Skip to main content

A few Chicklets for your thoughts...



Chicklets

Many, many years ago, my Mom would let us buy some candy here and there. But when we only had a nickel my Mom would suggest either that rolled up red licorice by Broadway or Chiclets. You know the little square gum pieces? It was so, my brother and I could share the candy. Those were the days when my Mom was fortunate enough to have a used car for a month or so, and she’d pull up to the gas pump and hold out a dollar or two fifty cent pieces and say to the attendant, “I’d like a dollar’s worth of gas, please.

These flashes of my childhood came to me as I ran today in the early afternoon I wondered which direction to run. I wondered how much energy I had. I couldn’t gage it. I hadn’t able to gage my energy now for about the past few years. Pure exhaustion and pushing through it for the better part of over twenty-eight years has taken its toll.  As I’ve done everything I could to beat a syndrome I’d been diagnosed with twenty-six years ago. For the first four plus years I struggled every day of my life.  And I can say, I really don’t know how I built a successful business being so ill in the mid to late 1990’s.  But like I said to a former fight coach of mine, “God built me good. Can’t complain.”

So, today as I did my first ‘round the block one mile loop to see what direction I’d go in. Or if I should push it, I saw a neighbor I’d never met.  An older gentleman in his seventies. What had just went, through my mind were Chiclets… Well, and toilet paper. I’ll explain. At about a quarter mile just before this. I realized in the early 1980’s when I was in the Marines, how easy it was to bribe for extra toilet paper. At the time I was one in about 5,000 women in the Marines that were driving trucks and tractor trailers being a female Marine. Yeah, that was about the ratio.  The benefit? The benefit was, since rarely if ever there was another woman around, especially when we did convoys and desert maneuvers … well the way I got extra toilet paper was Chiclets. Yes, Chiclets. And the fact that the men didn’t need toilet paper as much as I did. I’ll let you, my audience figure that one out.

Just as I was coming by this man, I thought he’d enjoy this tidbit story. He did, and then he said, “My mechanic offered anyone coming in for service, such oil change and the like. That he’d give them a free roll of toilet paper. Good business, I’d say.” He smiled. I nodded in agreement. And yes, I stood approximately twelve feet and two point four inches in distance away from him, just in case either one of us snorted and laughed. A few Chiclets for thoughts.---Jody-Lynn Reicher


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.