While I sat in the
reception area of my doctor’s office, a
woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room.
As she went to the
receptionist’s desk, the man sat there, alone and
silent. Just as I was
thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy
slipped off his
mother’s lap and walked over to the wheelchair.
Placing his hand on the
man’s, he said, “I know how you feel. My Mom
makes me ride in the
stroller too.”
*****
As
I was nursing my
baby, my cousin’s six-year-old daughter, Krissy, came
into the room. Never
having seen anyone breast-feed before, she was intrigued
and full of all
kinds of questions about what I was doing. After mulling
over my answers, she remarked, “My mom has some of those, but I don’t
think she knows how to
use them.”
*****
Out bicycling one
day
with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a
little wistful. “In ten years,” I said, “you’ll want
to be with your friends and you won’t go walking, biking, and swimming
with me like you do
now.
Carolyn shrugged.
“In ten years you’ll be too old to do all those
things anyway.”
*****
Working as a
pediatric nurse, I had the difficult assignment of giving
immunization shots to
children. One day, I entered the examining room to give
four-year-old Lizzie
her injection.
“No, no,
no!” she screamed. “Lizzie,” scolded her
mother, “that’s not polite behavior.”
With that, the girl
yelled
even louder, “No, thank you! No, thank you!”
*****
On
the way back from a
Cub Scout meeting, my grandson innocently said to my son,
“Dad, I know
babies come from mommies’ tummies, but how do they get
there in the first
place?”
After my son hemmed
and hawed awhile, my grandson finally spoke up in disgust,
“You don’t
have to make up something, Dad. It’s okay if you
don’t know the
answer.”
*****
Just before I was
deployed to Iraq , I sat my eight-year-old son down and
broke the news to
him. “I’m going to be away for a long
time,” I told him.
“I’m going to Iraq.”
“Why?”
he
asked. “Don’t you know there’s a war going
on over there?”
*****
Paul Newman founded
the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for
children stricken with
cancer, AIDS, and blood diseases. One afternoon, he and
his wife, Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with the kids. A
counselor at a nearby
table, suspecting the young patients wouldn’t know
Newman was a famous
movie star, explained, “That’s the man who
made this camp
possible. Maybe you’ve seen his picture on his salad
dressing
bottle?” Blank stares.
“Well,
you’ve probably seen his face on his lemonade
carton.”
An
eight-year-old girl
perked up. “How long was he missing?”
*****
And my personal
favorite…
God’s Problem
Now!
His wife’s
grave side
service was just barely finished, when there was a massive
clap of thunder,
followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied by
even more thunder
rumbling in the distance. The little, old man looked at
the pastor and calmly
said, “Well, she’s there.”
*****
Keep a SMILE on your face ~ And a SONG in
your heart!
A smile – is a sign of joy. A hug – is a sign of love.
A laugh – is a sign of happiness.
And a friend like me? – Well that’s just a sign of
good taste!
We’ll be friends until I am senile.