STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

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Jan 23, 2006? 

Today??™s Announcements:

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? A hardy welcome Mate, goes out to our newest writer, Keith Ready, writer #284, from the land of down under. Don??™t forget to email him and let him know exactly what you think of his work.

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Now on to the good stuff..........

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Today's Queue Stories
~**~**~**~

Honesty is the Best Policy

Sharlett F. Hunt

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?  All of us, at some time during our lives learned the difference between right and wrong, hopefully, by the time we reach adulthood.?  For some, it was enough to be told, be truthful, don't lie and don't take anything that doesn't belong to you.?  I, however, had to learn the hard way.

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?  I distinctly remember being a child with a vivid imagination, who was sometimes prone to stretching the truth.?  Mama would often scold me but I had a short term memory and soon would forget.

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?  One day I will never forget.?  It lingers in my mind to this day.?  It was the day my daddy taught me, thou shall not steal".? 

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?  I was around five years old at the time.?  We lived in an old dilapidated house at the end of a dirt road on some acreage, which my dad farmed.? 

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?  Sometimes the older kids would allow me to walk with them the half mile or so to the end of our road where there stood an old country store.? 

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?  I just loved Hershey chocolate bars and sometimes my daddy would give me the money (probably a nickel at that time) to buy one of those luscious bars of chocolate.?  I would purchase my candy and eat it on the way home, covered with it from head to toe, I am sure.

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?  On this particular day, I waited for my dad to come in from the fields so I could ask if he would walk me to the store but no Daddy.?  I knew he would buy me my favorite candy bar if he was just home.? 

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?  I finally decided I was a big girl and would just go by myself.?  So off I went.?  I timidly went inside the store and got my treasured Hershey Bar and walked home, eating it on the way, as usual.? 

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?  My dad was waiting for me on the front steps and he looked angry.?  He asked if I had walked to the store alone and I said yes.?  Then he wanted to know if I had bought a Hershey Bar and if so, with what, as he knew I had no money.? 

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?  I couldn't deny the fact that I had eaten chocolate as the evidence was all over me.?  I tearfully admitted that I didn't pay for it.? 

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?  He marched me back down to the store.?  When we got there he handed me the nickel and told me to pay the man behind the counter.? 

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?  Then he made me apologize.?  I'm sure I tearfully blurted out, "I'm sorry I took a candy bar without paying for it."?  It was hard for me but I am sure, harder for him.

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?  That was many years ago and I can honestly say I never have had the desire to take something that didn't belong to me.?  Since the ripe old age of five, I have been a perfectly honest individual.?  Not saying that I didn't fail every once in a while, but it took the honesty and integrity of that wise old man to make a believer out of me.? 

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?  In all actuality, I recently mentioned this to my daddy, who is 88 now, and he doesn't remember this incident.?  He's my best friend and my dad.?  I can't tell? you enough the love we have is so overwhelming, at times.?  He thought I was always a good kid.? Of course, I wasn't.? I am fifty five and still his little girl.

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He's getting a little forgetful, sometimes, when we talk.?  Frightens the? heck out of me.?  What on earth will I do when he is gone??  I'll be a lost little girl.

? Sharlette863 @aol.com


About Me:

I was born in Alabama, the middle of seven children. At about age four we moved to Central Florida and I have lived here most of my life. I am a Viet Nam Era Veteran. I have always enjoyed writing and as I get older it seems to come more naturally to me. I believe everyone has many stories inside them and some are blessed to be able to share them.

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~**~**~? 

? ValueSpeak

A Weekly Column

By Joseph Walker

valuespeak@msn.com

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WISDOM WITH A GOLD STAR

Joe is in his first year at a prestigious law school in the eastern United States. A lot of folks are impressed by that.

But not Becky.

Becky is Joe??™s 5-going-on-15-year-old daughter. She has been in kindergarten for two whole months, which means she??™s pretty much got life figured out now.

For example, it didn??™t take her long to notice that she was the only one in her entire kindergarten class whose Daddy still went to school. All of the other daddies had jobs, including daddies who work on computers, daddies who build things, daddies who sell things and even one daddy who is a police officer.

When you??™re in kindergarten, a daddy who is a police officer is prestigious. A daddy who is still going to school like you is . . . well . . . not.

