Here's a goody I just got from a long-time friend who is facing his 
retirement with courage.

Lala
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A Thousand Marbles

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet 
solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the 
unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours 
of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling 
toward the basement shack with
a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. 
What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons 
that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it. I 
turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in 
order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came 
across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. 
You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting 
business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a 
thousand marbles"

I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say. "Well, Tom, it 
sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but 
it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to 
believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to 
make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital." He 
continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me 
keep a good perspective on my own priorities." And that's when he began to 
explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average 
person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live 
less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years." "Now then, I 
multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of 
Saturdays that the average person
has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the 
important part." "It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think 
about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived 
through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I 
lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand
of them left to enjoy."

"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended 
up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them 
home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in 
the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one 
marble out and thrown it away."
"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the 
really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time 
here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my 
lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble 
out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have 
been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a 
little more time." "It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time 
with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. 75 year 
Old Man, this is K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I 
guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the 
antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to 
work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife 
up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast."

"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's 
just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. 
Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND MAY ALL SATURDAYS BE SPECIAL!!!!!!!!!


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"La honra puédela tener el pobre pero no el vicioso."
         -Miguel de Cervantes- Don Quijote de la Mancha
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"I divide all readers into two classes:  Those who read to
remember and those who read to forget."
                         -William Phelps
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Oralia Preble-Niemi, Ph.D.
Professor and Head
Foreign Languages & Literatures
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Chattanooga, TN  37403
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