For Some Inspiration
RED SKELTON'S -TIPS FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE 
1. Two times a week, we go to a nice restaurant, have a little
beverage, good food and companionship. She goes on Tuesdays, I go on Fridays.
2. We also sleep in separate beds. Hers is in Calif. and mine is in Texas.
3. I take my wife everywhere.....but she keeps finding her way back.
4. I asked my wife where she wanted to go for our anniversary.
"Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said. So I suggested the kitchen.
5. We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.
6. She has an electric blender, electric toaster and electric bread
maker. She said "There are too many gadgets and no place to sit down!" So I bought her an electric chair.
7. My wife told me the car wasn't running well because there was
water in the carburetor. I asked where the car was; she told me "In the
lake."
8. She got a mud pack and looked great for two days. Then the mud
fell off.
9. She ran after the garbage truck, yelling "Am I too late for the
garbage?" The driver said "No, jump in!"
10. Remember: Marriage is the number one cause of divorce.
11. I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was Always.
12. I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months. I don't like to don't like to
interrupt her.
13. The last fight was my fault though. My wife asked "What's on
the TV?" I said "Dust!"
(I have no idea who wrote this - arrived by E-mail)
Michael is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a
good mood and always has something positive to say.
When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply,
"If I were any better, I would be twins!"
He was a natural motivator.
If an employee was having a bad day, Michael was there telling
the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up
to Michael and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a
positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"
Michael replied, "Each morning I wake up and say to myself, you
have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or
... you can choose to be in a bad mood.
I choose to be in a good mood.
Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim
or...I can choose to learn from it.
I choose to learn from it.
Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to
accept their complaining or... I can point out the positive side
of life.
I choose the positive side of life."
"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.
"Yes, it is," Michael said. "Life is all about choices.
When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice.
You choose how you react to situations.
You choose how people affect your mood. You choose to be in a
good mood or bad mood.
The bottom line: It's your choice how you live your life."
I reflected on what Michael said.
Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own
business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I
made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that Michael was involved in a
serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications
tower.
After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Michael
was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.
I saw Michael about six months after the accident. When I asked
him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins.
Wanna see my scars?"
I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone
through his mind as the accident took place.
"The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of
my soon-to-be-born daughter," Michael replied. "Then, as I lay
on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices:
I could choose to live or ...I could choose to die.
I chose to live."
"Weren't you scared? Did you lose consciousness?" I asked.
Michael continued, "...the paramedics were great. They kept
telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into
the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and
nurses, I got really scared.
In their eyes, I read - he's a dead man. I knew I needed to
take action."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,"
said Michael. "She asked if I was allergic to anything."
"Yes," I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they
waited for my reply.
I took a deep breath and yelled, "Gravity."
Over their laughter, I told them, "I am choosing to live.
Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead."
Michael lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also
because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every
day we have the choice to live fully.
Attitude, after all, is everything.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry
about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
After all, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
(I have no idea who wrote this - arrived by E-mail)
Youth :
Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy, cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Youth means a temperamental pre dominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station: So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
.
(I have no idea who wrote this - arrived by E-mail)
How did we survive?
Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have. As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based
paint. We often chewed on the crib, ingesting the paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and when
we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and
not from a bottle. We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as
long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach
ball would really hurt. We played with toy guns, cowboys and Indians, army,
cops and robbers, and used our fingers to simulate guns when the toy ones or
the BB gun was not available. We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and
drank sugar soda, but we were never over weight; we were always outside
playing.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't,
had to learn to deal with disappointment. Some students weren't as smart as
others or didn't work hard so they failed a grade and were held back to
repeat the same grade. That generation produced some of the greatest
risk-takers and problem solvers. We had the freedom, failure, success and
responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), the term cell phone
would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school
PA system. We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury
with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having
cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors.
I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell
us how much safer we are now. Flunking gym was not an option... even for
stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Every year, someone taught the whole school a lesson by running in the halls
with leather soles on linoleum tile and hitting the wet spot. How much
better off would we be today if we only knew we could have sued the school
system. Speaking of school, we all said prayers and the pledge (amazing we
aren't all brain dead from that), and staying in detention after school
caught all sorts of negative attention for about the next two weeks. We
must have had horribly damaged psyches. Schools didn't offer 14 year olds
an abortion or condoms (we wouldn't have known what either was anyway) but
they did give us a couple of baby aspirin and cough syrup if we started
getting the sniffles. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember
school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed
to be proud of myself. I just can't recall how bored we were without
computers, PlayStation, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital cable stations. I
must be repressing that memory as I try to rationalize through the denial of
the dangers could have befallen us as we trekked off each day about a mile
down the road to some guy's vacant 20, built forts out of branches and
pieces of plywood, made trails, and fought over who got to be the Lone Ranger.
What was that property owner thinking, letting us play on that lot. He
should have been locked up for not putting up a fence around the property,
complete with a self-closing gate and an infrared intruder alarm. Oh
yeah...and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee
sting? I could have been killed!
We played king of the hill on piles of gravel left on vacant construction
sites and when we got hurt, mom pulled out the 48 cent bottle of
mercurochrome and then we got butt-whooped. Now it's a trip to the emergency
room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics and then mom
calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile
of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either
because if we did, we got butt-whooped (physical abuse) there too... and then we
got butt-whooped again when we got home.
Mom invited the door-to-door salesman inside for coffee, kids choked down
the dust from the gravel driveway while playing with Tonka trucks (remember
why Tonka trucks were made tough... it wasn't so that they could take the
rough berber in the family room), and Dad drove a car with leaded gas.
Our music had to be left inside when we went out to play and I am sure that
I nearly exhausted my imagination a couple of times when we went on two week
vacations. I should probably sue the folks now for the danger they put us in
when we all slept in campgrounds in the family tent. Summers were spent
behind the push lawnmower and I didn't even know that mowers came with
motors until I was 13 and we got one without an automatic blade-stop or an
auto-drive. How sick were my parents?
Of course my parents weren't the only psychos. I recall Donny Reynolds from
next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop just before he
fell off. Little did his mom know that she could have owned our house.
Instead she pick him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a
neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were
from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have know that we needed
to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so
duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire
country wasn't taking Prozac!
How did we survive?
(I have no idea who wrote this - arrived by E-mail)
Zen-type Thoughts
1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
4. Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.
5. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
6. No one is listening until you fart.
7. Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else.
8. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
9. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
10. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you're a mile away and you have their shoes.
11. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
13. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
14. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
15. Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield.
16. Don't worry; it only seems kinky the first time.
17. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
18. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
19. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
20. Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
21. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
22. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
23. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
24. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
25. We are born naked, wet and hungry, and get slapped on our butt...then things get worse.
26. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
27. There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
28. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
29. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday...around age 11.
30. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
(I have no idea who wrote this - arrived by E-mail)
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