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There are lots of people digging into their family tree these days. In fact, we've done some of our own. A lot of digging around to find out where your roots are. You know, where my grandfather came from and my great grandfather, and which king or famous person I'm descended from. Of course I would be descended from someone famous, right?
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So, our whole family had to go for blood tests. It was time to check everyone's cholesterol levels, we were told. Now, as our son's blood was being drawn, he suddenly said, "I'm feeling a little weak." Well, that's unusual, because this son was probably the strongest member of the family.
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Stranded on the highest mountain on earth. Or buried beneath the rubble of a shattered hotel.
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Every New York television station you turned to had the same bold graphic, "Blizzard of '96." I still remember it. It was barely 1996; we were only six days into the new year when anywhere between 20-30 inches of snow unloaded on the Metropolitan New York area. It was like a mega-ton snow bomb hit the area, and it literally drove the Big Apple to its knees.
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We were trying to teach some young leaders the importance of teamwork. One of the exercises I used was to have them put together a puzzle. (I thought it was a bright idea.) You tear off a page of a magazine, tear it into pieces, dump it into the middle of each small group, and see who could put their pictures together first. It didn't work too well. See, I forgot one little thing. I forgot to give them a copy of the complete picture so they could see what it should look like when it was all together. Duh! Now, I've tried to work on one of those big, many-pieces puzzles myself, and I've had the same frustration because I didn't know where the top of the puzzle box was. It was really hard to put the pieces together when the complete picture wasn't there.
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When I was in junior high school, we usually bought one copy of the local newspaper every day. Until the day I won the County Spelling Bee! Yeah, I can do autographs later. I'm sure you're very impressed. Well, that day my parents bought about 20 copies of the local newspaper. What was the difference? Well, my name was in it this time!
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I was at my friend Dave's house, meeting with a group of teenagers, and it happened. We had been eating together out on his porch when the sky suddenly turned really nasty. We hustled inside, just before the skies started dumping rain and thunder and lightning - big time thunder and lightning we're talking here. I wanted to continue our conversation under the dining room table, but no one wanted to join me there, so we went to the living room.
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I really hate it when a five-year-old makes me feel dumb, especially when it's my grandson. I mean, he didn't mean to make me feel dumb. He didn't know he was making me feel dumb. But he is really smart, and he knew a lot about a lot! Like the solar system. He had the planets down cold along with all kinds of facts about the universe. Things I either have forgotten or never knew. Another thing our grandson was really mastering was numbers. Man, could he count! He was working on thousands, millions, billions, and his favorite quantity, a google! When it comes to our universe, he was never going to be able to count that high!
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Boom! Suddenly all the lights went out in the conference center where we were staying, just as we were all making our way out of our rooms and down this long hallway to breakfast. No windows. The hallway was longer than usual that morning because it was totally dark. Turns out the entire region experienced a power failure that morning. Because a squirrel got into a relay station and gnawed through a cable. That's fried squirrel and lights out.
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Well, several years ago it was our turn again for the cicadas to pay us a brief visit. You can't really complain; they only drop by every 17 years. What a life these critters have! They suck on a root in the ground for a while, they finally emerge, they climb a tree, they make a lot of noise for about three weeks, and they die. You talk about "get a life!"
