What made you smile today?

TerryD! Hi {waving}. Good on ya.

<waving back>

I'd be lying if I said I've missed you.....who has time?

ha! and then off to inventory!

I have a knack for making a short story long. Bear with me; I hope it makes you smile.

One of my employees is a good ole southern boy. He worships at a church that is not affililiated with any of the big religions, although, for purposes of discussion, they are close to being Baptists. They
(about 100 or so folks) meet in a church building they bought that was built in something like 1890.
He is an ordained minister, able to do weddings, which he does once or twice a year.

One of my managers is a young, black lady, active in her church. Her church and his church get together on a regular basis. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, he was supposed to come into work on Saturday, but he got a call from Pastor Bob saying that he wasn't going to be able to preach on Sunday. Craig would not only have to handle the music but he would also have to give the sermon.
When he came in today he said he was able to cobble together something that made sense. I can't possibly do justice to his story.
Somehow, it involved the thesis that, in his bible, "wise men came" bearing "three gifts." That doesn't mean there were only three wise men. Somehow that notion was pertinent.

Anyway, as we tried to satisfy the frantic last minute shoppers, we smiled as we speculated about the fourth wiseman, whispering to #3: "Hey, dude, can we say that this is from both of us?"

If I don't run into y'all again, have a great holiday!
-realjohnboy-

I worked today, and now am off until next Monday! Yippee!

Wonderful story RJB!

I sent out some 'Merry Christmas mails' to friends all over the world today. And got an immediate answer from sweet Letty. Smile!!!

And another answer from an ex-colleague whom I had not heard from for ages. Smile again!!!

RJB reminded me of a smile today caused by a customer: All morning I fielded questions like "You're out of it? How can you be out of it?" or "What do you mean 'it's been gone for weeks?'" or "You do have more of this in the back, don't you?" (One of these days I'm going to answer with "did you happen to glance at a calendar before you left the house?")
A gentleman approached me at about noon and asked "would you mind if I asked you a question?" Intuitively sensing that the gentleman had a sense of humor I replied, "No sir, I'm very sorry but I don't have anything in stock in your wife's size" with an impish grin on my face. After we both had a good laugh, I helped him find what he was looking for and thanked him for playing along.

Smile #2: In place of our weekly executive meeting, we held our executive holiday party this afternoon. Our gifts made the boss cry.

Smile #3: After the party the boss took me aside and informed me that she'd picked up a gift for me before she decided to get us all what she gave out at the party. I traded the gift she'd given me in front of everyone (which I genuinely appreciated) for the one she knew I'd actually use. Sometimes I wish I could clone my boss and give one of her to all my friends.

I learned today the thrust of the sermon. Some wisemen brought material things, like gold that glittered.
Perhaps there were other wisemen who brought other things like appreciation for Tolerance and Respect, Kindness and Generosity, Forgiveness.
I'm sure you can think of other things that, 2000 years later, we're struggling to remember that the
"other " wisemen brought to the manger.
All we can we remember is the gold.
-rjb-

You just made me smile, RJB. I remember as a child loving the story of "The Other Wiseman."

Letty, I'm not familiar with that story. Did I inadvertently crib?

No, RJB. I'll see if I can find it for 'ya. It's the dearest thing.

Goodnight, my friends.

From Florida

nimh will approve of this. It's by Henry Van Dyke. I remember crying every time the teacher read it. Teachers need to read aloud to their kids more, 'ya know?:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1308/

Of course you already know the story of "A Walton Christmas" <smile>

Goodnight------------------------------------------------

awesome

This did ... isnt it cute?

Stories about the Sozlet are always cute ... "This is not a deterrent. At all." <grins> Thanks also to Diane's "small world" in the light of the lamp.

I'm also very glad to have rjb on board here. <nods> He seems to have more than satisfactorily taken my place on this thread, telling "random" stories that last a while but then always bring a genuine smile. I'm glad.

I always try to smile or make some "nice" contact with the clerk, btw - they have one of the toughest jobs. Its like waiters and waitresses. People sometimes get impatient with my patience with sometimes slow waiters - but hell, what a job.

Story reminded me of something, by the way. In the supermarket across the road here, they've "adopted" a Streetnews-seller (the homeless people's newspaper). He sits there, on a fold-up chair, in between the entrance to the shop and where you actually go into the shopping zone - with a full view over the clerks and the lines. He's an older guy, pretty well dressed actually, and he smiles and politely says "good afternoon" to each and every shopper. I've never bought a Streetnews from him (because I've usually already bought mine at the station, or around the corner from my work, or on my way home ... I live downtown), but that doesnt to any extent make him smile or say his friendly hello any less enthusiastically.

