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We raised a son who loves sports, but he also had ability in music. How do you put those two together? A lot of times those two interests don't go together. Well, it was fourth grade when we thought it was time to introduce our son to a musical instrument. And when we talked a little bit about what instrument he'd be interested in, he said, "Well, maybe the saxophone."
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Not long ago our family got in one of those uproarious "remember when" conversations. And the subject was various times that we had disciplined our children, and they were going way back. This took an hour and a half of them thinking back, "Remember the time you..." "Oh, yeah, that was hilarious!" We explained, for example, how we had always tried to discipline with natural consequences. You know, if you did something wrong with your mouth, you had to be quiet for a while. Or maybe in some cases have your mouth washed out. If you did something wrong with your hands, then you had to fold your hands; you forfeited the right to use them. At which point our oldest son said, "But I never did anything wrong with my bottom!" Which is where a lot of the disciplining took place. So much for natural consequences!
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They call it the shark tunnel. Yeah, that has to make you think twice about going in. It's an attraction, if you want to call it an attraction, at some of the aquariums and theme parks in America.
The tourists walk through this tunnel that's surrounded by glass above them and on both sides there's water all around them. And on the other side in that water are huge sharks swimming menacingly in their tank, and occasionally bumping into the glass. I think just about everyone has this primeval fear of sharks. Now I can't speak for everyone, but I do. And suddenly there they were all around me, and I was paying to see them - one wall between me and those monsters! But it made all the difference.
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You know, sometimes it seems like there's a growing number of women who are really attractive until they open their mouth. Maybe that's why someone said, "There are girls you date..." Remember that? "...and there are girls you marry." Oh, our society stresses beautiful hair, and teeth, and eyes, and clothes, and they think that's all that beauty is to a lot of women. But every once in a while, you meet a woman who's got a quality that really makes her special. It's hard to put a name on it, but she's special. It's kind of like a beach ball I saw the other night. You say the other night? Yeah. Actually you can use this beach ball in the dark. It has a light inside.
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One of the amazing frustrations about families is that you just can't get everybody to agree on a comfortable temperature. Sometimes you can't even get a husband and wife to agree on it. One likes the room cozy and warm; the other likes it cool and refreshing, shall we say. It's hard even be in agreement on what is hot and what is cold.
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Well, for many years, Penn State was just one college of many with a powerful football program. And then not too long ago, it suddenly became the epicenter of a whole lot of outrage.
Screaming students; angry that Joe Paterno, their iconic coach - the "winning-est" college coach ever - had been summarily fired. And then the parents, the politicians, the pundits, enraged as they should be, at allegations of young lives ruined by sexual abuse. Allegedly by a coach who used a locker room as a place to horribly exploit young boys.
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I won't be going to a Lady Gaga concert soon, but tons of people have and will. To some, that headline-generating singer is just another cultural side show. But at least for now, the entertainer known for her bizarre outfits and her wild performances is an A-list celebrity and a cultural icon.
And it's all too easy to forget she's a person. Like all of us, a person with a story. She's starting to tell some of that story. As I read part of it yesterday, I honestly felt sad. For all of her stratospheric success in the spotlight, there's apparently a lot of hurt offstage.
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Have you ever noticed how a baby learns to walk? Yeah, it's the "step, boom" method. Someone comes along and says, "I think it's about time", sets them up on their legs - you know, kind of spaghetti legs - and they take one step, boom. And, of course, they get up again, and the next time it's step, step, boom. And then step, step, step, boom, etc. You know.
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It was one of those 3-H summer days: hazy, hot, and humid. It's not advisable to sweat on those days, because there's really no place to go. You keep running into your own sweat. And you know how it is on those days; you kind of feel "ugh"...you feel like doing nothing. Well, it was one of those days, and a brief storm went through. It was the leading edge of a cold front the weather man said, and the temperature dropped almost 25 degrees in a four-hour period of time. That heavy, muggy, hazy air suddenly cleared out; people started moving around again. I'll tell you, the view all of a sudden was crystal clear; no haze. The atmosphere was refreshing finally. Did you know a person can actually have that affect?
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It's amazing how creative parents can become when it's time to explain the facts of life to a child, and they really get creative when it comes to the vocabulary they choose. Now, we tell our kids that an ear is an ear, a leg is a leg, an elbow is an elbow and so on. But when it comes time to explain the male and female parts of the body and the facts of life talk, we have a hard time using the right words. Frankly, I've heard some pretty weird names for human anatomy. Words invented, I guess, by a red-faced parent, but not recognized by any doctor on the planet. You know, it's good to use the right words when it comes to sex, especially the one that really counts - the Bible does.
