OLD MEN
I was running down the stairs the other day when I slipped on somebody’s phone case. I hit back first and slid down the rest of the stairs. Luckily, they were carpeted, though I still could have broken my neck. I immediately charged back up the stairs, grabbed that phone case, and then threw it out. That’s what my father’s example had taught me. Whenever he walked into something, he tossed it out. My mother used to have a little stepladder she used to reach up into the kitchen cabinets. One day, my father wasn’t looking and walked right into it. He cried out and said he’s hurt his leg and then grabbed the stepladder and hurled it out into the backyard and later the garbage can in the alley. Another time he walked into the trash bin in the kitchen and knocked it over. Then he took that up and hurled it into the yard. He regretted it later when he wanted to throw something out. So he went out into the yard, realized he’d thrown the old trash bin into the trashcan in the alley and so went to search through that. Of course that didn’t teach him anything at all. Old men have that privilege.