The purchasing agent at work, Lynn, scours sales ads for cheap coke deals, clips coupons and beats out other grocery shoppers for the first selection on canned soft drinks.
I don’t know this, but I suspect she’s probably a Black Friday beast shopper, the kind where two women wrestle in a store aisle over the last available Zappy Dappy Duck for kids.
Continue reading Careful What You OrderI found an old journal I wrote in college, one I haven’t read in years. Page by page, I re-introduced me to myself from things penciled years ago.
Below is a story that flooded back to memory. It was in a college town two days after graduation, 36 years ago today. I was staying the summer to work two jobs in town while almost every other college student moved back home.
Here’s my journal entry from Monday, May 20, 1985:
“Daddy, they called! They have a heart!!”
(Read Part 1 here)
A new heart! Renewed hope!! A chance for Shelby to live a full life!! It’s exactly what we hoped and prayed for!
But wait! Wait…
For one to live, someone doesn’t.
Somewhere, a family’s tears flow. Someplace, loved ones grieve. Somebody is hurting, mourning a tragic loss.
Their hope, it’s gone.
Yet, in the deepest of deep grief, they share. They share life through their loss.
To someone else, some unknown person to them … to Shelby … they pass along a heart, the very beat of life. Continue reading HEART OF HOPE (2) – My Daughter’s Transplant Story
My daughter said she was thinking about taking a college philosophy class.
I swallowed, hard.
My exposure to Philosophy 101 in college was a single day many moons ago. I figured it was going to be a blow off elective course. I mean, easy, right?
But when the sweater wearing professor came in with pointed shoes, coke bottle glasses and five pens in his pocket protector, well, there’s your sign.
He walked straight to the lectern, cleared his throat and started.
He didn’t introduce himself, say hi, nothing.
He could have at least said, “Hey y’all! What a dad gum good lookin’ class this is! I’m Professor Nerdman, and this here is Philosophy 101! You’ll all need this textbook I’m holdin’ up right here and I’m passin’ round a syllabus for ya now.” Continue reading Philosophy of a One
In college one of my roommates signed up for “Fight Night”, an annual two night event featuring boxing matches between college students.
My “trainer” was a college buddy. His training regiment was simple: pizza and Rocky movies. I even called him, Mickey. It just seemed right.
When Fight Night rolled around, there were 800 to 900 students surrounding an honest to goodness, real life, professional boxing ring. After a dozen fights, it was time to get the gloves on.
Mickey said “we” had drawn a fight against the second string tight end for the SFA (our University) football team. I was nervous because I had zero, nada, zilch boxing experience, and all the sudden I wished we’d done more than eat pizza and watch Rocky movies. Continue reading Fighting Goliaths
A car skid to a stand-still on the dirt road in front of my house some years back. Through the woods, I could see and hear three young men.
It wasn’t ordinary, and they were interested in something on the edge of my land. I armed myself, told my oldest three sons to wait where they were, fired up the truck and drove to where they were.
There were three college guys looking up a tree on the edge of the barbed wire fence on the property line. Way up at the top of a large pine tree was a huge mama raccoon looking down at the guys. About ten feet up, four baby coons were sitting on a tree limb. Continue reading Baby Coon Precious
RabBits 