Benjamin Franklin
For the past 20 years I have spoken to all kinds of audiences in the character of Benjamin Franklin. Even though the majority of my engagements are before corporate and convention audiences, I still like to talk to school groups. When I work for corporate clients outside the Philadelphia area, I ask them to sponsor appearances in two schools as a service to their community.
I find that even very young children relate well to the message I present through the character of Benjamin Franklin. I always encourage them to ask any questions they wish, so I usually get some interesting ones. The character of Benjamin Franklin often becomes so real to these students that they willingly suspend disbelief and are caught up in a dialogue with me as if I am really Ben Franklin.
On one particular day after an assembly for an elementary school, I was visiting a fifth-grade classroom to answer questions for students who were studying American history. One student raised his hand and said, "I thought you died." This was not an unusual
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question and I answered it by saying, "Well, I did die on April 17,1790, when I was 84 years old, but I didn't like it and I'm never going to do it again."
I immediately asked for any other questions and called on a boy at the back of the room who raised his hand. He asked, "When you were in Heaven, did you see my mother there?"
My heart stopped. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. My only thought was, "Don't blow this!" I realized for an 11-year-old boy to ask that question in front of all of his classmates it had to either be a very recent occurrence or of utmost concern. I also knew I had to say something.
Then I heard my voice say: "I'm not sure if she is the one I think she was, but if she is, she was the prettiest angel there."
The smile on his face told me that it was the right answer. I'm not sure where it came from, but I think I just may have had a little help from the prettiest angel there.
Ralph Archbold
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4
A MATTER OF ATTITUDE
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
William James
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Discouraged?
As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-baseline, I asked one of the boys what the score was.
''We're behind 14 to nothing," he answered with a smile.
"Really," I said. "I have to say you don't look very discouraged."
"Discouraged?" the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. "Why should we be discouraged? We haven't been up to bat yet."
Jack Canfield
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A Place to Stand
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
Swedish proverb
Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln
If you have ever gone through a toll booth, you know that your relationship to the person in the booth is not the most intimate you'll ever have. It is one of life's frequent nonencounters: You hand over some money; you might get change; you drive off. I have been through every one of the 17 toll booths on the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge on thousands of occasions, and never had an exchange worth remembering with anybody.
Late one morning in 1984, headed for lunch in San Francisco, I drove toward one of the booths. I heard loud music. It sounded like a party, or a Michael Jackson concert. I looked around. No other cars with their windows open. No sound trucks. I looked at the toll booth. Inside it, the man was dancing.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm having a party," he said.
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"What about the rest of these people?" I looked over at other booths; nothing moving there.
"They're not invited."
I had a dozen other questions for him, but somebody in a big hurry to get somewhere started punching his horn behind me and I drove off. But I made a note to myself: Find this guy again. There's something in his eye that says there's magic in his toll booth.
Months later I did find him again, still with the loud music, still having a party.
Again I asked, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I remember you from the last time. I'm still dancing. I'm having the same party."
I said, "Look. What about the rest of the people . . ."
He said. "Stop. What do those look like to you?" He pointed down the row of toll booths.
"They look like . . . toll booths."
"Nooooo imagination!"
I said, "Okay, I give up. What do they look like to you?"
He said, "Vertical coffins."
"What are you talking about?"
"I can prove it. At 8:30 every morning, live people get in. Then they die for eight hours. At 4:30, like Lazarus from the dead, they reemerge and go home. For eight hours, brain is on hold, dead on the job. Going through the motions."
I was amazed. This guy had developed a philosophy, a mythology about his job. I could not help asking the next question: "Why is it different for you? You're having a good time."
He looked at me. "I knew you were going to ask that," he said. "I'm going to be a dancer someday." He pointed to the administration building. "My bosses are in there, and they're paying for my training."
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Sixteen people dead on the job, and the seventeenth, in precisely the same situation, figures out a way to live. That man was having a party where you and I would probably not last three days. The boredom! He and I did have lunch later, and he said, I don't understand why anybody would think my job is boring. I have a corner office, glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate, San Francisco, the Berkeley hills; half the Western world vacations here . . . and I just stroll in every day and practice dancing."
Dr. Charles Garfield
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The Window
And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Grandma Moses
There were once two men, both seriously ill, in the same small room of a great hospital. Quite a small room, it had one window looking out on the world. One of the men, as part of his treatment, was allowed to sit up in bed for an hour in the afternoon (something to do with draining the fluid from his lungs). His bed was next to the window. But the other man had to spend all his time flat on his back.
Every afternoon when the man next to the window was propped up for his hour, he would pass the time by describing what he could see outside. The window apparently overlooked a park where there was a lake. There were ducks and swans in the lake, and children came to throw them bread and sail model boats. Young lovers walked hand in hand beneath the trees, and there were flowers and stretches of grass, games of softball. And at the back, behind the fringe of trees, was a fine view of the city skyline.
The man on his back would listen to the other man describe all of this, enjoying every minute. He heard how a child nearly fell into the lake, and how
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beautiful the girls were in their summer dresses. His friend's descriptions eventually made him feel he could almost see what was happening outside.
Then one fine afternoon, the thought struck him: Why should the man next to the window have all the pleasure of seeing what was going on? Why shouldn't he get the chance? He felt ashamed, but the more he tried not to think like that, the worse he wanted a change. He'd do anything! One night as he stared at the ceiling, the other man suddenly woke up, coughing and choking, his hands groping for the button that would bring the nurse running. But the man watched without movingeven when the sound of breathing stopped. In the morning, the nurse found the other man dead, and quietly took his body away.
