Thursday, March 28, 2024

Positive Attitude

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Driving home on a four-lane highway with Grandpa last week I almost ran over a chair. Yep, a chair. Coming around the curve; going sixty miles an hour we saw yellow flashing lights a-ways ahead. Grandpa said, “See those?” “Yep,” I said wondering if it was road work lights or the lights from an incident response vehicle. We were too far away to tell. Ahead of me the work truck pulling a flatbed trailer with heavy machinery on it blocked my view of the lane ahead. I began to position my car so I could move over if I needed to but the three cars in the left lane must have seen the lights before Grandpa and I did. They had already jockeyed into position and were blocking my entry into that lane. So, I just hung tight with a wait-and-see attitude for about a minute at which time the work truck with the local excavating company’s logo on the back left the road ahead, swerved right leaving the lane wide open for me to see what I was about to hit. It was a chair, a gracefully shaped, beautifully carved perfect addition to any family’s kitchen table blond wooden chair. It was lying on its side in the middle of the lane.

For a split second I contemplated swerving left into the other lane but for some reason I decided to follow the working man’s truck and left the road to miss the chair. It was a good thing I did because had I tried to get into the left lane, I’d have run into the second of the three cars jockeying to pass the work truck. I glanced up and saw the white incident response truck setting atop the hill a quarter of a mile ahead of us as I reentered the right lane following behind the work truck. Grandpa glanced back over his shoulder at the chair in the middle of our lane getting smaller and smaller. “If we’d been thinking a little faster, we could have pulled over and got that chair out of traffic.” I said, “I don’t care enough about a chair to risk running out in the middle of the highway.” Grandpa was silent for a moment giving me time to process what I’d just said. He’s good at having the patience to let a person figure it out on their own. “Oh,” I said, “the chair needs moved so the cars behind us won’t wreck.”  He nodded. “It’s too late now. That chair will really make a mess if a car hits it. If we’d been a little quicker, we could have taken care of that.”

About then we passed the white incident response vehicle at the crest of the hill. Just about three hundred yards further on the downhill side of the road I looked over just in time to see two strapping young fellows outside their truck tossing straps back and forth securing the furniture still in the bed of their truck. I caught a glimpse of the mate to the beautifully carved wooden chair I’d just passed. It was laying sideways across the top of the furniture pile. I wondered for a moment why one of those strapping young men wasn’t running back to remove the first chair from the highway. Maybe it was too early for them to get past the lack of chair value and onto wreck potential. So, when we got home and we were eating lunch with Grandma I got to thinking about how Grandpa’s first response was to clear the path for the next guy. Thinking back on following him and Grandma on my way to growing up and the way we lived, outside of town, usually in the woods in undeveloped environments; how he and Grandma together built more than one home from the ground up for us to live in. Mostly there were no incident response vehicles to respond to a chair in the middle of the road. It was up to the two of them to clear a path for themselves and us, their children, and perhaps even the few folks who might be on their way to visit. Our neighbors, at least the ones who came into our house, usually from miles away, were the same. Together all the neighbors maintained the gravel roads we traveled on. How and when did I get to the point that the speed of travel and my urgency to get ‘there’ allowed me to forget that if I’m going to get anywhere, I need a road and roads need maintenance folks. And just maybe it would be good if those folks were maintained too.  And that got me to thinking about how hard it is for folks to want to work when people like me forget how valuable maintenance folks are. And that led to my thinking about self-maintenance, so I asked Grandpa Truman, “What do you do to keep a positive attitude?”

Grandma Lydia looked over at me and I could see the wheels turning in her mind. Grandpa Truman made eye contact. It took a moment for him to answer then he said, “Well, it starts with a prayer in the morning.” I glanced at Grandma Lydia she said, “before getting out of bed.”

Grandpa Truman nodded. I grinned and thought, pretty good recipe for the beginning of a day.  

 

Grandpa and Grandma’s Recipe for a Positive Attitude

Say a prayer before starting the day while still in bed.

Invite good thoughts to the kitchen table of the mind. When negative thoughts knock on the kitchen door don’t open it; just keep them out.

Remember, it IS legal to take a nap.




 

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