1000 Marbles....
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings.
Perhaps it's the quiet
solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or
maybe it's the
unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way,
the first few hours
of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement
shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand
and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning,
turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to
time. Let me tell you about it.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band
on my ham radio in
order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along
the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a
golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the
broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something
about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to
what he had to say.
"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with
your job. I'm sure they pay
you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home
and your family so
much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work
sixty or seventy
hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your
daughter's dance recital." He continued, "Let! me tell you something
Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own
priorities."
And that's when he began to explain his theory of a
"thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little
arithmetic. The average
person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live
more and some live
less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five
years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up
with 3900, which is
the number of Saturdays that the average person has in
their entire
lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the
important part. It
took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about
all this in any
detail"; he went on, "and by that time I had
lived through over twenty-eight
hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to
be seventy-five, I
only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single
marble they had. I ended
up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000
marbles. I took them
home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic
container right here in
the sack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I
have taken one marble out and thrown it away."
"I found that by watching the
marbles diminish, focus more on the really important
things in life. There
is nothing like watching your time here on this earth
run out to help get
your priorities straight." "Now let me tell
you one last thing before I
sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for
breakfast. This morning, I
took the very last marble out of the container. I figure
that if I make it
until next Saturday then I have been given a little
extra time. And the one
thing we can all use is a little more time."
It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time
with your family,
and I hope to meet you again here on the band. 75 year
Old Man, this is
K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this
fellow signed off. I
guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned
to work on the
antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up
with a few hams to
work on the next club newsletter.
Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a
kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm
taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What
brought this on?" she asked
with a smile.
"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time
since we spent a Saturday
together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store
while we're out? I
need to buy some marbles....
"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to
be a hundred minus one day,
so I never have to live without you." -Winnie
the Pooh