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Buttermilk Falls is a beautiful spot! That's what I had been told, and I was always open for a great new spot to go for a Sunday afternoon drive with the kids. So we drove out to the country and set out to discover the beauty of Buttermilk Falls. I did have to stop and ask directions a couple of times; I guess a lot of people didn't know where this great spot was.
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I've been short and I've been tall. When I interviewed some professional football players, I had to fully extend my arm in order just to get the microphone up to their mouths. I was short. And then I went to Singapore and the Philippines, and I was tall! When I was in Manila I thought I could be in the NBA; I could play professional basketball there. Yeah, I was tall there. Of course, it's all a matter of what standards you compare yourself to. With that in mind, I have some great news for you this Christmas. Man, you are rich!
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Like most Americans, I just about O.D. on the news. No matter what it's about! It could be news about elections, some economic cliff, or eruptions in the Middle East. It's all important, but it's not exactly in the "joy to the world" category.
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During the summer our family loved going to Ocean City at the Jersey Shore. Now, there's about a two and a half, three mile boardwalk there. And I'll tell you, it's interesting to just sit there and watch the people parade go by. You'll see some guys parade along with torn shirts or real mini t-shirts displaying those bulging muscles, their arms, their chest, their back. I don't do that. No, I sort of cover up as much as I can.
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There's a spot in upstate New York where our family always loved to go for vacation. And that began years before when some friends looked at my drooping eyelids and said, "You need a vacation." I've heard those words many times. So we went off to Baker's Cabins. Now, we've stayed there at several points over the years, and then they changed the name of that place to Water's Edge. Same place, different name. Now, we went there after they changed the name to Water's Edge, and it had been called that for a while, but I could never seem to remember that name. I always called it Baker's Cabins. Even though they hadn't used that name for several years, well that was the name that was stuck in my mind. See, once you know something by a certain name, it isn't easy to make that new name stick.
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The names we use to describe people all depend on which side we're on. For example, if there are leftists who are trying to overthrow a pro-western government, we call them guerillas or revolutionaries. If pro-western guerillas are trying to overthrow a leftist government, we call them freedom fighters. If someone comes to our side, they're defectors. If they leave our side, they're deserters. You're probably either coming or going right now.
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If you've ever given a child a helium balloon, you know you had better tie it to something or you're going to have a heartbroken kid pretty soon! That crazy balloon will just float away and slowly disappear into the sky, and you will have a crying child pointing at the sky and expecting you to somehow get up there and retrieve it.
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Don't ever get behind me in a grocery store checkout line. I told a man that just the other day. You see, this time, once again, the line stopped moving as soon as I got in it. Something usually goes wrong in a line I'm in. It's just a part of my lot in life. I don't know what I've done to deserve this, but when I get in a line, all of a sudden the shift changes, or the toll booth light suddenly goes from green to red, or an argument breaks out in front of me, or people are having trouble paying, or something like that.
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Back when my sons were teenagers, they both owned a watch, but you would never know it if you looked at their wrist most of the time. Oh they owned a watch; they seldom wore it. Maybe that's typical of teenage boys. I guess kids live blissfully oblivious to time much of the time. Now some people depend on their cell phone, but you've got to pull that out and check it, and I do like to have it on my wrist. A lot of times our boys would have to ask what time it was, and most of the time they would ask a parent.
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Each year in my Campus Life Club we would have a meeting honoring the football players and the cheerleaders. And we had a crowd-breaker that was always great for laughs. We'd get three cheerleaders up front. We'd give them a bag filled with a complete football uniform, pads and all, minus a couple of items that would have been inappropriate. And then with a player coaching them verbally, the cheerleaders raced to see who could get all their uniform on first. You don't realize how much gear a football player has to put on until you try to figure out where all those pads go; knee pads, shoulder pads, hip pads. I mean, it's a lot to figure out!
