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Honestly, snowball fights have always been a mismatch in our family. When our boys were little, they didn't stand a chance. Then they got bigger than I am; now I don't stand a chance. Actually, snowballs are fun unless you get too many of them. If you put thousands of snowballs together and roll them down a mountain, you've got an avalanche. That's not fun.
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It actually starts while men are still boys, "I'll beat you!" It's that innate desire in a male to compete, to conquer, to win. A girl is a conquest, a game is a conquest, a career or a business is a conquest. In Spanish, men were called conquistadors! Give them a challenge in their field or in their interest area, and they will work hard to conquer it. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that these conquerors retreat when the challenge happens to be in a relationship.
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Surprise! I used to be in a quartet. Oh I did! Listen, don't laugh out loud. Yes, when I was in college, for a little while I sang in a gospel quartet. I did not sing any solos. No, no solos for me. Now, musically, I'm okay in a group. Solo – not so much. You know, in a way, we're all like that.
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Nantucket—a romantic island off the coast of Massachusetts. Waterbrook—a humble cabin in the woods in the mountains north of New York City. Long Beach Island—a little house by the Jersey shore. See, those are places where my wife has been her most beautiful. That’s not because she had new makeup on, or was all dressed up, or did her hair differently. Those are just some places where we’ve gone to be alone, and where I finally slowed down and noticed her again. She’s beautiful all the time, but I don’t notice it all the time, because I see her best when we’re alone. If you’re in a lonely time right now, let’s talk.
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I think I first remember hearing about it on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. And most people listening are going, "Say what?" Yeah, we're talking the 1950s, and it was a show that most teenagers watched. And I of course, was only two at the time. But it was predictable that a teenage show was going to have as their primary advertiser a company called Clearasil.
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I never heard the words till I got to college. You start talking about Senior Panic. Yeah, well, if you didn't have a prospective mate by your senior year, it became pretty obvious that the odds were working against you and time was not on your side. Sadly, there were some people who got somebody in their desperation, but time began to show they got the wrong somebody. I guess you don't have to be a senior to begin to panic over your singleness. In fact, you may very well fear deep down inside never being married or never having anyone again; that you're going to be stuck eating frozen dinners alone a lot of nights for the rest of your life. In your anxiety, you can make a terrible mistake. I think I've got some good news today!
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I think it's somewhere during your senior year of high school you begin to develop this priceless trait called perspective. I know that Chris did. Chris was at school and I bumped into him one day. He stopped me and he said, "You know, Ron, you told me something when I was a freshman and I didn't believe it then. Now I do."
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If you'd seen the front lawn of our office, you wouldn't have been able to tell that there had been a change inside. The only evidence of that was that there was an uncustomary pile of shattered sheetrock in this big lump in the yard. The changes were on the second floor immediately above that pile where two small offices had just become one large office. A man from our staff went in, and went after that temporary wall that divided the people in that room, and ripped it out in no time. I'll tell you, it feels pretty different in there with that wall gone! Wish they were all that easy to tear down.
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All right, what famous TV personality said these words: "I love trash." All right, Sesame Street fans, yep, Oscar the Grouch, who even lived in a trash can.
Now listen, I've got a few idiosyncrasies; not nearly as many as everybody else I know, but one of those is that it's very important to me that my trash gets picked up once a week. I try to be faithful in getting it out to the street like I'm supposed to on the day it's supposed to be there. What if the trash man doesn't come one week? What if he didn't come for two weeks? What should I do about that?
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When I lived in the New York area, I occasionally spoke for the New York Giants, and the New York Jets, and the Yankees, and the Mets, and some of their visiting teams. Now, when people heard about that, guess what their first question usually was? Well, of course, they said, "Ron, what scripture verse did you speak on?"