As soon as it seemed decent, the man asked if he could be switched to the bed next to the window. So they moved him, tucked him in,
and made him quite comfortable. The minute they left, he propped himself up on one elbow, painfully and laboriously, and looked out the window.
It faced a blank wall
Author Unknown
Submitted by Ronald Dahlsten and Harriette Lindsey
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The Optimist
There is a story of identical twins. One was a hope-filled optimist. "Everything is coming up roses!" he would say. The other was a sad and hopeless pessimist. He thought that Murphy, as in Murphy's Law, was an optimist. The worried parents of the boys brought them to the local psychologist.
He suggested to the parents a plan to balance the twins' personalities. "On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts. Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford, and give the optimist a box of manure." The parents followed these instructions and carefully observed the results.
When they peeked in on the pessimist, they heard him audibly complaining, "I don't like the color of this computer. . . . I'll bet this calculator will break. . . . I don't like this game. . . . I know someone who's got a bigger toy car than this. . . ."
Tiptoeing across the corridor, the parents peeked in and saw their little optimist gleefully throwing the manure up in the air. He was giggling. "You can't fool me! Where there's this much manure, there's gotta be a pony!"
Author Unknown
from More Sower's Seeds by Brian Cavanaugh
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Millie's Mother's Red Dress
It hung there in the closet
While she was dying, Mother's red dress,
Like a gash in the row
Of dark, old clothes
She had worn away her life in.
They had called me home
And I knew when I saw her
She wasn't going to last.
When I saw the dress, I said
Why, Motherhow beautiful!
I've never seen it on you."
"I've never worn it," she slowly said.
"Sit down, MillieI'd like to undo
A lesson or two before I go, if I can."
I sat by her bed
And she sighed a bigger breath
Than I thought she could hold.
"Now that I'll soon be gone,
I can see some things.
Oh, I taught you goodbut I taught you wrong."
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"What do you mean, Mother?"
"WellI always thought
That a good woman never takes her turn,
That she's just for doing for somebody else.
Do here, do there, always keep
Everybody else's wants tended and make sure
Yours are at the bottom of the heap.
"Maybe someday you'll get to them.
But of course you never do.
My life was like thatdoing for your dad,
Doing for the boys, for your sisters, for you."
"You dideverything a mother could."
"Oh, Millie, Millie, it was no good
For youfor him. Don't you see?
I did you the worst of wrongs.
I asked for nothingfor me!
"Your father in the other room,
All stirred up and staring at the walls
When the doctor told him, he took
It badcame to my bed and all but shook
The life right out of me. 'You can't die,
Do you hear? What'll become of me?'
"'What'll become of me?'
It'll be hard, all right, when I go.
He can't even find the flying pan, you know.
"And you children
I was a free ride for everybody, everywhere.
I was the first one up and the last one down
Seven days out of the week.
I always took the toast that got burned.
And the very smallest piece of pie.
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"I look at how some of your brothers
Treat their wives now
And it makes me sick, 'cause it was me
That taught it to them. And they learned.
They learned that a woman doesn't
Even exist except to give.
Why, every single penny that I could save
Went for your clothes, or your books,
Even when it wasn't necessary.
Can't even remember once when I took
Myself downtown to buy something beautiful
For me.
"Except last year when I got that red dress.
I found I had twenty dollars
That wasn't especially spoke for.
I was on my way to pay it extra on the washer.
But somehowI came home with this big box.
Your father really gave it to me then.
'Where you going to wear a thing like that to
Some opera or something?'
And he was right, I guess.
I've never, except in the store,
Put on that dress.
"Oh MillieI always thought if you take
Nothing for yourself in this world
You'd have it all in the next somehow
I don't believe that anymore.
I think the Lord wants us to have something
Hereand now.
'And I'm telling you, Millie, if some miracle
Could get me off this bed, you could look
For a different mother, 'cause I would be one.
Oh, I passed up my turn so long
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I would hardly know how to take it.
But I'd learn, Millie.
I would learn!''
It hung there in the closet
While she was dying, Mother's red dress,
Like a gash in the row
Of dark, old clothes
She had worn away her life in.
Her last words to me were these:
"Do me the honor, Millie,
Of not following in my footsteps.
Promise me that."
I promised.
She caught her breath
Then Mother took her turn
In death.
Carol Lynn Pearson
Used by Permission of Carol Pearson, 1976
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AttitudeOne of Life's Choices
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
Hugh Downs
My wife, Tere, and I purchased a new car in December. Even though we had tickets to fly from California to Houston to visit her family for Christmas, we decided to drive to Texas to break in the new car. We packed the car and took off for a wonderful week with Grandma.
We had a wonderful time and stayed to the last possible minute visiting with Grandma. On the return trip we needed to get home in a hurry, so we drove straight throughone person driving while the other one slept. After driving in a hard rain for several hours, we arrived home late at night. We were tired and ready for a hot shower and a soft bed. I had the feeling that no matter how tired we were, we should unpack the car that night, but all Tere wanted was the hot shower and the soft bed, so we decided to wait and unload the car in the morning.
At seven o'clock in the morning, we got up refreshed and ready to unpack the car. When we opened the front door, there was no car in the driveway! Tere and I looked at each other, looked back at the driveway,
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looked at each other, looked back at the driveway, and looked at each other again. Then Tere asked this wonderful question, "Well, where did you park the car?"
A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul Page 17