A Time to Listen

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You know, I encourage you all to listen to me so that I may share with you the truth, wisdom, and insight that I have. You see, I do know most everything and have an opinion on most everything I don't know.

Well, as I've been travelling these past few months, I've learned even more about listening. I've tried listening to others a few times now, and I've concluded that listening to your adult children is usually not the best thing to do as long as you still have some control of your mind.

One daughter dug out a favorite kitchen gadget to help prepare the dinner salad just the other night. The gadget is intended to spin dry the salad greens after rinsing them. A novel idea I guess, but I don't see the value of it over simply shaking the water off in a strainer. But anyway, she couldn't get the gadget to work and asked me to figure out what was wrong with it as it worked perfectly fine the last time (Who knows when that was. She doesn't even eat salad!)

Anyway, after taking a quick look at it, I noticed there was a part apparently missing that engaged the basket to a drive wheel to cause it to spin when a lever was pumped. She gave me a disgusted look, told me that I was wrong, and that simple air pressure from the lever action caused the basket to turn. Oh, well, we set the thing aside and rinsed the salad the old fashion way. A few days later, she called to say she found the missing part and the gadget works fine, but never offered an apology.

And then, as we were nearing the next place to visit, my wife's son called to give us a shorter rout. Now, keeping in mind that the GPS we had followed over the past 1263 miles from Oregon up to the last 15 miles of his place went without a glitch. But, he had a better way. One which he promised would save us 10 minutes. Ten Minutes, I thought. Geez after driving a cumulative 27 hours, you would think that I would jump on that. And I did!! Turned out to be seven miles of construction zone traffic jammed with Christmas shoppers. You gotta be kidding me!

So, I have concluded that I will never follow the advice of my kids until they begin feeding me with a spoon, and wiping my butt. Until then, I'll aways be suspicious of their advice, and not bend over when they ask.

Hope you all had a nice holiday, in whatever tradition you have. But for me it was a Wonder Christmas.

Well be home soon. So be ready!
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