Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Jack and Bob


Jack took a long look at his speedometer before slowing down: 73 in a 55 zone. Fourth time in as many months. How could a guy get caught so often? When his car had slowed to 10 miles an hour, Jack pulled over, but only partially. Let the cop worry about the potential traffic hazard. Maybe some other car will tweak his backside with a mirror.

The cop was stepping out of his car, the big pad in hand. Bob? Bob from church? Jack sunk farther into his trench coat. This was worse than the coming ticket. A cop catching a guy from his own church. A guy who happened to be a little eager to get home after a long day at the office. A guy he was about to play golf with tomorrow. Jumping out of the car, he approached a man he saw every Sunday, a man he'd never seen in uniform.

"Hi, Bob. Fancy meeting you like this."

"Hello, Jack." No smile.

"Guess you caught me red-handed in a rush to see my wife and kids."

"Yeah, I guess." Bob seemed uncertain. Good.

"I've seen some long days at the office lately. I'm afraid I bent the rules a bit - just this once." Jack toed at a pebble on the pavement. "Diane said something about roast beef and potatoes tonight. Know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. I also know that you have a reputation in our precinct." Ouch.

This was not going in the right direction. Time to change tactics. "What'd you clock me at?"

"Seventy. Would you sit back in your car please?"

"Now wait a minute here, Bob. I checked as soon as I saw you. I was barely nudging 65." The lie seemed to come easier with every ticket.

"Please, Jack, in the car." Flustered, Jack hunched himself through the still-open door. Slamming it shut, he stared at the dashboard. He was in no rush to open the window. The minutes ticked by. Bob scribbled away on the pad. Why hadn't he asked for a driver's license? Whatever the reason, it would be a month of Sundays before Jack ever sat near this cop again. A tap on the door jerked his head to the left. There was Bob, a folded paper in hand.

Jack rolled down the window a mere two inches, just enough room for Bob to pass him the slip. "Thanks." Jack could not quite keep the sneer out of his voice. Bob returned to his police car without a word. Jack watched his retreat in the mirror. Jack unfolded the sheet of paper. How much was this one going to cost? Wait a minute. What was this? Some kind of joke? Certainly not a ticket. Jack began to read:

"Dear Jack, Once upon a time I had a daughter. She was six when killed by a car. You guessed it -- a speeding driver. A fine and three months in jail, and the man was free. Free to hug his daughters. All three of them. I only had one, and I'm going to have to wait until Heaven before I can ever hug her again. A thousand times I've tried to forgive that man. A thousand times I thought I had. Maybe I did, but I need to do it again. Even now. Pray for me.

And be careful, Jack, my son is all I have left." "Bob"

Jack turned around in time to see Bob's car pull away and head down the road. Jack watched until it disappeared. A full 15 minutes later, he, too, pulled away and drove slowly home, praying for forgiveness and hugging a surprised wife and kids when he arrived.




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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Like father, like son


Like Father, like Son


As I sat reading one evening last winter, my young son Rahul approached my chair in friendly silence. He stood just outside the half-moon of my light ade by an old brass lamp I cherish, the one that lit my doctor father’s desk.

These days Rahul likes coming to me with his most serious problems when I’m reading. It wasn’t long that he did that whenever I was working in the garden. Perhaps he feels at ease with difficulties when I’m doing what he’s getting ready to do. In the season past he learnt to plant seeds and leave them, instead of digging them up the next morning to see if they had grown. This year he’s beginning to read to himself—although he won’t admit to me that he can.

I looked up and he grinned. Then his expression turned abruptly serious—a not too flattering imitation of me when I look serious.

“I’ve broken my car,” he said, withdrawing the toy from behind his back. “Look.”

He didn’t ask if I could mend it. His trust that I could was a compliment from a small boy to the miracle fixer of tricycles, pedal cars and assorted toys.

The car’s blue plastic door had snapped. My father, who treasured the tools of all profession, would not have approved of a plastic car.

“There are some pieces missing. Have you got them?’

Rahul opened a clenched fist to reveal the remaining fragments. I did not see how it could be properly mended.

He watched me intently, his expression revealing absolute confidence that I could do anything. That look stirred memories. I examined the car with great care, turning over the broken pieces in my hands as I turned over the past in my mind.

When I was seven, I’d gone to my father’s surgery one November day after school. My father was clearly the best doctor within a thousand kms. Of our small town. I was perpetually astonished by him, by the things he could do—as were his patients. He could not only heal whatever was the matter with anyone, but he could also break and train a horse, carve a top and slide down Long Hill on my sledge, standing up. I liked to hang around his waiting-room and notice the way his patients always looked better after they had seen him.

But on this day, my purpose for going was to see my best friend, Jimmy Hadsety. Jimmy hadn’t been at school for three days, and his mother had sent word to my father’s nurse that she just might bring him from the farm today.

When the last of the afternoon’s patients had left, Jimmy was still nowhere to be seen. My father and I went off on his round. He liked me with him because he enjoyed telling stories when he drove—and I suppose I was the best listener in the world when it came to my father’s stories.

It was nearly seven when we finished. As we started home, my father said suddenly, “Let’s go up and check old Jimmy.” I felt squirmy with gratitude, certain that my father was doing it to please me.

But when we came in sight of the old house, there was a light in an upstairs window and another over the back door—the ancient signs of trouble.

As we drove up, Alice, Jimmy’s older sister, came running out and threw her arms round my father, crying and shaking and trying to talk. “Oh, Doctor, Jimmy’s dying! Dad’s chasing all over the place looking for you. Thank God you’ve come. It was only a cold. Then he started to sweat like a river and just closed his eyes.” She kept talking like that and hanging on to him.

