I got a note from Mrs. Spyker yesterday.  She noticed that I would be having a birthday soon and sent me her best wishes, along with some news about how her family was doing.  I haven’t seen her for forty-five years.  It’s great that we’ve been able to renew our very old friendship, but her note brought an old memory to mind; not a very enjoyable one, but it was one which had some part in shaping who I am.

The Spykers (pronounced “speaker”) are missionaries in Mexico even still, although at one time, Mr. Spyker was also a building contractor.  The family took a break from ministry for a few years about the same time we were getting settled in the home in which I spent most of my growing up years.  The incident I recalled recently, happened while they were building their house which was essentially next door to ours, although a narrow side street separated us.  The house was made completely of concrete block, including the inner walls.  It was a little unusual, but block buildings tended to be cooler than most homes constructed of other building materials and, being in a very warm climate in the days before air conditioning was common, it made sense.  Of course, it was impossible to keep a six-year old kid away from the construction site, with the cement mixer and power tools filling the air with attractive noises, and the structure rising up from the ground.  Where there had been an empty lot, a building was literally growing, since all the block walls had to be laid from the ground up at the same time.  It was not just one wall being put up at a time, as you would expect with a wood structure.  My intense curiosity was to have disastrous consequences.

On this particular day, all the walls had risen to about five feet tall, towering above my head.  I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I snuck in anyway, just to watch the block layers plying their craft.  They worked quickly, first slathering a layer of mortar on top of the last course which had been laid, taking the eight-inch blocks from their helpers who constantly kept them supplied, and setting them into place, tamping them down with the handle of their trowel.  They would level them up with the string which had been stretched from one end of the wall to the other, pausing to make sure of the level after each course was completed.  Every once in awhile, one of the block-layers would take a funny top-shaped steel device out of his pocket and holding the string it was attached to at the top of the wall, would let the “plumb-bob” dangle down to the floor, checking to be sure the walls were plumb and not leaning at all.  This is where my part came in.  As I watched the men, I had gradually leaned against a short stub wall behind me. In height, it was just as tall as the others, but it was only a short length of wall between interior doorways.  Because of this, it wasn’t connected to any other walls.  You can guess what happened in short order.  As I leaned, the wall began to tip.  I yelled; one of the men carrying blocks dropped his load and leapt behind the wall, pushing it back up into position.

It wasn’t immediately clear to me why the men were all so angry, but I knew I had done something terribly wrong, even though my intent hadn’t been malicious in any way.  Mr. Spyker was immediately in front of me, asking me, no…telling me in very clear language that I was not to enter the building zone again.  He did explain to me that if the wall had gone over into the next wall, they might have been rebuilding the whole house, since the domino effect was a definite possibility.  He finished up by saying, “You have to keep your eyes open if you’re in here; and, you have to know what you can lean on and what you can’t.”  Crying and ashamed, I headed for home and went straight upstairs to my bed and bawled.

Lessons learned?  Wow!  Where to begin?  To start with, this domino effect was a new idea to me.  To think that one little error at a single point in a huge house could cause a problem which might require a complete rebuilding of the whole project, was mind-boggling.  It was just an accident!  Was it really possible that a little boy of forty pounds, leaning against a wall of sturdy concrete blocks much heavier than he, could wreak such havoc?  In spite of my embarrassment, I was unbelievably relieved that the man had caught the wall.  I thought that would be the end of the incident…right?

Not quite.  It seems that the section of wall I had tipped that little bit, had to be completely removed and then rebuilt, block by block, from the concrete floor, all the way up to the level at which it had stood before.  As the wall tipped, it broke the mortar joint at the floor, changing the level of each course.  Obviously, it would no longer be plumb either, so down came the wall, right to the floor; a fate I thought had been avoided by the quick thinking of the fellow who caught it as it tottered there.  So, in spite of my relief, workers still had to spend precious time and energy rebuilding a wall that moments before had been perfect and solid.  All because of one little six-year old boy.

My mom was fond of maxims.  You know, “If it had been a snake, it would have bitten you”; “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face”;  that kind of thing.  Her comment this time was, “Curiosity killed the cat.”  I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I didn’t think it fit.  I wasn’t hurt a bit, but I had caused all that damage for others to deal with.  What a burden for a small lad to carry.  I still remember the shame and the desire to find a hole to climb into.  But, like most things, I got over it within a few hours.  Hopefully, the lesson has lasted a little longer.