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Okay, I never voted for having a dog in our house. I think they sneaked her in when I was on a trip or something. Her name was Missy - a Shih Tzu, and the last time she went to this dog care place, they registered her as Missy Hutchcraft. Now that's my last name! There's no family resemblance, and I wasn't sure I want to give her my last name.
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Well, it's time to get out the old winter wardrobe again, and a lot of us don't mind. You see, there's something very special about winter clothes - they're big, they're bulky. In other words, those sweaters cover a multitude of bulges and figure-faults unlike those summer clothes. Remember them? They reveal entirely too much, and I'm not even talking about modesty here. I'm talking honesty about all the figure problems. You know? Winter covers the bulges; summer exposes them. And in that sense, summer is coming for each of us.
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I don't mind sharing my cereal with my family or with house guests. I draw the line at sharing it with the bugs in the house. They seem to like my shredded wheat. In fact, given a chance, these bugs somehow get into the cabinet, get into the box and help themselves. It's not fun to find them sharing your cereal when you open the box in the morning. Eventually they hatch out into moths.
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Most days of my life I have to assess the damage from the day before - on a scale. When you have a history of being sort of "blimpy" when you were young and a slow metabolism as I do, it's very good to weigh yourself every day. One summer we spent the night with our son who was staying in a mobile home. He was unusually enthusiastic about the scale he had. He really wanted us to weigh ourselves on it. See, he's a scale watcher too.
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Over the years I've been placed in positions where I was supposed to motivate people to do something. Obviously that word motivate comes from the same word as motion - get people moving in some area. And I have to say my greatest motivational challenges have not come with large groups or with small groups; well one small group especially - my family. How do you motivate two boys to clean their room? If someone ever wrote an effective book on this, oh I would have bought it. It could have been a best seller. I won't be writing it, so go ahead.
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It was one a record-breaking pre-summer day in Denver - 99 degrees. I was there. I know. And after I finished speaking in the afternoon I went out for a vigorous 45-minute walk - Mr. Fitness. After I put a few blocks behind me, I was asking myself one question, "How come I'm not sweating much?" If I was home, man, I'd be wet all over. Denver doesn't have the kind of heat that I'm used to. They don't have the humidity. Oh, but a couple of days later, I was in Chicago. I took three steps and soaked my shirt. It's the same when I went home to New Jersey, where according to a meteorologist a 100-degree day actually felt like 126 degrees because the air was saturated. Isn't it nice to be in a place where it's hot but you don't have to perspire as much?
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I'm on the road a lot, and the phone in my room is still a very important tool (especially when I'm in those areas when I don't have cell signal). But years ago, even before cell phones, it was even more frustrating. I was staying in this campus guest room provided by the school where I was ministering. I appreciated the room; I just didn't appreciate the phone. See, I couldn't call out, even collect or with a credit card. The school had programmed the phone so it blocked any outgoing calls, because I guess they didn't want to get stuck with long distance bills.
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"She let us down." That's what one ten-year-old said about Miley Cyrus' more-than-suggestive performance at the MTV Awards. And that little girl nailed it.
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One of the nice things about our yard there in New Jersey was the trees. One of the frustrating things about that yard was the trees. See, every fall we would take out about a hundred bags or more stuffed with the leaves that come from those trees. We appreciate those leaves most of the year, but there is a little month there where they're not much fun at all.
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For many years Americans were not very quick to catch on to soccer. It's been the world's game; not so much America's game. We did have the World Cup finals here, and for many Americans they began to understand most of what the world already knew. It's the greatest sports obsession in the world. Obsession may seem a little strong, but consider what happened in Thailand. One night during the World Cup games there the streets were empty in this particular Thai city. "Hey, the World Cup is on. Why would I be out on the street?" In fact, even the security guard at the bank left to watch the game. And while the guard and the city lost themselves in a soccer game, you guessed it. Some thief cleaned out the bank. Now, I don't know who won the match, but I know who lost their money.
