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

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.

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 friend from Facebook shared this story with me, and passing it on just feels like the right thing to do:

This is for anyone who has had a teacher who inspired them to be their best – John Busswood

One day a teacher asked her students to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers. Read the rest of this entry

Part of almost every guy’s wiring leads to the bone in his head that generates perpetual kidhood. A few somehow received only bone fragments and are old men by thirty, but I’m not interested in exceptions, only the rule. Most women’s wiring is more complex than ours and frequently shorts out at this level of operation, so I’ll leave them off the circuit board for a while, too … do not pass ‘go’, do not collect $200.  What I’m referring to are basic guy things like a fascination with flashing lights, digital readouts, switches that go click and cars that go fast!

Some guys can sit for hours, staring at row of colored lights with the same fascination a child has for the shiny new quarter his 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 Read the rest of this entry

First, let me categorically state that everyone has something to be thankful for, even if it’s only still being around to air their latest gripe and have somebody handy to do eye rolls! If my friend Bob could have seen me steering my way through our Thanksgiving feast he would have said, “Look at him, sittin’ there fat and happy!” and he would have been right. If one can strut while occupying a chair, clutching an overburdened fork in one hand and a gravy-soaked dinner roll in the other, then I was strutting.

The reason my chest was puffed up bigger than the turkey’s wasn’t so much the incredible meal, meticulously prepared by my incredible bride of some thirty-three Thanksgivings, or even the fact that I was surrounded by a small gaggle of kids and grandkids, only one of whom managed to spill anything that would repattern the tablecloth. It wasn’t even having my Mom, now easing her way toward ninety-four, raising a glass of wine with us and providing a toast in her parents’ native Slovak. It was something much bigger, yet so small I don’t think anyone else even noticed.

Vigi had heaped the table with every imaginable Thanksgiving delight, to the point of overflow onto a convenient sideboard. With appropriate gratitude offered to the Lord and before I could even warn my taste buds, I found myself the salivating recipient of the turkey platter … then the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing and so forth. Without so much as a word between them, my two sons [at my immediate left] collaborated to see that I was the first to receive each serving plate, before anyone else! Of course Vigi, [to my immediate right] was next … then the rest. The organizational chart says that I’m head of the family but frequently, as the years whizzed by, I wondered if anyone had ever read it.

This gesture of respect was never taught to them, nor ever demanded … any more than I could have demanded the love that was so clearly behind it. At a time of life when many of my achievements seem to feel as though they were authored by some phantom, and self-doubt often interrupts reason, these two characters elevated me to the level of King Arthur, himself, presiding at the Round Table! It never happened before, and may never again, but the only way they can fully grasp the importance of their act is to be blessed with such a moment themselves. I wish it for them both.

As the meal progressed I looked and listened with growing pride to the conversational ebb and flow of four family generations … giggles, eye rolls and all. The little girls were now young women on the verge of accomplishing great things, my boys were beginning to sport the slightest touches of gray as middle age nibbles at their hairlines, and even Vigi’s sumptuous feast paled a bit in the glow of the royalty consuming it.

Most parents do the best they can to raise their children properly … to instill a traditional value system and an ethical sense of right and wrong. You may have noticed kids don’t come with an instruction manual and most people that have written books about them don’t seem to have any of their own. With so many potent outside forces that shape who these new adults become once they’ve graduated from home, all that remains is the hope you did something right along the way. When the table is cleared and dishes done, the things for which to be truly thankful are the ones, like this, that let you know you did.

Listen to Bananas Crackers and Nuts Podcast. Find Links under “Recent Podcasts”… and more shows on my Podcast Page.