"She hasn??™t said anything, but I can tell by the way she looks at me that she feels kind of sorry for me," Joe told me recently. "Most people think I??™m in this law school because I??™m smart. My daughter thinks I??™m in this law school because I??™m an idiot."

Which shouldn??™t come as a great surprise to Joe ??“ pretty much all children see their fathers as idiots at some point in their lives. And they love us anyway. Most of the time.

The thing that really seals the deal for Becky is the stars. Every day in kindergarten the children earn gold stars for their behavior. The more gold stars on their paper at the end of the day, the better behaved they were. Usually Becky comes home with four or five stars on her paper. So when Joe brought one of his papers home from law school, she wanted to see it.

It may surprise you to learn that one of America??™s leading law schools doesn??™t normally put gold stars on student papers. So there were no stars on Joe??™s paper for Becky to see.

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Joe could see the realization dawning in Becky??™s eyes. Not only was her father an idiot, but he was an idiot who behaved poorly. Becky looked at her father compassionately and benevolently, as one might look at someone to whom life has done a great disservice.

"It??™s OK, Daddy," she said, patting his hand sympathetically. "I??™ll get a good job."

And as far as Becky is concerned, that??™s OK. The way she sees it, she??™s got kindergarten under control. Law school and the rest of life can??™t be any more difficult than that, can it?

Of course, those of us who have lived more than five years on this planet understand that there??™s a little more to it than that. While it may be true, as Robert Fulghum??™s wonderful book indicates, that "Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," there is much to be said for the things we learn ??“ sometimes painfully ??“ through years of living and experience.

We may learn in kindergarten, as Fulghum writes, that you should "say you??™re sorry when you hurt somebody." But it is only through years of experiencing the pain of hurting and being hurt that we learn why that??™s such a good, healthy, healing idea. Or we may learn in kindergarten that we should "play fair." But we have to see and experience the consequences of unfairness to truly understand why playing fair is so important.

"Not all learning comes from books," said country music superstar Loretta Lynn. "You have to live a lot."

It??™s called wisdom, and you don??™t learn it at school ??“ not even the most prestigious of law schools. You don??™t even learn it at kindergarten, although some of it probably starts there. It rarely comes quickly or easily. But it comes in powerful ways that you never forget.

With or without the gold stars.

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Broken Eggs and Shattered Glass
. . .? with my sincere thanks to those late night pranksters!

On a recent Saturday evening at around midnight, my wife and? I were just about to turn out the light and go to sleep when we heard the sounds of a? group of? people talking in the street, outside our home. Then out of the blue came two loud thuds above our bedroom window, followed by the noise of laughter and? people running? away down our street.

We both? jumped out of bed, I turned on the external lights and rushed outside unsure of what had caused the two thuds or what damage I could expect to see. The silence of the night was broken by the distant sound of people laughing and at that moment I was of a mind to chase after them,? however, running bare-footed on the road in the dark is not a very wise thing to do.

I could hear dripping noises on the driveway and the flood light above our garage helped me to identify just what had happened. Our home had been the victim of? an egg bombing!

Being faced with the prospect of cleaning up this sticky mess in the early hours of the morning was not a pleasing thought, on top of which I was less than impressed that we had been singled out for this annoying prank.? I decided that it was too late to clean up the mess, as it would disturb our neighbours, so it could wait to the morning.

Early next morning with a bucket of warm water and scrubbing brush in hand, and with? the extension ladder placed on the front wall,? I? was now? ready? to wash off what was now two dry yellowish, egg grit impregnated, 1 metre long patches above our front bedroom windows.? 

My task? was made even more challenging by the two large canvas awnings which protect our bedroom windows from the heat and glare of the afternoon sun.? My annoyance with the late night pranksters was again building to the level of the night before.

After? retracting each of the awnings, something we rarely do except when there is are very high winds, I? then climbed the ladder to clean up the first patch of egg stain and then move the ladder to clean the second patch.

As I climbed the ladder for the second time, I noticed that the glass in a small window just under the roof line was very badly cracked. On closer inspection the crack ran around? over half of the outer edge of the window pane.?  As the awning protected the window, it was clear to me that the damage had not been caused by the egg bombing.? As I carefully placed my hand on the glass, I discovered that? the pane? of glass was very loose and? had the window been closed with any force, it would have most likely shattered and the glass dropped to the drive way, some? seven metres below.

