October 31 – “Older … wiser”

Well, we made it home with little fuss.  Even managed to stop at Cracker Barrel for an early supper.  I think we were somewhere near College Station.  Lots of Aggie stuff.  It was a brand new store, though.  I could tell because all the antiques they have on display looked brand new.  Kel and his family were all here when we got back, so we had a regular welcome home party for a few hours.  I’m sure that’s not why they were here, but I’m pretty good at pretending.

I slept until seven the next morning.  It was nice to be in a real bed instead of a blow-up mattress.  Not that it was that uncomfortable, except that one night when it lost some air and the boys were already asleep so I couldn’t top it off.  Way too squishy.  I spent most of the day trying to catch up on the week’s preparations for Sunday.  And then I tried to send out an email to my Seaside contact list.  Well, apparently yesterday was not the appropriate time to make such an attempt.  Oh, the email was innocuous enough.  I was just inviting everyone to our Halloween party and Bible give-away.  But for some reason, yahoo has seen fit to declare such activities potentially subversive and/or terroristic.  They wouldn’t let me send emails to more than one person at a time.  The help screen asked such questions as, “Have you sent a lot of mass emails lately?” and “Has anyone else had access to your account?”  I guess that means they thought I might have been hacked.  And I was just about to start believing that they had my best interests at heart.  Silly me. 

The last screen I was directed to informed me that if I wanted to continuing my seditious sending of mass emails, then I would have to … drum roll here, please … I would have to start using their “brand new concept created just for yahoo so our members can create groups and send emails in the safety and security of the group email zone.”  There it was.  They wanted me to buy into their new idea, so they just made it impossible for me to do anything else.  So I was stuck, right?  Well, not exactly.  They failed to consider that I am an old guy anyway.  I just reverted back to the good old days (Well, not too far back.  I didn’t rush over to the telephone that was wired to the wall and wait for the operator to ask me how she could connect me).  Actually, I just sent each one individually.  Took some extra time, but one thing I learned from my Dad that only started to make sense as I got older … there is rarely a reason to rush so much that you put yourself in a position to make a careless mistake.  He applied it to everything from driving to schoolwork.  And it’s amazing how much wiser my Dad got as I got older. 

Leviticus 19:32 says, “Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the Lord.”

Father, thank you for the wisdom of my Dad.  Help me to impart a little smarts to my kids and grandkids as well.  Amen.