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My friend called me not long ago to pray for his Mom. During some medical tests, the doctor discovered something he didn't like - a large growth in her stomach. My friend said, "They haven't used the 'C' word yet. They wanted to take some more tests first." Now they've said the "C" word; the word all of us dread hearing from a doctor. You know - cancer. We know what that word can mean.
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They were just a young fire-fighting crew, assigned to work on a relatively small brush fire in Washington State. No one could have imagined what was about to happen. Seemingly timid fires suddenly roared to life and then out of control. In the end, 14 firefighters had to pin their hopes on those tinfoil shelters designed to be the last line of protection in a firetrap. Ultimately, four young firefighters died in the fire that day. They had tried to escape the fire by heading for a nearby road. Apparently, their superiors had not advised them that it was a dead-end road.
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Twenty-three seconds. It takes you longer than that to eat a slice of pizza, or at least it should. It takes me about that long to just say three or four sentences. Now, a short TV commercial is longer than that. But every 23 seconds, something absolutely amazing happens inside you. Your blood pumps through your body, delivers oxygen and nutrients to all your cells, and carries away the impurities from your cells and starts back through again in 23 seconds. Mind-blowing! That's what it takes to keep you going. You've got to have that oxygen delivered regularly. You've got to have your cell garbage taken out regularly, and your blood gets it done.
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I was more of a Superman and Batman fan. I never really got into Spider-Man. But when the blockbuster Spider-Man movie came out, a lot of people did get into Spider-Man. And you know what? There has been a couple more of them since then. I'm still not very interested in this web-spinning, skyscraper-climbing, crime-fighting guy in the spider suit, but I am interested in something he said in the first movie about him. Peter Parker is the bookish teenager who gets bitten by a radioactive spider one day and begins to discover that he has suddenly developed some amazing spiderish abilities. (Okay, I'm reporting the story; I didn't write it.) Now, it dawns on him that he can't just use these abilities for himself. He has to use them to make a difference. Here's what he says. I like this: "For me, living an ordinary life is no longer an option."
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Our son was so excited when he called us. Our year-old granddaughter had just gotten up and walked about 30 steps across the floor! We had seen her crawl for the first time - we'd seen her stand by herself and even take a step. But this time she had suddenly exploded into big-time walking. Our son seemed to have an immediate revelation about what this development was going to mean for the life of her parents. He simply introduced his announcement of her walking with these four words, "Let the games begin!" No kidding!
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I have a friend who fixes bodies - auto bodies, that is. And the sign in front of his body shop always has a provocative bit of philosophy to make you think or make you smile. I have to make it a note to tell my friend about a radio commercial I heard recently, actually advertising an auto body shop in another area. It just struck me as being a clever motto for somebody in that business. It just said, "We meet by accident."
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City Boy here is a lot of fun to watch when he's trying to be Farm Boy. My wife and I were helping out in someone else's barn the other night when it happened: the large shadow of something flying over our heads. I hadn't seen the creatures yet; all I could see was this massive shadow on the wall. I knew my responsibility as a man. That's right, run for help! Well, there was actually no reason to run. When we looked up, we saw what was casting those huge, unsettling shadows: some little moths, flying around the little light overhead. The shadow was scary; the reality behind the shadow was not scary at all.
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During two weeks that I call "The Ice Age" in our area, a car slid into our vehicle in a parking lot. So the right side looked pretty ugly. Interestingly enough, that damage didn't affect the performance of our car at all. Like so many older cars we've had over the years, the outside was banged up but the engine was running fine.
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When I came home from my first trip to Australia, my kids were eager to see what souvenirs I might have brought back for them. I couldn't fit that kangaroo in my suitcase, but there was one very Australian item I did bring back - a boomerang. Those things are amazing. If you throw it right, that boomerang will go out, make a U-turn, and come right back to you. It's probably a good idea, then, to pay attention after you throw your boomerang. I can just see a klutz like me throwing it, turning my back, and getting boomed with my own boomerang!
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My wife and I are some of those psychos that I call marathon drivers. Now I know long-haul truckers have to do it for a living. But sometimes we choose to do it, just because we want to get somewhere quickly. Of course, like most men, I like to be the one driving, sometimes for longer than I should. My wife tells me that our lives start to be in danger from the time I start rubbing my right leg while I'm driving. Apparently, that's the first tip-off of fatigue. She will gently offer to drive and I will, of course, refuse. She offers several other times to drive, when I start doing a Jane Fonda workout at the wheel, when I turn on some obnoxious radio station at full volume, when I open the window to let in the 20-below wind chill. Finally, just before we're just about to become a National Safety Council statistic, I grudgingly pull over to the side of the road. We change seats, and I'm out before she can start up the car again.
