Our friend had a medical procedure to repair what the doctor called "a hole in her heart." Then he told her that everyone is born with a hole in their heart. That got my attention. I called a longtime friend of mine who is a highly experienced and respected heart surgeon. He told me that before we are born, there's a hole that is the passageway for blood to enter our pre-natal heart. In most people, and I'm glad I'm most people, the hole heals up within a few days after birth. For a few, it doesn't go away. And it really needs to be repaired.
I know this is going to come as a huge surprise to you, but radio guys like me make mistakes sometimes. Yes, believe it or not. But you don't hear them because of that wonder-worker we call an editor—our producer. To whom I must always be very nice. Yes, our producers edit out my mistakes, but that doesn't mean they throw away the tape. Oh, no. And the same goes for the random, and sometimes crazy, things I may say before or after we record a program. Oh, it's all there. The tape is always rolling. Last Christmas I was reminded of that in a most vivid way. They put together a recording of some of those mistakes and comments, stitched together in an imaginary interview with a TV reporter, which they played for our whole staff. You’ll never hear it. Sure enough, if I say it, they've got it.
I got every baseball card but the one with my hero on it. When I was a kid, I'd go to the vacant lot near our apartment on the south side of Chicago and I'd collect old pop bottles. Then I'd go to the little store on the corner, trade the bottles for money and the money for as many baseball cards as I could afford. My team was the Chicago White Sox. My hero was an All-Star, Hall of Fame-bound second baseman named Nellie Fox. I got every White Sox player except one. I could never find a Nellie Fox card. Fast forward about 25 years. My nine-year-old son is now a determined baseball card collector. He has saved all his allowances for a while to go with me to a special baseball card show. At one of the first tables we visited, my son said, "Dad, look!" And there he was, under glass - Nellie. My Nellie! The card did exist after all. But being all grown up now and needing every dollar, I looked but I didn't buy. My son and I agreed to meet a few minutes later up front. He came with his hand behind his back. I said, "What did you get?" He looked up at me with those huge blue eyes, held out his hand, and handed me that Nellie Fox baseball card. Needless to say, I was a mess.
Each winter, certain parts of America get hammered with monster snowstorms. And when it's our turn, we all have stories about how we survived the winter of whatever year it is. Well, no one's got a story like a Norwegian explorer named Boerge Ousland. For 64 days, he saw little more than white. He recently became the first person to ever cross the continent of Antarctica alone and unaided. It took him 64 days to cover those frozen 1,675 miles. He harnessed Antarctica's fierce winds by strapping himself to this parachute-like sail. With the winds in his favor, he could ski as much as 140 miles a day. All the while, he's towing a sled carrying about 400 pounds of supplies, enduring monotony and even temperatures that dipped to 40 degrees below zero. After his incredible journey, Ousland talked about the huge mental challenge of facing seemingly endless fields of snow. But here's how he did it, in his own words, "It's so big and so far - you have to keep concentrating on the near future and make every day a victory." Wow!
When I travel - which seems to be most of the time - I always try to carry some quarters. I think it started when the kids were growing up. It says in the Dad's Job Description, "must have quarters at all times." Now I carry them partially because you never know when you're going to be needing a vending machine - actually, you're going to want a vending machine. I'm in a hotel, I'm working late, and I want a snack, I want a cold drink, I want today's newspaper. I go through the familiar ritual: put the quarters in, hit the selection button, something good comes out. At least it better. It's pretty annoying if you put your money in and don't get anything back. Why, I probably won't put any more money in that machine!
I was in my office, trying to crawl out of an avalanche of papers on my desk. Suddenly, there was a knock on my door - and in came one of our team members with his wife and their bright-eyed eight-month-old little boy, Zachary. My wife then joined our little Zachary party and proceeded to plop this animated little bundle right in the middle of my desk - in the middle of a mountain of paper work - right where I couldn't ignore him. And you know something, I didn't mind one bit. Little Zachary and I had a great conversation. That means I did all the talking. We played, we laughed, and Zachary creatively reorganized (shall we say) the project I was working on. It was one of the best things that happened that day. It took me a while to reconstruct my project, but it was fun having that little guy right in the middle of everything!
"Please help us." That's what the people stranded on the roof of their house had written on the sign that they waved over their heads. They represented so many thousands of New Orleans residents who were left stranded and in deadly danger by the floods of Hurricane Katrina. The wind and the rain of that category four hurricane were bad enough - but it was when the levees broke that suddenly major parts of the city were underwater, literally up to the rooftops. Harrowing stories began to unfold of how people had moved from a first floor to a second floor to escape the toxic waters. Then, as the second floor filled with water, how they moved to their last point of refuge - the roof. And many were stranded there, without food, without water, and increasingly without hope. And then hope showed up - in the shape of a Coast Guard helicopter, hovering over their rooftop refuge. Hope was a man coming down a cable to where they were; a man who secured their rescue and saved their lives.
Our friend Joy has become a bit of an expert on moving. Her husband is a career Air Force officer, and that means seeing a lot of different places, having a lot of different addresses, and seeing a lot of moving vans in your life. We were talking the other day about their last move and what she considered one of the greatest gifts she's ever been given. It didn't have beautiful wrapping paper or bows on it. In fact, it was a dumpster! That might not sound all that exciting to you, but it was to her! She and her family had so much stuff to move, and everything they could get rid of, they didn't have to move. Someone said to her, "I've got this dumpster I'd like to loan to you for your move." Joy said she was overjoyed! She said there was something so exciting about the first thud of the first thing they threw into that dumpster. Then it was all about lots of thuds as they threw away mountains of stuff. They couldn't wait to go get more.
Some years ago I heard about an unusual experiment that some scientists conducted. The scientists wired a cage with low level voltage in the bottom of the cage, they put dogs in it and then they closed the door. They sent a current through. It wasn't enough to harm the dogs but it was enough to inflict some mild pain. You can guess the dog's reaction. They jumped, they barked, they howled. Well, they kept this up several times a day, but the reaction eventually changed. After a while the dogs barely twitched when the current went through the floor of that cage. They had gotten conditioned to it. In fact, the scientists then opened the cage door, sent the current through the floor and not one dog even tried to leave. It's as if they'd given up ever getting away from the pain. One last step in the experiment: they put a dog in the cage who had not been conditioned to the current and they left the door open. Well, they turned on the juice and the new dog knew exactly what to do. He ran right out of the cage followed by all the other dogs!
When five-year-old Jeremy started school, it was more than he bargained for. It was the second morning of his kindergarten experience. Mom got Jeremy up and started helping him get ready. Then came his question, "Do I have to go back?" Oops! He wasn't counting on an encore. His rationale, "Well, I already went yesterday." His mother told us, "I didn't have the heart to tell him there's 12 more years of this!" Well, he went off to day two, of year one, of twelve more years!
