Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface to air missile … Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in the communist Vietnamese prison but survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”

“How in the world do you know that?” asked Plumb. “I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!” Plumb assured him, “It sure did. If that chute hadn’t opened, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Plumb couldn’t sleep all night thinking about that man. Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he looked like in a Navy uniform … a white hat, a bib in the back, and bell bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might’ve seen him and not even said, “Good morning, how are you?” or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor. Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute … holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t even know.

Now, Plumb asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute?” Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory. He needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and the spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before he finally reached safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life presents, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you … congratulate someone on something wonderful that this happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no particular reason. As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without writing a word. Maybe this could explain it: When you’re very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do … you forward jokes. And to let you know that you are still remembered, still important, still loved, that you are still cared for, guess what you get? A forwarded joke!

So the next time you get a joke, don’t think that you’ve been sent just another forwarded joke but delight in the fact that you’ve been thought of today and your friend at the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile … just helping to pack your parachute!

– Author Unknown

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God and I have this great relationship. At least I think we do … it seems to work from my standpoint, I hope it does from His. Organized religion and I never quite hit it off and even during advancing seniorhood I still consider myself ‘in recovery’. Any flirtation with religious formality ended with the last of my innocence when, what I needed was good advice about a bad marriage, but received instead only tongue-lashings and platitudes from every religious person I knew … including my Mom who makes even holy men look like their halos need a brisk buffing with Brasso.

Rather than concrete and stone, my cathedral lies in the embrace of towering trees and singing birds or falling snow, where I can clear my head and enjoy a more direct communion with the one who makes it all possible. While I remain a Christian, I quickly lose patience with Read the rest of this entry

She wasn’t my first love but she was the first female to inflict womanly pain upon my soul. My first love was Lucy Williams in kindergarten. We once shared a mat during rest period and a couple of crayons afterword. Next was Laura Gail Fitzsimmons in the first grade, but she never knew it. She had flaming red hair, a few discretely placed freckles and kept a small lace handkerchief in her sleeve.

Miss Crystal was, actually, my third love … an older woman with whom I became smitten in the second grade. She was the trifecta, the hat trick, the ultimate in kid crushes! She was also the first to break my heart. From the moment I saw her, I knew she was the girl I would marry someday … as soon as I caught up with her. You see, Miss Crystal was my second grade teacher. That meant I had some serious growing to do before Read the rest of this entry

Santa had come and gone. The children were nestled all snug in their beds but the sugar plums that once danced in their heads had been devoured and, by now, the resulting ‘high’ subsided settling things back to a dull roar. Even the nastiest little crumb cruncher hadn’t received coal in his stocking and all was well.  Or was it?

Here it was New Year’s Eve and each year the same two things always amaze me. The first is how the nature of my celebration has changed with time.  The other is our tradition of getting misty-eyed over a song to which most people know the words but few know either the meaning or how to spell it.

For years I held that Christmas was the holiday for kids and New Year’s was the adult holiday.  To prove it, I’d whip up a batch of lethal Read the rest of this entry

The high school I occupied during my pre-adult period was nearly ninety percent Jewish. When many of the more important Hebrew holidays were celebrated, like in September and October, they actually consolidated as many as three or four classes for any given subject into a single room. Even with that arrangement, I was one of only a tiny hand-full of students in there. We had a lot of fall study halls back then.

Chanukah was different because it usually seemed to coincide pretty closely with Christmas and everybody was off from school … even the kids that celebrated holidays with names most of us never heard of, until ‘political correctness’ came to town a few years later. In those days you were either a Christian or a Jew and nobody was offended by wishes of “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Chanukah,” even if you got it wrong. In my neighborhood, the Christmas tree and the Menorah lived side by side. Read the rest of this entry

As we prepare for Christmas, each in his own way, let us take just a moment to reflect upon all that we have … and why we get to keep it. This is from a Christmas card, from a friend.

by Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt

T’was the night before Christmas, he lived all alone
In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney with presents to give
And to see just who in this home did live.
I looked all about, a strange sight I did see –
No Tinsel, no presents, not even a tree. Read the rest of this entry

A buddy of mine asked his readers for Christmas stories on his blog The Dick Summer Connection … and among the many responses he received, this one jumped right off the page. Most guys have experienced something similar, although I would hope less extreme. Dick said I could share the story, so from my house to yours, here’s Bill Ervolino’s house. Whew!

 I thought it would be a nice idea to bring a date to my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. I thought it would be interesting for a non-Italian girl to see how an Italian family spends the holidays. I thought my mother and my date would hit it off like partridges and pear trees. So, I was wrong. Sue me.

I had only known Karen for three weeks when I extended the invitation. “I know these family things can be a little weird,” I told her, “but my folks are great, and we always have a lot of fun on Christmas Eve.” “Sounds fine to me,” Karen said. Read the rest of this entry