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How
will you spend your 3900 Saturdays
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. 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 garage 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. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s
dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that
has helped me keep 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 3,900, 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 1,000 marbles. I took them home and
put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack
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,
I focused more on the really important things in life. There’s 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. This is a 75 year old man,
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. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re
out? I need to buy some marbles.”
Contributed By:
Charging
the Human Battery : Mac Anderson
Quotes for the day:
"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be
reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps."
*-- Confucius
"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who
got where he is had to begin where he was."
*-- Richard Evans
"You can't have a better tomorrow if you're
thinking about yesterday."
*-- Charles Kettering
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