A Few Thoughts From The Birthday Boy

Blog 2226 – 11.22.2021

Today is my seventy first birthday, that is just two short years from the last birthday that my dearly departed daddy celebrated. Shortly after my dad’s passing in 1997 in a briefcase of his I found an autobiographical manuscript hammered out in all caps on a typewriter almost as old as he was. Daddy probably did not realized that typing in all caps is considered shouting, but then he often shouted without realizing that he was. Like most of us, he just wanted to be heard. The manuscript consisted of several stories from his youth and life as a young man. The stories stop before before he met my mom and before my brother and I were born. I guess dad never got around to typing those stories.

We are all guilty of putting off certain tasks that we say we mean to do when we get a round to it. So for my birthday gift to you, here is a two-sided round “Do it, 2 It” wooden nickel. There is a saying “Don’t take any wooden nickels”, but I hope you will take this one and make good use of it and carry it in your mind as you would in your purse or pocket as a reminder to do each day at least one of those things that you have promised yourself that you would do as soon as you got a round TUIT.

Somewhere along the way to posting blog number 2226 (today’s) I realized that I was following in my daddy’s footsteps, typing out my thoughts (not in all caps or shouting) but sharing my slightly skewed view of life nonetheless as he did in his stories spoken and written. Nobody could tell a story quite like my dad and for all the similarities of our stories we each of us have many unique and different experiences. I like to think that we are all of us just God in disguise and on vacation experiencing every possible scenario in this time and space holodeck safe space. My friend Mike Dooley often refers to this time space matrix as a time space jungle. But to me the dangers here are meant mostly just for entertainment value like the dips on a roller coaster. I can hear and you can too if you listen closely in those scary and fearful moments a loving voice whispering in your heart of hearts, “Fear not for I am with you always.”

Someday after I have left the scene as my daddy and his daddy before him did (my Grandpa White passed several years before I came to America – was born) perhaps my son or his children will read through the writings that I leave behind. If they do they will certainly have a lot to cover. I hope they will find nuggets to make in worth the while.

That is alway my hope, my friends (my family) to leave you some encouraging words. Do I think I know all the answers? Hardly, even after seventy one years at it, this time, I still don’t even know let alone understand half the questions yet.

This one thing I know and that is Who and Whose I am. And I find great comfort it that knowledge. This is the birthday that the Lord and I have made, we will rejoice in it.

Remember folks, as Muppet bandleader, Doctor Tooth, says, “There’s a party all the time for them that choose. I barely had room for my birthday balloons in my little home away from home on wheels. And blowing them up and hanging them took a little time, but I remembered my “Do It 2 It” and I did it.