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Now, I don't really go see many movies. I mean, my popcorn is much cheaper than theirs, and actually, I don't like the sticky "cinemuck" on the floor. Now, I haven't seen this movie, but the story's fascinating. I read about it. It was called The King's Speech, and that year it walked off with all kinds of Academy Awards.
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Mine's in my shoulder, from replacement surgery. Our grandson, well, his is in his chest from heart surgery. Country singer, Carrie Underwood's was on her face from a bad fall and 40 stitches a while back. But most of ours are deep inside, where no one can see them.
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I've got a lot of friends who live on some pretty isolated Indian reservations in the United States. And, frankly, there just aren't many jobs there. But recently, a couple of them have suddenly found themselves making some pretty big money on a construction job. One of my Native friends said, "Man, this is a great job! They're building a road, and I got hired, and it's great money!" Actually, when you're working construction, it usually does mean some pretty decent pay.
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Our friend Steve has been involved with horses most of his life. He's even owned a couple of champions. But one day at the barn, in one moment of carelessness, Steve allowed himself to get in what horse lovers know as the "kill zone" - that area behind a horse where they can kick you with those potentially deadly hooves. In one life-changing moment, Steve was kicked in the leg, shattered his bones. Even though he was in excruciating pain, he did manage to drag himself to the highway near his house where he pulled himself up and started waving for help. Car after car just drove right on past this seriously injured man - even his friends and neighbors. They didn't know he was hurting. They thought he was just waving "Hi!" Really?
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North Dakota's a long way from Wuhan, China. But our friend Wes has been seeing more and more customers wearing masks in the local Walmart. He says he's going to start telling them "to calm down." Then, thinking of how fear can spook the stock market, he said, "Then I'm going to thank them for destroying my 401(k)."
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It was one of those unexpected phone calls that leaves you stunned. Our friend Curt, one of the most experienced private pilots we know, had crashed two hours earlier. He was landing on a grass strip near his home, a strip where he's landed hundreds of times. This time he somehow went into a skid that propelled his plane right into a tree. The plane caught fire and exploded, and our friend Curt was in heaven. As a beloved leader in our community, I can tell you that his death rocked a lot of people, including me. Because of a collapsed wheel, he had been in a crash fourteen months earlier; one which should have been fatal but which he actually escaped from with serious but survivable injuries. I can't tell you how grateful I am he did not die then. See, something very important happened between those two crashes.
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For some people, a long drive is anything more than an hour or two. Over the years for my wife and me, well, it just had to be many hours before we could call it a long drive. Oh, good night, I think back! We've driven so many marathon trips over the years and, for the most part, we've enjoyed it...if we traveled together. It's not fun driving a long haul alone. In fact, unless you're a professional long-hauler, it's not even safe to drive a long trip alone. It never is a good idea to nap and drive simultaneously I believe. If you really want to cover a lot of miles, take somebody with you. You can go a lot longer. Oh sure, that second person might slow you down a little sometimes, but hey, they're worth it. There's an old African proverb that says it pretty well: "If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together." That's cool, huh?
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I think most of us remember hearing that news first about Kobe Bryant's sudden death in the helicopter crash. I notice a deep sense of sadness people have. A lot of times it was like they almost had lost somebody that they knew. And then we learned his 13-year-old daughter had died and seven other extraordinary people were also lost in that crash.
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Several years ago, it was like the talk of people watching TV. It was that show "Lost." I never got hooked on that series, but a whole lot of my friends did. I would often see the day after that they'd be shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, and they're kind of tongue-tied when it came to trying to explain what happened the night before. Well, one Sunday night, their long journey ended with this 2 ½ hour finale, creatively titled, "The End." I don't know how long they worked on that title.
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It still sickens me to see it on a news replay. Those plumes of smoke over Cape Canaveral - the awful trail from what had been the Space Shuttle "Challenger." Teacher Christa McCauliffe and six other crew members were gone before our eyes. Hard to believe it was so many years ago. Hard to believe the memories and the feelings are still so vivid.
