Dying man’s Daily Journal One of my favorites

Not feeling so spry today with my wonkie head and am as I often do, copying and posting a wonderful email I received. The message is so clear and so important. I am not sure of the origins of the message or I would certainly give due credit.

3900 Saturdays

The older I get, the  more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s  the quiet solitude that comes with being  the  first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first  few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.  A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What  began  as a typical Saturday morning turned  into one of those lessons that life seems to  hand you from time to time. Let me tell you  about it: I turned the dial up into the phone  portion of  the band on my ham radio in order  to listen to  a Saturday morning swap net.  Along the way, I came across an older sounding  chap, with a  tremendous signal and a golden  voice. You know the kind;  he sounded like he  should be in the broadcasting business.  He was  telling whomever he was talking with something about  “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with  your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame  you  have to be away from home and your family  so much. Hard to believe  a young fellow should  have to work sixty or seventy hours a week  to  make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s  “dance recital” he continued. “Let me tell you something that  has helped me keep my own priorities.” And that’s when  he began to  explain his theory of a “thousand  marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did  a little arithmetic.  The average person lives  about seventy-five years. I know,  some live  more and some live less, but on average, folks live  about seventy-five years.  “Now then,  I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came  up with  3900, which is the number of Saturdays that   the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting   to the important part. It took me until I was  fifty-five years old to  think about all this  in any detail”, he went on,  “and by that time  I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred  Saturdays.” “I got to  thinking that if I lived  to be seventy-five, I  only had about a  thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a  toy store and bought every single  marble they  had. I ended up having to visit  three toy  stores to round up 1000 marbles I  took them  home and put them inside a large,  clear  plastic container right here in the shack  next  to my gear.”

“Every Saturday since then, I  have taken one  marble out and thrown it away.  I found that by watching the marbles diminish,  I focused more on the really important things  in life.  There’s nothing like watching your  time here on this earth run out to help get  your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell  you one last thing before I sign  off with you  and take my lovely wife out for breakfast.   This morning, I took the very last marble out  of the container. I figure that if I  make it  until next Saturday then I have been  given a  little extra time.. And the one thing we can  all use is a little more time.”

“It was nice  to meet you Tom, I hope you spend  more time  with your family, and I hope to meet  you again  here on the band This is a 75 Year old Man,  , clear and going , good morning!”

You  could have heard a pin drop on the band  when  this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us  all  a lot to think about. I had planned to work  on  the antenna that morning, and then I was  going  to meet up with a few hams to work on  the next  club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and  woke my wife up  with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m  taking you and  the kids to breakfast.” “What  brought this on?”  she asked with a smile “Oh,  nothing special, it’s  just been a long time  since we spent a Saturday  together with the  kids. And hey, can we stop at  a toy store  while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.