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I meet a lot of single people in their twenties and thirties, and of course, a lot of them would like to be married. Either they haven't found the right person yet, or they found someone with like commitment phobia who hears wedding bells and runs the other way. Our mate selection process, as you may know very personally, is a little uncertain and sometimes messed up, actually.
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You see them in motel rooms, most public buildings, and you should see them on the ceilings in your house - smoke detectors. Those little plastic monitoring devices that sound an obnoxious alarm when there's smoke in the room. Just ask me; I proved it the day I left my English muffin in the toaster oven too long. The smoke detector did its job; a job that can actually save lives. You want an alarm to go off when there's smoke in your house, especially if it's warning you about something that could do major damage.
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There have been a lot of changes in the space program over the years, but I'll tell you, I like thinking back to those original pioneering flights to the moon. Those are pretty heroic deals - the Apollo missions. It was mind-blowing to think that we had reached the point where men like us could actually walk on that moon that had just been that distant light in the night for millennia. It really was a big deal!
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I'm not sure who "Simon" was, but I know a lot of kids - including me - have had to play his little game. You know, "Simon says." Just in case you were lucky enough to escape Simon, it goes like this. One person, often a grownup or another student, stands up in front and gives you commands. "Simon says stand up. Simon says sit down. Simon says hop on one foot. Simon says wave at all the girls in the class." The trick is that in the middle of all these commands, the leader slips in one command without a "Simon says." If you obey that command, you're out. You're only supposed to do what Simon says.
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Sometimes something happens in the news that just leaves images you just can't forget. For me, one of those is that massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. That was one of those. Those images of that inescapable wall of water consuming everything in its path! I mean, those are moments that are more than impressive. They're moving! Sometimes even the usually dispassionate reporters get caught up in a story like that.
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Tyler's story really touched me and showed me what makes someone a hero. In this case - an eight-year-old hero. Since he didn't have school on Martin Luther King Day, Tyler went to stay at his grandpa's trailer for the night. He wasn't the only one. Nine people slept that night in that little trailer.
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It was my first overseas trip, and I mean trip. Ten thousand miles to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and there we were at Kennedy Airport. Me, my wife, our three young children facing three weeks of Daddy being gone. We'd never had that before. That's a long time when you're a little kid. Actually, it's a long time when you're the Daddy of some little kids. Well, I headed down the jet way, and I smiled and waved goodbye. Rounded the bend to the plane and then I wasn't smiling.
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I was on one of those early-morning airplane flights that's packed with business people. And as we landed that morning, we had one of those "two for the price of one" landings. We bumped and jumped along the runway as we landed. A lot of fun! And suddenly that commanded the attention of all us passengers who are usually numb from frequent travel. I thought, "I wonder what the flight attendant's going to say? I mean, this wasn't in any way a routine landing." Well, the attendant simply got on the sound system and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, now that I have your attention, I'd like to make a few announcements..." Man, did they have our attention!
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It was several years ago now, but that last earthquake in Haiti; I think the images of that quake will be with us for a long time. For a while there they were looking for any hope they could get, because it was just all about so much death and disaster. You remember that when it seemed that no one else could still be alive in all those collapsed buildings, a boy thought he heard a voice from the rubble of a bank building. The husband of a woman who worked there had been frantically trying to find his wife. When the boy told that man about what he had heard, that husband went for a nearby rescue team from California.
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When my friend Larry isn't running his business, he can often be found riding his bicycle. We're talking serious biking here, not just the little leisurely around-the-block stuff. He and his friends have covered a lot of America on their bicycles, conquering all kinds of challenges. Like big hills, you know. Now, any of us who has ever ridden a bike, we know it's the hills that bite your leg muscles. As you're riding, you see this mountain looming in front of you. OK, it's a hill, but your mind is thinking "mountain." At least mine is. My friend told me a fundamental "big hill" principle that he's discovered and that he passes on to other bikers. He said, "The longer you look, the bigger it gets!" That's true.