My father never ran. He usually said there wasn’t any good reason to hurry. If you had to hurry it was too late. But he told Alice to let go of him, and he ran then.

I followed him through the kitchen and up the narrow, dark stairs. Jimmy was breathing very fast and made a high, airy sound. He had mounds of quilts piled over him so that I could barely see his face in the flickering light of the oil lamps. He looked d all worn out and his skin glistened.

His mother said nothing. She was a large woman whom I had never seen before in her own house without an apron on. She stood behind me, both her hands on my shoulders, as my father listened to Jimmy’s chest. He fixed a hypodermic and held the needle up to the light. Mrs Hardesty, Alice and I watched a clear drop roll off the tip of the needle. I was certain that in it was the miracle we certainly must have.

My father gave Jimmy the injection. He then got a gauge pad from his black case and put it over Jimmy’s mouth. He bent over him and began to breathe with him. No one moved in that room, and there was no other sound.

Then, as suddenly as lightning, there was the awful sound of my father’s breathing alone. I felt Mrs. Hardesty’s hands tighten on my shoulders and knew, as she knew, that something had snapped. But my father kept on breathing into his lungs. After a long time, Mrs. Hardesty went to the bed, put her hand on my father’s shoulder and said very quietly, “He’s gone, Doctor. It’s no use. Come away. My boy’s not with us any longer.” But my father would not move.

She took me by the hand then, and we went to the kitchen. Mrs. Hardesty sat down in a rocking-chair and Alice, looking as forlorn as I’d ever seen anyone look, threw herself into her mother’s lap. I went out and sat down on the top step in the cold darkness. I wanted no one to see or hear me.

When Mr. Hardesty came back and saw our car, he went running into the house. In a while I could hear voices. Then silence, then voices again. At last there was a noise of men’s heavy steps on the stairs. My father came outside, and I followed him into the car. All the lonely way into the town he said nothing to me. And I could not risk saying anything to him. The world I thought I knew lay broken in my heart.

We didn’t go home; we went to his surgery instead. He stood alone at the door for a long time. Then he called out my name loudly, fiercely, handed me the key and said; “Open it. I can’t get it open.”

I was very frightened. I wasn’t used to doing things for him. It was always the other way round. We went to his darkened office. He told me to turn on his lamp, and began going through textbook after textbook, looking desperately for something he might have done.

I wanted to stop him, but I did not know how. I couldn’t imagine how the night would ever end. From time to time, all unwilling, I would begin to cry again.

Finally, I heard someone at the door and went out through the reception room, grateful to whoever it might be. News of the beginnings and endings of life traveled far and fast in a community like ours. My mother had come for us. She knelt down, hugged me, rubbed the back of my head, and I clung to her as I had not done since I was a baby.

“Oh, Mother, why couldn’t he, why couldn’t he?” I wept.

She rubbed my back until I was quiet. Then she said, “Your father is bigger than you are, but he’s smaller than life. We love him for what he can do; we don’t love him less for what he can’t do. Love always accepts—no matter what.”

Even though I’m not sure I understood what she meant, I know I felt the importance of what she said. Then she went to get my father.

THAT winter seemed to have gone on for ever when I lived through it long ago, but the memory played itself out in my mind in seconds as I sat turning over the pieces of Rahul’s toy. I said to him, “I’m afraid it’s broken.”

“I know that. Will you mend it please?” There was a tiny disguise of impatience in his voice.

“I can’t”

“But you can.”

“No, I can’t. I’m sorry”

He looked at me—and the expression of awesome confidence faded. His lower lip trembled, and he fought his tears even as they came.

I pulled him up on to my lap and comforted him as best as I could over his sorrow over his broken toy and his fallen idol. Gradually his crying subsided. I was certain he sensed my melancholy at seeing myself only as an ordinary mortal in his eyes because he stayed nestled against me for quite some time.

As he left the room, giving me direct and friendly look, I could hear my mother’s voice, telling me in her certain way that love was not conditional. Once the son, now the father, I knew that out of the anguish of that discovery comes the beginning of understanding.


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Monday, August 15, 2011

powerpoint





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Fathers are special


Fathers are special people,
Whom we often take for granted.

We do not give them high praises
Or enough credit.
For all he has done
To provide for his family.
He has done what a man suppose to.
He gives himself unselfishly.

Fathers make many sacrifices,
Just like mothers do,
But do we once tell our fathers,
Father, thank you.

He struggles each day,
To be a hero in his family's eyes.
He is the protector and the provider.
In him is where the strength lies.

Fathers aren't the kind of people,
Who shows their emotions,
But when you look inside his heart,
You know his true notions.

Father's are special people,
In many different ways.
He is what makes a family whole.
We need that now these days.

Fathers are like our heavenly father,
Who sits high above.
We can always depend on him,
To give his undying love.





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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Asking the right question

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION

Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.

Max replies, "Why don't you ask the Priest?"

So Jack goes up to the Priest and asks, "Father, may I smoke while I pray?"

The Priest replies, "No, my son, you may not! That's utter disrespect to our religion."

Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good Priest told him.

Max says, "I'm not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try."

And so Max goes up to the Priest and asks, "Father, may I pray while I smoke?"

To which the Priest eagerly replies, "By all means, my son. By all means. You can always pray whenever you want to."



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Moral of the story is... The reply you get depends on the question you ask.


**********

For example, if you want a vacation when still working on a project don't ask for the holiday;


Ask: "Can I keep working on this project while I'm on vacation?"






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