Stories Inspiring

I’ve never followed boxing closely, but I chuckle at the attitude of a high school boxing coach. Some of the new athletes were, let’s say, better suited for other activities. One of his boys worked furiously for a couple of rounds, but never connected with anything that might be construed as a punch. Nevertheless, he asked, “What do you think, Coach? Have I done him any damage?”

“No,” said a bewildered coach. “But keep on swinging. The draft might give him a cold.”

Slim as it is, that might be his only chance to win. And we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Slim to none are sometimes the best odds we can hold out for. Those were about the odds one may have given to early mountaineers who attempted Mt. Everest.

The census taker knocked on the lady’s door. She answered all his questions except one. She refused to tell him her age.

“But everyone tells their age to the census taker,” he said.

“Did Miss Maisy Hill, and Miss Daisy Hill tell you their ages?” she asked.

“Certainly,” he replied.

“Well, I’m the same age as they are,” she snapped.

The census taker simply wrote on the form, “As old as the Hills.”

You may have heard that our nation’s oldest person, a 113-year-old woman, died recently just weeks before her 114th birthday. The world’s oldest person in the world, according to the Gerontology Research Group, is a Japanese man, who will turn 116 next week. The oldest person ever on record was a Frenchwoman who was 122 when she died in 1997. All of these could easily be described with the phrase, “As old as the hills.”

Wesley Autrey took action when others wouldn’t.

Wesley is the New York City man who jumped on the subway tracks when a man having a seizure faced sure death as a subway sped toward his helpless body. Wesley said later that he knew something needed to be done and “I’m the only one to do it.”

Wesley jumped on the tracks, rolled with the man to a hole and covered the man’s body with his own. The subway train just barely skimmed the body of Wesley as it passed over the two men.

A mother heard the family cat yowl in pain. She knew where to look – she looked for her son, Mike. “Stop pulling the cat’s tail, Michael!” she chided.

“I’m not pulling his tail,” the boy retorted. “I’m just standing on it. He’s doing the pulling.”

He, of course, is no different than any of us. Often, our first impulse is to blame someone or something else for problems. It’s the cat’s fault. Or the school’s fault. Or my parents’ fault.

I once heard a story of a 40-year-old woman who was jogging in a U. S. state park when she was attacked and killed by a mountain lion. Her family immediately filed suit against the state because of its “failure to manage the mountain lion population” and because it didn’t “react to reports of cougar activity in the area by posting warning signs.”

The Browns were shown into the dentist’s office, where Mr. Brown made it clear he was in a big hurry. “No fancy stuff, Doctor,” he ordered, “No gas or needles or any of that stuff. Just pull the tooth and get it over with.”

“I wish more of my patients were as stoic as you,” said the dentist admiringly. “Now, which tooth is it?”

Mr. Brown turned to his wife… “Show him, honey.”

It’s easy to be brave when someone else is the one experiencing the pain! I wonder as I write and speak about facing trials with a positive attitude if I could be so upbeat if I actually suffer the loss of everything I own in a hurricane or tornado. It’s easy to be brave when someone else is experiencing the pain!

A young woman was filling out an application for college when she came across the question: Are you a leader? She thought she had better be brutally honest, so she answered, “No.” She was convinced when she sent the application in that she’d never hear from them because of that answer.

But she received a letter back from the school that read: “We have reviewed numerous applications and, to date, there will be some 1,452 new leaders attending school next year. We have decided to accept your application because we felt it was imperative that they have at least one follower.”

I heard this story about the owner of a Rolls Royce. It certainly sounds as if could be true:

The great British automaker takes great pride in the reliability of their handcrafted automobiles.   An obviously wealthy owner of a Rolls took it to Europe on an extended trip. While traveling in France the car had some mechanical problem. He called the Rolls Royce factory and asked that they send out a mechanic straightaway to fix the problem.

The company responded in royal fashion. They put a mechanic on a private jet with all of the necessary tools and flew him over to France to make the repairs. The owner was so wealthy that he wasn’t at all concerned about the cost, and he would not spare any expense to assure that his beloved Rolls Royce was properly repaired.

Did you ever have a day like this? A man, cleaning one of those big cement trucks, got caught in the mixer. He climbed into the back of the truck with a hose to flush out remaining cement when his hose caught on a lever and pulled it to the “on” position. Suddenly, he found himself going round and round in the mixer with no way to escape. Slipping, sliding and banging around inside, all he could do was shout for help.

Fortunately, another worker came over and shut it off. In moments a bruised man, covered with wet concrete, emerged from the mixer. It reminds me of some days I’ve had. You know what I mean.

Today’s story (which is a bit longer than usual) can only be labeled as “bizarre”. This is an edited version of a speech that was given in 1994 at an awards dinner for the American Association for Forensic Science. While some sources refer to this as a “true story” by AAFS President Don Mills, other sources are I believe more accurate when they describe this as a “tall tale on complex forensics”.

On March 23, 1994, a medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). He was unaware that a safety net had been set up at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and his attempt to kill himself would not succeed. As he fell past the ninth floor, however, he was hit by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly.

Let me ask you this: How valuable is salt?

40 million tons are required each year to fill our needs. Homer called it divine. Plato called it a “substance dear to the gods.”

Shakespeare mentioned salt 17 times in his plays.

Perhaps Leonard da Vinci wanted to send a subtle message about purity lost when he painted “The Last Supper.”

In that painting an overturned salt cellar is conspicuously placed before Judas.

In ancient Greece a far-flung trade involving the exchange of salt for slaves gave rise to the expression, “…not worth his salt.”