Anytime I'm planning to be in New York City I make sure I have plenty of loose change with me. Yeah, I know I'll need it for tips; maybe for a parking lot attendant or cab driver, a waitress. In fact, tipping, well it's a way of life in America. Now, I looked up tipping in the dictionary and here's what a tip is: It is a small present of money given directly to someone for performing a service. Aw, that's nice isn't it? A tip, a small thank you. Nothing major; loose change stuff. And that's fine if it's in response to a small service, but what about if it's a response to a total sacrifice.
Now, there's one good way to recognize the places that folks think are important—the guards. Yeah. I mean, they obviously think the White House is important; there are guards all around it. The bank usually has a guard. There are some club communities that I've seen where you don't get to even go into the neighborhood until the guard says, "Yes, somebody left a name here at the booth. You can go in."
I used to work with our high school football team quite a bit, and their practices were in full swing. And I was talking with one of the soon to be freshman football players, and he said, "Ron, it seems like just yesterday we were having our first practices back in the summer." And I talked to some seniors, and then they said, "Ron, weren't we just freshmen? How did we get here so fast?"
Over the years in campus ministry, I always put on a special push to reach football players, because, you know, they're pretty strategic people on campus. And there was one event that football players always enjoyed. We called it "The Great Cheerleader Put-On." What we would do is we'd invite in four cheerleaders and then four football players to be their coaches. You say, "What? Coaches for what?" Well, we brought in most of the pieces of football gear: shoulder pads, knee pads, hip pads, helmet. And then we wanted to see which cheerleader could get fully dressed in a football uniform first.
You know, you and I are living in a, well, a pretty adjustable world. I mean, we have adjustable rate mortgages. I have an adjustable wrench that changes sizes for different jobs. We have adjustable clothes, and that's a good thing because we seem to have adjustable bodies these days. We even have one size that fits all. And we have negotiations going on between nations, who are constantly adjusting their views, and their policies, and their public statements that things they said would never change. As the situation changes, we all seem willing to change almost everything with it—sometimes including the truth.
Teenage boys aren't known primarily for their neatness and organization, as you probably know. When my oldest son was that creature called "a teenage boy," he had one area that defied the messy stereotype. I said just one area, right? It was his baseball card collection.
Oh, everything else may have been in a state of total chaos, but oh not the baseball cards. They were neatly put away in plastic holders, filed in notebooks, categorized. Why? Well, as he said, "Dad, they're only valuable if they're in mint condition. I want to keep these cards in mint condition."
This body that you and I move around in is pretty amazing. One of the amazing qualities it has might be called "compensation." In other words, when one part breaks down, it seems as if another part gets stronger in order to help make up the difference.
We couldn't figure it out. For some reason, the mice suddenly liked our house so much. All I know is after not having had that problem, we suddenly were invaded. Well, I planned very strategically to be gone, of course, when they invaded the house. In fact the reason we know that they were there is because my wife found, well let's just say some signs of them in the silverware drawer of all places.
My daughter and I hugged a lot when she was little. And when she was a big college student, and even now that she has a family of her own, I'm happy to report we still have what we call "hug alerts." We have always had a demonstrative relationship; have with all the kids actually.
You know, when my oldest son was younger, he collected baseball cards just for fun. Well, then that changed! Somehow it went from something just to spend your allowance on, to a hobby, to a serious collection, to where it became almost a business. It actually helped him get through college! He kept figuring out which ones were going to be valuable, and then he would trade, and buy and sell. I can see why he worked on them a lot. And you know what? He spent many, many hours analyzing and categorizing, and strategizing his collection.
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