Day: January 5, 2025

Thinking Time

Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

When I’m writing, I spend more time thinking about the past. That’s where most of my stories originate. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the future. I do what I need to ensure the best future but I don’t have a lot of control over what comes.

Horse Joke

A man is driving along a country road in England, there are fields both sides. Suddenly his car sputters to a halt, he gets out, in the closest field are two horses looking at him over a fence. The man opens the cars bonnet to look at the engine, suddenly he hears a male voice, it tells him to look at his spark plugs, he quickly looks about to see who had spoken, but he was alone, except for the two horses, a chestnut and a grey. The man bends down to tinker with the engine again, once more the voice tells him that it is definitely his spark plugs, he looks up again, then one of the horses looks straight at him and says “why won’t you listen, you need to replace the spark plugs”. The man screams and runs for about a mile and a half down the road until he sees a pub, he runs in and locals stop talking and stare at him, the landlord wants to know what is wrong, after a quick drink to steady his nerves, the man tells the landlord what happened, after giving him a strange look the Landlord asked which horse spoke, the man said “the chestnut” at that the Landlord sighed in relief and replied ”thank goodness for that, that grey knows nothing about engines”.

Nostalgic Christmas Gifts: A Tricycle Story

I got a bright shiny, red tricycle like this one might have looked the Christmas of 1953. My older sister got the big kid version. It had a gigantic front wheel and step for an additional rider. That was fortunate, since in the manner of three-year-olds everywhere, I carelessly abandoned it where I finished riding, right behind the back tire of Daddy’s truck.

Of course, he backed over it, destroying it. Naturally, it scared the pudding out of him. In the manner of 1950’s parents, he wore my behind out for scaring him and making him ruin my tricycle. That was a wasted lesson. He’d already demonstrated what a truck did to a tricycle. To make it worse, the smashed tricycle lay near the front gate for a while before hitting the trash.

Fortunately, my sister let me ride behind her all over the yard. When she was otherwise occupied, I appropriated it and propelled it like a scooter. I remembered my previous lesson and didn’t park it behind Daddy’s truck.

In the prosperous days before my parents indulged begetting, we got bigger Christmas gifts. One memorable Christmas, I got a Radio Flyer Red Wagon, my second set of wheels. I convinced my parents to let me bring it to my uncle’s house on Christmas Day. My cousin and I got one unforgettable ride down a steep gravel road narrowly missing plunging into a deep creek before it occurred to my parents to set limitations on its use.

Fortunately, my precious red wagon wasn’t damaged.