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

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

Click for the ultimate in ‘Green’

Green has always been a pleasant color. Christmas trees are green, the soft grass tickling your toes in the backyard is green, some of the most nourishing veggies are green and my money is green … at least most of it. They’ve been mixing in other rainbow-like hues lately and making it look more like Monopoly money. That’s a good balance though, because it spends more like Monopoly money everyday, only I don’t have any hotels on Boardwalk or Park Place.

So how come, all of a sudden, ‘Green’ has become a politically correct religion and we’re being pummeled about the head and shoulders with it like a piñata? Ever see one of those lunatics risking his life Read the rest of this entry

I have a birthday coming up in a week or so and I’ve been reflecting upon my life, as we all do from time-to-time. It’s just that after a certain age those times occur more frequently … especially as you near the annual celebration of your parents’ fecundity.

It occurs to me that I’ve had three great women in my life: One who taught me what was possible, one who showed me what I didn’t want, and one that helped me find what I really needed. Most guys are lucky to experience even one great woman, so I guess I’ve been blessed with more than my share! They were all significant influences in making me the man I am today so if you have any complaints, in a few paragraphs, you’ll know who to blame. Read the rest of this entry

As you tread the long road between first tooth and last, you stumble into some things that most of us are never really ready to do … you just do them and work out the consequences along the way. Getting married, having kids or buying a house are a few of the ‘just do it’ things that leap to mind. If you examine them too closely or too logically, you’ll end up lonely, childless and renting a one room flat where the bed folds out of the wall, because you won’t do any of them. I believe retirement ranks high on that list.

My concept of retirement was to be able to do all the things I’ve always wanted, without worrying about being successful at them or having to impress anyone. That included working at my own pace, not someone else’s. Read the rest of this entry

About the time I was entering my teens, I remember counting the decades on my fingers to figure out if I’d be alive in the year 2000 for the arrival of the new millennium. With the typical hubris that heralds the arrival of excess growth hormones and causes a kid to walk ten paces in front of his parents at the mall, I decided I’d probably still be here … but I’d be so bleepin’ old it wouldn’t matter. Well, I was and it does! It’s interesting how your perspective changes, depending upon which end of the telescope you’re looking through. Here I am with the millennium just a speck in my rear view mirror and I still feel an excitement about watching the mile markers zip by, especially on New Year’s Eve.

It wasn’t until after I graduated from home that I was able to grasp why so many people made such a big deal out of December 31st. Read the rest of this entry