Anyway, so this afternoon, A. and me were pretty bummed - she'd picked me up from work to do some shopping together for the new years cards we were going to make on Friday, but we'd gotten into a fight. Christmas Eve means no rest for the wicked so, as it turns out, we'd both had to run straight out from that to go here, go there, arrange this and that before everything closed - no time to sit out our sadness. When I'd done my stuff, I took the big box A. had gotten as Christmas present from McD and had left at my work, and walked with it to her house - only to find her coming out the door when I arrived, rushing for the pharmacist. End of story: here we are, sitting outside in the cold on the bench-shaped windowsill of the pharmacist, with medicine but without a clue, just staring at the people passing by - and who passes by, walking by our sittting selves like we had passed by him, on his chair, ever so often?

And so it was that we found ourselves looking up at him, smiling and politely saying good afternoon, and he smiled and nodded back like a good citizen, just like we'd done, ever so often ...

Oh, but that so wouldnt fly here <grins>

We had a sobering duo of stories this past year, on that count ...

The first time, it was a group of three clerks, who'd gone after a guy who had robbed their supermarket. The guy had threatened one of the (female) clerks with a knife - and the three guys ran out after him when he left and pursued him. Thing is, they caught him, and the police arrived by that time too, but then they kicked him still even after he was caught and held. So then they were arrested, too, for manhandling the fellow.

It was a big case, on all the frontpages, and everybody got involved. The vox populi was on their side of course, cause Holland is one big city and people are totally fed up with petty crime and especially with the "senseless violence" involved in it all - and here were kids who actually did something about it, and they were punished! The judges, responding that they had simply crossed the line by kicking the robber even as he'd already been caught, were in the defensive as politicians from the (right-wing liberal) VVD and the List Fortuyn stood up for the clerks and Prince Bernhard himself (husband of the former queen) promised to pay their fine, should they be found guilty. He did. The (christian-democrat) minister of justice let it be known that he disapproved of that.

Skip to a few months on. Again a group of clerks in Amsterdam, five of 'em, had run after a thief - a shoplifter, a middle-aged woman. While trying to grab her and catch her, they kicked her and hit her. She collapsed, and she died. As it turned out, she was a homeless person, a well-known figure in the neighbourhood. She had tried to steal two cans of beer and a bag of dogfood.

This time the clamour of the vox populi went the other way, and the spot where she died turned into an impromptu memorial, with many Amsterdammers laying flowers there against "senseless violence". The Prince was forced to publicly declare that, of course, he regretted this case deeply.

Add to all of this that the clerks whose fine was paid by the Prince were arrested again a month or two later, for mistreating a man who had stolen a bottle of beer. Also add that in the first case, the robber had been black and the clerks white, and the second time the clerks had been Moroccan, and the victim German - and you get about a picture of what a jumbled big mess it all became, with politicians, judges, supermarket owners, neighbourhood groups all tangled up in the sordid chaos ... it's a small country, you know.

Eh - sorry about bumming up this thread ...

nimh, your point is well stated. My story was from ten or so years ago and from the relatively rural south which takes it back another decade or more. Frontier justice.

Let's un-bum this thread. Waiting to hear about Sozlet's Christmas...

When I went to my sister's for Christmas, in the slow train from The Hague to Rotterdam there was a girl and a guy sitting in the next booth. She was positively radiant, a lightblue kerchief carefully wrapped around her black braids, a selected few tumbling from underneath, a pair of glasses that, apart from making her appear distantly like a graphic design student, just added to the vibrant liking she seemed to radiate for the world. The guy, also black, I could only see from the back - a big guy, the silent, slightly tough type, his words rather slurred in this legato ghetto slang. I could swear she was so in love with him ...

They chatted - she, mostly - , about stuff; he asked what the other girls had said after he'd left. She laughed something about thinking he was "dangerous", and they grinned about that, he only briefly, cool, she as relaxed as a cat stretching. Then she called him "dad". That kinda threw me, I had to recalibrate. Apparently, he was out of jail on leave, he was saying something about what he was going to do, she said something about not getting into trouble, he went into this slightly incoherent complaint about how often they'd been to control him, once every two weeks, cause "they dont like me". Not to say he seemed necessarily unsympathetic, mostly just - yeh, that type, that kinda life. But apparently, he was also the dad of a girl at the very zenith of her life, so prefectly complete as one can only remember with some regret when one gets 30 or 40.

Late in the evening, when I was trekking my way home back from my sister's, I went down the other way round - over Rotterdam rather than The Hague. I also decided to not walk straight to my connecting train, but to hang out in the station hall. In Rotterdam there is a lot to see, people passing by. Almost everyone is black or Asian, and the variety of types and fashions, all this self-casting being done to perfection, is fascinating. So I stood there, waiting and sometimes glancing at the tough Moroccan kids, the Antillean girls in mindbogglingly high boots and short skirts, the giggling Chinese nerds, the black guy with his rasta-hat and the pretty Chinese girl in Western boots that kept yawning, when from the corner of my eye I saw two familiar figures. Homegirl was going back home, with her dad, on the evening of Christmas Day.

In the category of Great Blues Nonsequitors:

"I may be wrong / but I wont be wrong always"

;-)

ah, nimh and speaking of nonsequitors:

I may be wrong, but I think you're wonderful.........................

Too bad you're taken..

Goodnight...from Florida