My Dad sent me this and I thougt I would share it, its pretty good. Enjoy your day.

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes....

My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.

He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----! she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingse's next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van Laningham's across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopson's two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car. Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.

(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

"No left turns," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

"What?" I said again.

"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."

"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

"Loses count?" I asked.

"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

"No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."

My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

"You're probably right," I said.

"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

"Because you're 102 years old," I said..

"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet."

An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

A short time later, he died.

I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life, or because he quit taking left turns."

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it & if it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."


ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!

Respect

Ok, so honesty first, this Gates issue, now on its fifth or sixth day is getting old. The result is as consistent as most frustrations sensed from the chosen topics of our modern media. Why do we focus on the dramatic of a few when there are so many truly dramatic topics our media could be educating a generally ignorant public on?

This brings me to the reason I sat down at my PC over the past three evenings. Respect. So many topics we are hearing about in the media would not be there if there were simply more presence of respect in our daily lives. Would Gates be in the media today if he had respect for the police officer who approached him and simply asked him what he was doing and to produce some identification? Let’s not forget, the cop was “called” there to look into a “suspected burglary”. No, if he had done what most people would have done when faced with the same situation what he would have done would have been to comply, tell the officer exactly who he was and that he lived at the residence. “Sir, here is my license, there must be some sort of a mix up, I live here, you are welcome to come into my home and I’ll show you several personal items that will confirm this is my home. Can I offer you something while you wait?” Oh, and by the way, since I’m such a respectful neighbor, why don’t you invite my neighbor who called over and we can figure this out right now, I’m sure we will all get a good laugh out of it.

Rather than be respectful, this jack ass decides to standoff with an officer of the law and start grandstanding! Where does this behavior come from, and how on earth can the president (that I voted for) defend, in any way, this guys behavior and claim the officer acted “stupidly”? After a statement like that, I’m guessing there are more than a few people in this country wondering who the “stupid” one is. On the flip side, I’m sure the officer got a bit short and possibly even belligerent with this guy, who has been accused of breaking and entering and hasn’t denied it. Can anyone put themselves in this situation as an officer and argue that they wouldn’t have? I’m actually quite amazed they didn’t take this guy to his face and break his arm getting him in cuffs. Putting myself in the shoes of an officer, I would have gotten pretty damn rough with a guy who was smarting off and not answering my questions. Respect was completely absent from Mr. Gates in this situation.

It may be that I’m getting old, but I’m starting to sound more and more like my parents, but what happened to good old fashioned respect?

Respect for your elders, your wife, neighbors, policemen and women, firefighters, your boss, your siblings, parents, teachers, and friends. What about respect for the flag, military personnel, veterans, pets, other people’s property and belongings. What happened to respecting one’s self enough to not break the law? What about just respecting the law? How about kids who respect their toys, having nice cloths, and being able to attend school? There are children who consider it an honor to have the privilege to attend school and be educated, our children feel it is a burden and parents treat schools like glorified daycare centers to raise their children while they go about their lives as though their children’s issues are someone else’s fault. How about the respect a parent is supposed to show a child? The bulk of this respect is to come during the formative years when respect is taught. Father’s who insist that their son’s open doors for girls, say yes sir and yes ma’am with respect vs. that smart mouth tone and insist that they respect their Mothers. Equally important is the Mother who insists that their children respect their Fathers and each other and follows through on punishments as well as rewards for good behaviors. These things take work, concentration and energy, they don’t happen because of good schools, church and reading books, it take examples, leadership and guidance from people who know the difference and have been taught the difference between fundamental rights and wrongs. I won’t get derailed on a religious tangent, but morality doesn’t come from religions; (read a decent article about that subject here) it comes from evolution, parenting, common sense and logic, along with laws designed by men to protect respectful people from disrespectful ones.

Ultimately this issue has infected every aspect of our lives. Respect for each other, human life and the sanctity of the human experience would practically eliminate the issues of Sudan Darfur, Palestine, Jerusalem, Bangladesh, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Gaza, and Rwanda to name just a few. I could get into my personal take on the effects of religion on these respect issues, but let’s not get sidetracked on that, but rather let’s just say that weather you rub a little fat man’s belly or you pray to an invisible bearded white man who lives in the sky, how about we all just respect each other’s rights to believe whatever the hell we want to, assuming that respect is extended in all direction by all groups to all other elements of life on this small planet? There is so little tolerance by the religions, each of them in their own way is disrespecting the others by the simple fact that they are saying, our way, is the right way, and if you don’t think they way we do, you are wrong. That is starting the conversation with an intolerant tone and very little to talk about in way of options. Where is the respect in this? (Sorry, I promised I wouldn’t get derailed, so I’ll stop)

How do we begin to instill the necessary respect in our children they will need to have to do this correctly, but also to tolerate all the disrespect they are going to encounter during their lifetime? Should we put up our modern day media, politicians, sport figures, musical stars, television actors, or religious figures up to our children as a qualified example of respect? I don’t know anyone who would. How do we begin to instill lessons in our children that can only be learned through struggle, hardship and adversity when our lives have become an endless rendition of supersized meals, movies, air conditioned environments and jobs that pay a student out of high school more money than 25 families combined would make in most underdeveloped countries. With a very select few exceptions of those who volunteered it is likely we will have up to four generations of people (including mine) who have never witnessed war in any other way than through the lens of a FOX or CNN news camera and will never know what it is to work a single day of physical labor during their lives.

It must be our responsibility as a civilized nation and as parents and citizens of this great country to take responsibility and lead our youth. We need to educate our children the truth about evolution, technology, health, and the well being of our planet. They must come to understand that getting a trophy for every place is wrong. Not keeping score at little league games and buying them every luxury they could ever want before they are even old enough to know they want it is not the answer. My own children are so underwhelmed by some of the most expensive gifts we buy them while on the other side when asked what she wanted for her birthday my 8 year old daughter replied simply, “a box of yarn Dad”. This is a great example of how our children want for nothing and yet we try to provide them the world. I believe all they truly want from us is our time. Slow down, read a book, teach them about respect and what it is to truly appreciate some of the more simple things in life like a walk in the woods, the smell of a hay field or lying on your back in the grass and searching the clouds for imaginative shapes. At the same time, we need to be incredibly diligent about teaching our children all the things they won’t learn in school. If you want to teach your children religion, teach them about “all” religions and expose them to immense diversity of religious studies. Explain to them all the differences between the religions of the world and describe all the various rituals, traditions and holidays of each. This, not unlike exposing a child to a variety of different activities during their childhood will better prepare them for a global experience and a healthy future.

Respect is a cornerstone of what will get us to the next horizon. It is what separates us from Darwin’s version of success. (Dan Dennett’s talk on Darwin “funny and educational”) Respect each other, respect those around you and respect what you leave behind when you are no longer here. But, that’s just what I think, I could be wrong.