What are you leaning on?  Pretty solid, is it?  Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.  If your prop gives way, who else is going to be hurt?  It’s easy to think that our actions and decisions will affect only ourselves.  But, time and again, that proves to be a falsehood, because everything we do has a domino effect.  It might seem a little less severe than that; more like a ripple effect, but the end result is the same. Lives will be upset and turned upside down, needing to be put right.  All because we are putting our trust in something that isn’t solid, isn’t able to stand up to our weight.

Sometimes what seems to be solid ground is nothing more than shifting sand.   You might not expect the six-year old to know the difference, but we’ve got a little experience under our belts now.   The more I consider it, the more I realize that we’ve come to put our trust in stubs of walls, not able to hold us up; Money in the bank, Governments, homes, guns; the list goes on and on.  Maybe that’s what the Psalmist was thinking when he wrote, “Some trust in chariots, some in horses; but we trust in the Name of the Lord our God.”  Now there’s something solid on which to lean!

No more leaning against unfinished block walls for me!  Now if only the rest of the decisions in life were that easy to figure out.    

“When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child; I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man,  I put my childish ways behind me.” 
(I Corinthians 13:11)

“Lean on me when you’re not strong.
I’ll be your friend. I’ll help you carry on.”
(Bill Withers~American singer/songwriter)

I bought a pig in a poke last week.  Okay…really it was a pickup truck.   But the idea is the same.  The local university, where the Lovely Lady goes each day to spend time with her friends, was offering the truck in a sealed bid auction.  What’s that?  Oh yeah…She actually is employed by the university library, but my take on it is that she has entirely too much fun there to call it work.  A few weeks ago, she showed me an email about this truck, with high miles and not running.  The university department which owned the vehicle had decided not to put any more time or money into it and was offering it to the highest bidder.  I decided to take a chance on it and submitted a bid.  My theory was that if I couldn’t get it to run, at least I could sell it to the scrap yard in town for pretty close to what I paid.  The pig in the poke was towed home last week and it was running by the end of that day.

By now, I’m guessing some of you are wondering about that “pig in a poke” thing.  Word nerd that I am, I wondered about it too, so I did a little research.  I’ve heard the phrase all my life to describe buying something that might turn out to be a good thing or not.  As my friend, Andy says, “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”  At least, I think he means about the same thing.  (Andy’s brain operates on a much higher plane than mine.)  In my research, I find that the phrase dates back to medieval England, when you might be wandering along the roadside toward the marketplace and find a farmer carrying a cloth bag, which was called a “poke” (hence our modern word pocket, from poke-ette, or little bag).  Asking him what he has in the bag, he would reply, “A suckling pig, fattened up just right for roasting.”  You could see the squirming, wiggling mass in the bag, so the price would be agreed upon and you would head for home with supper “in the bag”, so to speak.  Arriving home, the bag would be handed to the lady of the house and it would be opened to reveal…a large cat!  You’ve been taken!  The false farmer (probably just a tramp who grabbed a stray along the road) would be miles away with your money before you let the cat out of the bag.  Yep!  That’s also where that saying originates.  Anyway, the secret is revealed and you have an inedible cat, with nary a sign of the pig for which you bargained.

I hope the word nerds are satisfied, because there is still a bit more of this story to tell and I’m already running out of space.  I told you the truck was running by the end of the day.  I did not say it was running well.  Overall, I was pleased with my purchase, but the motor ran roughly, with a strong gasoline smell being emitted as it ran.  The optimist in me wanted to believe that a little injector cleaner would take care of the problem, so I took a trip to Wally-world to buy this elixir of youth for old engines.  The additive in the tank and a few gallons of gas later, I took a test drive.  About four miles down the road, I looked in the mirror to see sparks flying behind me.  This is not a good sign.  Onto the shoulder the truck was pulled and, moving around to the grass verge, I knelt down and looked under the truck.  Somehow, the catalytic converter is the only thing I could see in the dim light.  Of course, this might have been because it was glowing red-hot!  In my memory, it was just like the molten steel you see in the movies of the old factories in Pittsburgh, but that also might be an exaggeration produced by my astonishment at seeing such a thing within a foot of the gasoline tank on the underside of the truck.  You see, I was sitting right above the tank, so I had a vested interest in it not being ignited by the hot converter.  I took the truck directly home and called a mechanic to schedule a consultation with the expert.

Within a day or two, we should know if the cat’s out of the bag, or if I really did get a good pig for my money.  I’m hoping for the latter.  That said, I’m keeping the phone number of the salvage yard handy, just in case they need an old stray cat.