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We're pretty avid New York Giants football fans at our house. Don't hold that against us. You know, you can understand it if you follow football at all. We're eager after a long basketball season and a baseball season to see the first games, even when they're exhibition games. Now, when my children were growing up, there was a particular game on one season that we really wanted to see, because it was against a top NFL team.
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Our pre-school grandson? I think he overheard the weather forecast recently before his bedtime. It went something like this, "Chance of rain, maybe a few snow flurries." I guess that's all he needed to hear, because he began to pray fervently that night, "Jesus, please make it snow tomorrow." Now, flurries are barely snow, but apparently the mention of them is enough for fuel for hope, you know, and for faith...especially faith. And when he went to bed that night, his mom and dad...they prayed too. They said, "Dear Jesus, would you please answer a little boy's prayer?"
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I usually wake up in the morning to a local news station, which is a real encouraging way to wake up. You know, you can get your day off to a really cheerful start. You can hear about a war or two, a little terrorism, some of last night's fatalities. Oh yeah, that will get you started! Actually it's not the news I'm actually so interested in, it's the weather I want to hear. And when you hear the weather, then you can plan your day's wardrobe and your activities, you know, a little better.
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I never had a sister, but my sons have one, which means I have a daughter. Now, our oldest son is two years younger than our daughter, who is the oldest, but it was interesting to see as I watched their relationship what I had missed growing up. Oh, there was a lot of kidding around; the kids called it "busting." They had some exciting disagreements growing up because, well, they're two very different people.
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Have you driven past a home or building that's under construction lately? Take a good look, because there are some things that you will never see again, so you'd better look now. Like the foundation for example. You can see it right now while they're building, but pretty soon all you'll see is the house, or the office building, or the condo. The foundation will pretty soon disappear from view. But it's always going to be what's holding up that whole structure. The same is true of the support beams. Pretty soon they're going to be covered with walls, and paint, and wallpaper. But they will always form the invisible support for everything. If the foundation or the support beams go, the whole thing goes.
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Back when my son and his friends were going into their sophomore year in high school playing football, they moved up to the junior varsity and the varsity team. And the word got to them that they were going to have triple sessions in August and September practices. That's exciting... Triple sessions meant that you got to go, not for the regular two-hour practice of calisthenics, and running, and working hard, and running into things, and running into each other. No, you got to go for four hours. No, you guessed it: six wonderful hours of that!
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Wow! Talk about so near and yet so far - poor Desmond Bishop. He missed what could have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go to the White House and meet the President of the United States!
Desmond was a linebacker for the Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers that year, and his team met the President. Meanwhile, Desmond took a nap on the team bus. Why? All because he inadvertently left his I.D. on the plane, and the Secret Service wasn't about to make any exceptions on letting someone close to the President. No I.D., no White House, no President.
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I don't know who invented the credit card, but I'd like to have a very serious talk with him, because I'm not sure he helped any of us by thinking that this plastic "postponer" was going to help us. With a credit card you go to the store with $100 in cash, you get what you wanted, and you come out with $100 in your wallet. And it feels like, "Hey, that didn't cost anything." Wrong! Fantasy land! The bill will come...it always does. You postponed the payment, but you didn't cancel it. Oh, and by postponing it, that purchase is actually going to cost you more. I think that's what they call interest. The time lag between what you buy and what you pay can get you into big trouble.
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One of the most challenging and graceful track and field events has got to be the pole vault. There's this athlete running, then he's airborne on that pole, now he's gliding up and over that bar. Can't you picture it? Well, up at least! Oh, no! The bar comes crashing down; the "vaulter" didn't clear the bar. But wait! Here come the officials! Listen to what they're saying to the unsuccessful "vaulter", "Oh, that a little high for you wasn't it? Listen, why don't we lower the bar a couple of notches? We'll just keep lowering it until you can clear it."
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It was Christmas Eve a long time ago, and we got an emergency S.O.S. phone call from a school principal that we knew in Patterson, New Jersey. She actually had promised to supply Christmas toys for some of her students who were burned out families, and I think at that time Patterson was one of the arson capitols of the country. Actually, she had come up short and it was Christmas Eve. So - this emergency call asking if we could help.
