Near the end of the baseball season, a dad was able to get some good seats for him and his daughter at a Philadelphia Phillies game. Now, wouldn’t you know—a fly ball came sailing right into their zone and Dad caught it. A souvenir Major League baseball to show off! Not to be. He gave it to his daughter and she unknowingly threw the baseball away. What would a man’s instinctive reaction be when he had just lost a rare sports trophy? He reached over and hugged his daughter and told her he loved her.
The Dallas Cowboys may not have the best team in professional football right now, but they sure have the most impressive stadium. Their owner has built a new stadium that blows away all the others—including those gigantic video screens. Actually, one Dallas player really likes that screen. He said he can figure out the other team’s plays because, well, he can see to read their lips.
My friends took me to an auction the other day where a restaurant was selling off everything. It was jammed! Lots of people there were just bidding on smaller items like kitchen ware and unique signs, but I could tell there were some guys there, the dealers, who knew exactly what they’d come for and what they had decided it was worth. Like the giant cuckoo clock that one bought for $15,000!
It was my big, political move: running for President of my college senior class, and it was close…really close. I lost like something like three votes. The outcome hurt a little, but not as much as finding out that some of my best friends hadn’t gotten around to voting that day. I didn’t have the votes of the people who counted most—the people closest to me.
Each Veteran’s Day, and every day, many people make their way to that long, black wall in Washington—the Vietnam War Memorial. A while back, a photographer decided just to hang out at the wall for a while and record what he saw there. And later, those photos became a beautiful tribute book. Early one morning he got down in the grass to shoot a new remembrance that had been left there overnight. It included an American flag, a Greek flag, a picture of a soldier, and a simple three-word inscription. Suddenly the photographer felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. And there standing behind him was an elderly man who just asked, “What do you think?” The photographer told the man how moving it was, and the man just smiled and said, “I’m glad. I put it there yesterday.” And that’s when that little three-word inscription suddenly took on new meaning…”Only One Son.”