The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, and leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy.  The transliteration of the quote from Robert Burns’ sad ode “To a Mouse”, while seemingly a bit depressing, actually helps me to put things in perspective.  We can’t see the whole picture, but just have pieces to the puzzle.  It doesn’t stop us from trying different pieces, from turning them around and checking to see if the fit is right.  We just need to know that not everything is going to come to a happy conclusion without some flexibility along the way.  I’m starting to see that pretty much everything we attempt in life is like “buying a pig in a poke”.  That’s not to say we shouldn’t attempt to make good choices, but it becomes clearer day by day, that even the best researched moves we make don’t always produce the results we have planned for.

I’ll keep working at fitting my pieces together one by one and will have faith that the great Puzzle Maker knows His craft.  It’s a good thing He does, since it’s a cinch that neither my puzzle assembly skills, nor my mechanical ability are going to get the job done without help.

“If I had more skill in what I’m attempting, I wouldn’t need so much courage.”
(Ashleigh Brilliant~American cartoonist)

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
(John Lennon~English singer/songwriter~1940-1980)

They’re closing down my old elementary school.  The article in the hometown newspaper says that the school board has decided the maintenance costs are too high to justify keeping the school open.  The new use?  Offices and storage space.  The place I spent six of the formative years of my life will no longer enrich the lives of children in that South Texas city where many of the events about which I have written happened.  The newspaper article was brought to my attention by another friend the other day, so I posted it on an online page which plays host to a few generations of alumni of that school.  The result was amazing and even a little confusing.  There had been no activity in the past year on the page.  Now, a couple of days later, I have to scroll down on the page again and again and again, still not reaching the original posting of the article from a mere forty-eight hours ago.

I’m trying to figure out this phenomenon.  As long as the status quo remained, no one was concerned; we didn’t even deem it prudent to expose our memories in public.  Tonight, many aging adults share a common bond with people they have never met, simply because the use of an old brick building changed.  As long as the routine was unbroken, we were content to let our memories lie unexpressed.  Now we are compelled by some unseen force to talk about first grade teachers, principals, lunch tokens, Halloween carnivals, and crossing guards with complete strangers, whose only connection to us is this sixty year old building and its history.  Whatever the impetus for the conversation, I’m thoroughly enjoying it!

Memories are funny things, though.  It is possible to get so tied up in the past that we miss the import of the present and the potential of the future.  That’s why I love having children around me – because they lend an onus to make sure that we help their memories to be happy ones.  The events my grandchildren are living through now will be the memories they share with old friends forty and fifty years from now, just as I do now with you.  If all we do is live in the past, neglecting the present, we risk abetting in forming memories of dysfunctional and unhappy interactions, instead of bright, joyful ones.  I also have a few of those dark memories (as I’ m guessing you do), which I’ve not dwelt on, either in my mind, nor in my writing, simply because I’m not sure either would be profitable.  Some may be woven into a few of these pages when it seems beneficial, but most are best left in the dim shadows to do no more damage.

I’m convinced that we can learn from the past, but also that we must live in the present, as well as having hope for the future.  To that end, a generous dose of memories from years gone by, mixed with dreams for the days still to come, seems to be a reasonable tonic to make the present a very acceptable place in which to live.

Our memories don’t fade simply because building are torn down or re-purposed.  We don’t lose sight of loved ones, simply because they no longer walk this earth with us.  Our memories are a gift, given by a loving God to remind us of the good things, as well as the less happy events which have shaped who we are.

I remember with fondness the line to the cafeteria, one child after another, rubbing our lunch or milk tokens against the brick wall.  Those little plastic disks soon wore down to tiny nubs, but still entitled us to the meal or drink we had paid for.  In much the same way, as we age and the years erode the clarity of the events and memories, we still continue to reap the benefits of those early days spent learning, and growing, and living.

Maybe while we’re remembering the past, we can take some time to make a great memory or two for the future today.

“We must always have old memories and young hopes.”
(Arsene Houssaye~French novelist~1815-1896)

“Old things are passed away.  See?  All things have become new.”
(2 Corinthians: 5:17b)

The old Chevy sat out in the middle of the horse pasture.  I had let slip to a customer that I had a 1962 Impala that I was going to restore, and he immediately volunteered the information that he owned the same make and model and would be willing to sell it.  I didn’t need another car and started to move on in the conversation, but he steered it right back.  “No, I would sell it for parts.”  I asked him if the car was complete and he replied, “Right down to the hubcaps.”   I didn’t need any hubcaps, but there was one thing I knew I would have to have before the restoration was complete on my car.  “Is the windshield good?”  I probed.  The answer came back immediately,  “Perfect.  Not a single crack or star.”  I knew that a new windshield would cost me a hundred and fifty dollars if I installed it myself, so I made an offer.

