Skip to main content

Do Only Our Best

 


Do Only Our Best
When I was in elementary school there was this little boy.  Yes, he was maybe as little as I was back then, even in fifth grade. His brown burnt tinge colored hair lay on top of his high Irish freckled, sunny, Catholic face. It's as though I just saw him yesterday. That yesterday being nearly fifty years ago. You see I describe Kevin, Kevin McCormick,  that was his name.  I describe him as I see him in my mind's eye, from when we were kids. 

The crippled, yet happy go-lucky boy, properly dressed,  properly quaffed, walking to school with such extraordinary jerky motion in every stride of his walk.

He was the nice boy.  From what I understood,  he came from a strict upbringing. I gather it was due to the large Catholic family he was born into. I don't ever recall Kevin being called to the Principall's office,  nor receiving detention. His perpetual smile remains with me.

What this all brings me to is, and no I don't mean to sound like we need to give out more trophies,  like for 6th place. Nope, not going there. But, what's fair is fair.  However,  if "What's fair IS fair'. Then tell me this: Why oh why aren't the Paralympics on regular national television, as the Olympics of the more fortunately able graced athletes were just a few weeks ago? Not the extra channels you have to pay for. I'll wait...

Believe it or not, I look forward to watching all athletes in whatever their achievements with or without noticeable struggles. Why? Because it's the human spirit we need to witness that at times provides us more life.  Yes, there is more to life than what we view as perfection.

Perfection is not really where it's at. It's the survival beyond the seemingly perfect that matters.---Jody-Lynn Reicher 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

Sledging the Hammer

  "You could have a steam trainIf you'd just lay down your tracks..."---Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' lyrics. This is not the tune that lay in my mind this morning as I reminisced about yesterday's volunteers to help on trail crew.    However, as I looked up the proper definition of sledging that song popped up. I say sledging, which is my own take on swinging a hammer that we call a "Double Jack". The Single Jack is six pounds. I know that because our regular crew of five including me and one staff supervisor are handling Harriman State Park Trails, and have to carry about four of those, two shaping hammers, along with a hoist, belay bag with heavy equipment, first aid kit, double Jack, three 18lb rock bars, a lopper, three buckets, three eye to eyes, two burlap straps, two green wrapping straps, two pick Mattox, a roe hoe or two, a bar for either the two ton or one ton hoist, the feathers with pegs for splitting rocks that we drill... s
Post a Comment
Read more

Death in the Distant Future...

  Death in the Distant Future… Or at least that is what its supposed to be. We don’t suppose people should die at a certain age. We will witness suffering; but we know it gets better. So, we’ve been told. Or so, we have hope that it will. There are instances of mass tragedy. Sometimes we call that war—maybe insanity—perhaps terrorism… We have names for it, that type of death. Then there are the terminals. Things we think we can control—once we know the enemy within.   Or things we follow, pray for, aim for. We hold hands for it. Or we choose to suffer with the suffering because it matters. And it doesn’t matter how it matters. Then there is some form of Universal Order. A tainted weird line of fate. Perhaps mathematically calculated in everyone’s existence. No matter how great, how menial a life on earth may appear there’s a geometric wave—a pattern. We can involve other mathematical ideologies—Fibonacci, perhaps. And each of our lives are formulas. Formulas appearing misundersto
2 comments
Read more