Just a few metres away, we have a basketball ring and on most? days of the week there are? up to six young people who play in the immediate area, including both my sons. My thoughts immediately turned to what could have happened if the broken glass in the window had gone undetected for much longer and then suddenly shattered.?  The likelihood of my two sons and their friends being seriously injured was extremely high.

After quickly washing the remaining egg stain off the front wall and with the help of Tom, my youngest son, I got to work with some heavy duty masking tape and secured the cracked window as best I could. Within 24 hours the cracked window? had been? replaced and all was back to normal, except for the small bits of egg shell I kept finding on the front drive way and stuck? to our garage doors.

Over the next few days,? I realised that had our home not been bombarded by those eggs late on that Saturday night, I may not have discovered the broken window pane before it shattered and came down all over our drive way.

Even though? it had been an annoyance at time, the broken eggs and the stains? were? cleaned up very quickly, however, the pain that could have been caused by the? shattering of? glass would never gone away and would have haunted my wife and myself, forever and a day.

The cold shudder that ran down my spine when I first discovered the cracked window and the thought about the consequences of someone being seriously injured or even killed, made me realise just how very lucky we had been.

Frequently? in life,? the small things that? happen to us may have a negative impact and cause some form of pain, sadness, discomfort or personal aggravation. It is often said that we should not 'sweat the small stuff' and always look for the positive outcome or the silver lining in those dark clouds of the current circumstance, even though at the time that is not always an easy thing to do.

My personal experience with the egg bombing on that Saturday evening reminded me that in most cases there is always a flip side to everything that happens to us and that often the flip side can provide a positive outcome or an even greater benefit, if not now, then at some time in the future.

From now on whenever I see or break an egg, I will think of the egg bombing incident and say a thank you to those late night pranksters.? Equally, I? will always be reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre's quote:

'What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us'

Written by Keith Ready

Keith Ready is an Australian based business adviser and trainer whose specialty is working with his clients to improve top and bottom line business performance in a measurable way, through people.? 

Keith can be contacted via e-mail at kready@netspace.net.au or you can visit his website at www.agiftofinspiration.com.au

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Writers Feedback

my heart cries tears for Violet?  as I send her a hug and ask God to put and keep an angel around about her to hold her during these loney heart healing times.?  Leona ? ? 

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Prayer Requests and Updates

? Nikki called sobbing for joy... She is coming home today! She has to wait until they test a few more things, but it's a for sure thing.?  Friday she has an appointment to have her cells checked again, but she's out for a couple of weeks R &R.? ?  No one deserves it more.?  She has received tons of cards and said to tell you that she's so grateful for the prayers and love that she has felt from people she's never met.?  She said to tell everyone you know that miracles do happen and she's living proof.?  Love, Al

? SENIOR WRITERS

Chief Writer: Sharon Bryant

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? Agee, Vance;? Apted, Violet;? Baker, Kathy; Batt, Al;?  Berry, Nell; Blaine, Pamela

Boda, Ginger;? ? Buhagiar, Victor; Cassady, B.J.;?  Cavalera, Robyn; Crider, Mark;? 

Deming, Barb; Doherty, Maria; Gilbert, Robert Jr; Goodier, Steve; Halley, Ellie Braun;

Harris, Kathy Anne;? Hunt, Sharlette;? Hymes, Christina

Jacobson, Gary;? Kiser, Roger Dean; Kerens, Claudia; Kevin, Tim Jenkins, Pamela;

Liles, Norma; Lilly, Jodi Flesberg; Lock, Joyce; Mazzella, Joe;? Morris, Deepak;

Ojeigbe, Georgewaters;

?  Petry, Dianna Doles; Roberts, Susan;?  Shiveley, Debra; Shaw, Bob; Sims, Richard; Streidel, Saskia; Swarner, Ken; Vaknin, Sam; Verhoeff, Jan

Walker, Bill; Walker, Joe;? Warner, Gorden K; Walsh, Sue

Weymouth, Barbara; Whirity, Kathy;? White, Robert;

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STORYTIME TAPESTRY STAFF

Publisher: Carol Roach-founder

Moderator: Thelma Hartselle-co founder

Moderator: Clara Westerfer

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