“I’ll buy the car for a hundred dollars, on one condition.”  He wasn’t impressed with my offer, but wanted to know what the condition was.  “I’m going to take all the parts off that I want and leave the rest of it where it is.”  It wasn’t much of a proposal and I really didn’t expect him to jump at the opportunity to be used as a salvage yard, but his wife was a few feet away, nodding her head vigorously.  He accepted my offer.

A week or so later, my little girl and I made our way through the rickety gate back to where the old flivver sat; a derelict in the middle of the overgrown field, with a few wildflowers scattered around and three or four horses grazing at the back fence.  The car really was in too good a condition to be cannibalized, but I was fixing up my Grandpa’s old car, not some other vehicle with an unknown history.  The little girl played nearby, as I started removing trim inside the passenger compartment.  I really wasn’t worried about her, but I thought I was keeping an eye peeled for trouble.  Evidently it wasn’t good enough, because all of the sudden she screamed and ran for the car where I was.  It seems that horses are just as curious as humans, and they weren’t sure what to make of this miniature person invading their bailiwick.  They had gotten fairly close before she noticed the movement and looked up to see a giant creature towering over her.  In the safety of Dad’s presence and the car’s interior, she calmed down quickly and was soon chattering on about the beautiful animals and whether she would ever be brave enough to ride one or not.  I finished removing the trim from around the windshield and then decided that the last step of the removal process needed two adults, so we picked up the small parts I was taking and headed out.  The horses escorted us out, so the young lady elected to be carried to the gate, a rare occurrence with that one. 

In another day or two, I returned, sans daughter, but with a brother-in-law to assist.  We cut the gasket around the glass and pushed gently on the upper edge of the windshield inside the car.  It gave a healthy amount, so we worked together, the Lovely Lady’s brother outside with his fingertips in between the rim of the glass and the channel in which it normally laid, and me pushing a moderate amount at about the same place as he was pulling, only from the opposite side of the glass.  The process was much slower and more difficult than we anticipated, and we were winded well before we had progressed a fourth of the way across the top side.  We took a breather and talked it over.  “Why don’t we use a little more pressure on the inside, this next go-round,” the brother-in-law suggested.  I was just as eager to be done with the job as he and wondered aloud if it would hurt to use my feet.  The soft rubber soles of my Converse sneakers could do no harm, surely.

Those, as my mother would say, were “famous last words”.  We returned to work and he grasped the glass from the outside once more and this time I placed my size 10 1/2s on the interior side and pressed gently.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t so gently.   The disastrous result was an instantaneous “POP!” and just as rapidly, a crack appeared from top to bottom of the precious windshield, about ten inches over from where we had applied the pressure.  The only thing I needed from that car was ruined!  My razor-sharp bargaining skills had netted me nothing but a few hours work and a huge disappointment, to say nothing about the hundred dollar-sized hole in my pocket!  I pried the hubcaps off the car and left.

I laughed on the way home, though.  Somehow my mind seldom leaps to similar situations before I get myself into trouble, but on the road back to the shop, I recalled that fateful Sunday afternoon a few years prior, when my good friend and I were trying our hand at replacing one of the flat windshields in the old church bus.  Easy-Smeazy, right?  Flat piece of glass, new rubber gasket…What could go wrong?  We had set the gasket and glass almost into place and were just popping the final inch or so of glass into the place where it would be perfectly flush all the way around.  The large glass was reluctant to settle into place, but, hey!  The rubber gasket would give some around the edges wouldn’t it?  That’s what rubber does, right?  We forced the glass into place the last sixteenth of an inch and the job was complete.  Both my friend and I stepped back to admire our workmanship.  It was whisper-quiet, but we both heard it…the tiniest “zzzzzip” reached our ears and we searched for its source.  There.  Right in the middle and at the bottom edge of the three-foot tall glass panel, a crack about 1/4 of an inch in length was showing.  No…It was 3/8ths of an inch long now…then 5/8ths, creeping its way from the very bottom of the glass inexorably toward the top.  “Drill a hole!  That will stop it!” he suggested excitedly.  The only problem with his solution was that we were out in the country and had no power tools at all.  We jumped in his truck and tore down the dirt road, three miles cross country and three miles back with the drill, to find that the time it had taken to get the drill was just exactly the amount of time it took the crack to traverse the pane of glass.  We watched in dismay as it disappeared under the lower edge of the rubber gasket across the top.  When the church sold that bus ten years later, it went to its new owner with a cracked windshield on the passenger side.

