ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOEL KLAASSEN
Sunday is Mother’s Day. It is the one day that we set aside each year to honor our mothers.
Mine is a very special woman who has been my gyroscope for all these years. She has done it for the past 15 years without my dad, who died in 1990. She is the one who can ask me questions no one else can. She is the one who loves me in spite of what I do or don’t do. She is the one who has shown me that you make the best of the cards you are dealt in life. She is the one who is still determined to improve her life each and every day.
This year she will reach 90 years of age. I’m very lucky to have had her for nearly two-thirds of those years.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.
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In case anyone is interested I am already on Page 200 of the book I started last December. Maybe I’ll finish it by this December.
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Congratulations to Doug and Dana Wright of Wright’s Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep on reaching their 10th-year milestone in Hillsboro.
I once asked Doug how to clean the grimy ink from the leather steering wheel on my car. He didn’t just tell me, he jumped in and cleaned it himself and then shined my wheels to boot.
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Advertising Age, founded in 1930, recently printed a “now and then” feature listing what has happened in the past 75 years.
For example, the world’s population has grown from 2.1 billion to 6.4 billion. Population in the United States has grown from 123 million to 296 million while its percentage of world population has declined from 6 percent to 4.6 percent.
The number of people per U.S. household has declined from 4.1 to 2.6 and the percentage of people owning homes has grown from 48 to 66.
Registered vehicles have grown from 27 million to 231 million and vehicles per capita from 0.2 to 0.8.
We now have 361 million phones compared with 18 million in 1930. Of those 361 million phones, about half are land lines and the other half wireless.
Things costing one dollar in 1930 now cost $11.42.
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I can understand the young woman in Georgia who was a runaway bride. With 6.4 billion people in the world, one bride is bound to run away sooner or later.
Thinking back to my school days, I remember times I wanted to do the same thing when I faced anxiety. When I had to speak in front of people, I was always thinking of ways to get out of it. Like faking a bloody nose just before being called on or something similar.
Luckily, I took Dale Carnegie training and can do it now. But the bloody nose fakery still comes to mind.
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Maybe others think the same way I do about hyphens separating phone numbers in print. My telephone number has no hyphen, so why print them with the number? Wouldn’t a space be just as good?