Is there any lesson to be drawn from these two episodes?  Not really.  Oh, I guess you could work out something really deep from it, but I actually only mention them in the hopes that they are as funny to you now in the light of day, as they have been to me, squirreled away in the secret vault of my memory.  While they were happening…Disaster!  But we get over these mini-disasters and faux-catastrophes in time and then, looking back, see them for what they are, just good memories of spending time with friends and learning a lesson or two along the way.  If I had the power of the Doctor in that quirky Brit Sci-Fi series, “Dr. Who?”, and was able to travel back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing about either event.  I’m grateful for friendship and companionship along the way, sharing in my ineptitude, as well as in my accomplishments. 

I read daily in the social media of friends who are having horrible days.  I hope that recording them in a public forum now, doesn’t preclude these times from becoming just more amusing and educational memories years down the road.  We all need the opportunity to laugh at ourselves and enjoy life, with all its bumpiness, for what it is…an adventure not to be traded for any perfect fairy-tale ever imagined.

Today is yet another chance for us to fashion more good memories on the road to our final destination.  Why don’t we settle in, ignore the cracks, and enjoy the trip!

“…The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most – which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards…”
(Excerpt from “The Hobbit”~J.R.R. Tolkien~British author~1892-1973)

“Try not to have a good time…This is supposed to be educational!”
(Peanuts character Lucy Van Pelt~created by Charles M Schulz~American cartoonist~1922-2000)

An hour and a half.  Just sitting and thinking.  My mind runs up one rabbit trail and follows it to a dead end.  I pick up the thread of a thought a moment later and hold it in my head for a few moments, but…it is nothing.  I sat down in front of the computer to write and, as determined as I am to accomplish the task, nothing comes.  Perhaps it’s just as well.  There have been a few nights that I have forced the ideas onto the screen in front of me and they fall reluctantly into place, griping and complaining all the while.  The finished product is less than spectacular.  You’ve probably read one or two of those over the last few months. 

The other night as we stood studying the campfire, my grandsons begged to roast their own marshmallows.  I agreed to help and so, we headed for the edge of the fire, marshmallows ensconced on skewers, to take a shot at roasting the perfect marshmallows.  It was a mixed success, which is to say, it was a disaster.  The younger of the two children, always the adventurous one, placed his skewer right down next to the coals even as I warned against a conflagration (in easier to understand words, of course).  The older one, not wanting to brave the heat of close proximity, barely held his over the flame at all, so it was a slow, painstaking process.  As expected, soon the puffy roasters belonging to the younger boy burst into flame.  Quickly blowing out the flames and asking him to wait, I again turned my attention to the older boy, intent upon cooking his to perfection.  After a few moments, he agreed that they were a probably okay (even though there was no outward sign of them being done) and he was content.  We headed for the table to build the ‘Smores with chocolate bars and graham crackers.  The younger lad finished making his and began to consume it with fervor, despite the extremely charred exterior.  As the older child finished his creation, he put it to his mouth, only to draw it immediately out.  “Oh!”  He exclaimed.  “What?  Is it too hot?” his mom asked.  “No.  I just remembered.  I don’t like marshmallows.”  He refused to eat any of it.

So, lest that also be your response to a poorly thought out post, I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.  No incinerated, overdone thoughts, thrown desperately into place; not even any undercooked, barely warm ideas, which need more time to simmer and soften.  Maybe tomorrow’s menu will be more appetizing and better planned.

One can always hope.

“In laboring to be concise, I become obscure.”
(Horace~Ancient Roman Poet~65 BC-8 BC)

It was the worst vacation ever!  The baseball game at Turner Field was delayed by rain, the water coming down almost sideways, soaking us as we huddled under the canopy, trying to figure out why we were still here.  As we went back to the hotel that night, in those days before GPS, we got hopelessly lost, driving down the streets in seedy parts of Atlanta, wondering if we’d ever emerge alive.  Then, as we left town the next morning, I was distracted as I drove and didn’t notice that the traffic light was changing until it was too late to avoid bumping the car in front of us.  My bumper just kissed hers, but there were two tiny circular marks from my license plate screws on her rubber bumper, and she insisted that a citation should be issued.  Right about then, I discovered that my driver’s license had expired three weeks before that.  I was moaning about going to jail and the kids were crying.  It was the worst vacation ever!

Whoa!  Back the truck up a bit!  Can we talk about this a minute?  We had a week’s vacation, split between Atlanta and then on to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina.  The episodes I described took up a grand total of one, maybe two hours of the entire week.  One week of Six Flags, Underground Atlanta, World of Coca Cola (avoid the “Beverly” drink at all costs!), a great hotel (really cheap price), a wonderful time at the beach (even got in a couple of romantic walks in the moonlight with the Lovely Lady), miniature golf, amazing all-you-can-eat seafood, and a stop in rural Georgia to visit with a fantastic bunch of people having a family reunion at the lake.  It was one of the best vacations ever!

Why is it that whenever we talk about that vacation, we remember the negative events, no matter how small a part they really played?  If I stop and think for a little while, the great time we really had comes back into focus, but the image that jumps to mind initially is sitting by the side of the road, waiting for the cop to write the ticket and/or throw me into jail, the latter of which he elected not to do.  I think he was really sorry that we had to get a citation at all, since we were on vacation in his city.  He seemed happier as he wrote her one for driving without insurance. Regardless, for years I’ve allowed that to be the image of our vacation that year.

Today, a young friend brought the issue back to mind for me, unaware that she was doing it, of course.  She has spent the last few days in an island paradise, reporting on the fun activities including water sports, relaxing on the beach, and the like.  Today it took her sixteen hours to make the trip home, a maddening journey that should have taken less than half that.  I found myself hoping that this wouldn’t be what she remembered of the great adventure she had enjoyed over the last several days, only to see that she has already expressed the opinion that this wouldn’t tarnish her memories in any way.  Good for her!  But, it brought back memories for me.

Tonight, I’ve been replaying that long ago vacation in my head, and I think I’ve got it straight now.  I’ve decided that it was a great trip, with a couple of minor glitches which ought not to outgrow their level of importance.  One little event springs to mind that helps me to put the negative into perspective.  As we tried (unsuccessfully) to stay dry at the ball field, waiting for the storm to pass, our attention was drawn down to the baseball diamond, which was covered by a huge tarp.  Of course there was a lake of water standing on the plastic, but a couple of the Atlanta Braves ballplayers, bored by the lack of activity, had made their way out onto the infield.  They parodied a pitcher and batter as they stood in the ankle deep water.  We cheered them on as the faux-batter smacked the imaginary ball and took off, running the bases, splattering water as he ran.  Finally rounding third base, the would-be pitcher pantomimed catching the ball from a non-existent outfielder and it was a nail-biter to guess who would get to home plate first.  As we cheered and yelled, the runner ducked beneath the clumsy tag and slid into home, his chest pushing a wall of water which mounted high into the air in front of him.  Talk about turning a disaster into enjoyment!  These guys weren’t going to let a little rain get into their souls and dampen their spirits.  And they carried the crowd with them, right out of the dark of individual disappointment into the light of corporate amusement and glee.  What a great public service they performed that night!

We need to find the good in negative situations, not in a trite way – not even ignoring that some events are actually really bad.  It just helps if we can tell the difference.  Too often we allow our joy to be stolen from us by the thieves of inconvenience and annoyance.  Those are red herrings, put in our way to make us lose our focus on the good things that have been given.  Don’t be fooled.  Time spent in enjoyment with loved ones should be a memory we hold close; the disappointments thrown in here and there can be discarded as nonessential.  It’s not that they didn’t happen, just that they don’t matter nearly as much as we allow them to.  Too Pollyannaish?  You know, the little girl who thought that the serious sermon texts should be discarded for the “glad” texts in the Bible, which didn’t make people feel bad?  You might think that’s what I’m saying, but I also have a text to support my conclusion.  “…if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” It’s significantly more beneficial for us to dwell on the positive and good, than on the negative.

I’ve spent an enjoyable couple of hours tonight, going through the other good memories of that great trip.  I may have to remember to talk about “the rest of the story” the next time the opportunity presents itself with the family.  Maybe we can even laugh about those other little inconveniences…

As Clarence reminded George Bailey in the movie, “You see, George.  You really had a wonderful life!”  Okay, that was Pollyannaish!

“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll.  The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist the hole!”
(McLandburgh Wilson~American poet)

“There are some days I practice positive thinking and other days I’m not positive I am thinking.”
(John M. Eades~American author)