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Dollar in the Street

1/24/2021

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​If you found a dollar floating in a street puddle, I imagine you’d pick it up and keep it without thinking. Most people wouldn’t think twice.

But, what if it was a $20 bill? Or, a $50 or $100 bill? Would that make a difference? What is your level of moral backbone in terms of finding something that you know isn’t yours and should be turned back to its rightful owner?
 
I don’t think there is a specific answer to that question. Rather, there’s a certain moral grey zone we all play in.
 
Back in high school, I remember finding a wallet on the street outside the house of a guy a year older than me. He lived there with his uncle, and it was the uncle’s wallet. There was a LOT of cash in it, because I looked. I took it to their front door, rang the bell, a woman answered and I told her the circumstances. She thanked me, took it back, and that was the end of it.

I thought at the time (and still do), that they might have offered me five bucks or something for being so honest. I didn’t “expect” that, but thought they might give me a small reward. I wasn’t offended that they didn’t.
 
About 25 years ago, I found a $50 bill in a McDonalds bathroom. I didn’t bat an eye. I kept it. My thought process was, “It’s probably some drug dealer’s $50 bill, so who cares?” My second thought was that even if I brought it up to the person at the cash register, they would never get it to the person who lost the money, so what’s the point?
 
There has to be a certain dollar amount where we would turn in that money to the authorities. Maybe it’s a suitcase filled with twenty-dollar bills. If you found something like that in a shiny metal suitcase, you’d be convinced it was drug money, and you WOULDN’T want to hold onto it. You’d be scared the drug dealers would crush you. “Here, please take this away from me,” you’d tell the police.

Short of a suitcase full of cash, where is your moral backbone to return random cash to its rightful owner. I think something that comes into play is first of all even knowing you can find whose money it was. In the case of me finding the wallet, I checked the address on the drivers license, so I knew it was the house I knocked on. That’s simple.

The equation is more complex when there’s no clear route to who lost the money. You have to trust whoever it is you turn it into – the McDonald’s cash register person; the police; the proprietor of a shop if you found the bill on their floor.  And, you don’t know what they’ll do in response to you turning the money in. They might go out and buy a round of drinks at the bar, or take their wife out to dinner. Who knows?
 
All those thoughts go through your head. A $20 bill?  “Hmmm, I’m thinking.” A $100 bill? “I should turn this in. But who do I return it to?”
 
I will say this, if it’s a $500 bill, it’s probably counterfeit since it was discontinued in 1969. Take that one to the police.

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Soft White Sandwich Bread

1/17/2021

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​There is a lot to be said for soft, white sandwich bread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it’s bad for you, all that bleached flour. No nutrition. Empty calories.

But a lot of fun food is full of empty calories. Donuts, for example. All sugar and grease. Couldn’t be any worse for you. But, they taste great, don’t they? Not like all those artery-clogging ingredients stop you from having a donut when the right time strikes.
 
Soft white bread, while not in the donut’s taste league, serves a textural and flavor-enhancing function. Due to it’s softness, when you chew on your lettuce, tomato, turkey and cheese, you find yourself more focused on those other ingredients in your sandwich. The softness lets you break right through.
 
And, because white bread doesn’t have much taste (it does have a nice blandness to it), the actual flavors of everything else you’ve slapped between two slices comes out to your taste buds more effectively. Where else could you get bologna and muenster cheese to actually stand out, except between two slices of soft white bread?
 
The world wants us to eat nut breads, wheat bread, bread loaded with vitamins and fiber. I get it. We’re supposed to eat healthy. I want to be healthy.

But, here’s the thing. Some of those exotic, earthy breads are so strong and chewy, that they detract from the sandwich you made. You bite into it, and the crusted nutty wheat bread is all you can taste. You might as well just have those two slices of bread for all the taste it leaves you for your ham and swiss cheese.
 
In contrast, white bread is never going to hide those tastes because it is so bland. It’s blandness is the attraction. If you don’t like strong-tasting foods in general, white bread will be your sandwich bread of choice.
 
Growing up, our mom made us sandwiches almost every day with white bread. Sometime an apple would squash the tuna fish sandwich she wrapped and put in our brown paper sacks for lunch. I always hated when that happened because the sandwich was dented, flattened, squashed.

But, somehow the tuna fish with mayo and chopped celery flavor still came out. Flat as a pancake, but the savory taste remained.
 
I don’t know why I’ve started eating white bread the past few weeks. One day I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, and thought, “Gotta have white bread for that.”
 
Then, the loaf stared at me from the kitchen counter for a few days, so I made another white bread sandwich with leftover pot roast.  “Hmmmm, this is pretty darn good with mayo and lettuce.”
 
The movement started. Then, so as not to waste any leftover slices, I had to make more sandwiches. I liked them. They were easy to chew. It seemed like the taste of cheese was more evident.

Maybe it’s all my imagination regarding taste and texture. Maybe I’m reverting to my childhood and want to start eating sack lunches again, make myself feel younger. Who the heck knows? I’ve still got over half a loaf staring at me.
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No Nirvana Moment

1/10/2021

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​ 
There are no nirvana moments. There will be no nirvana moment. The world is not going to magically change in 2021.
 
Long, long ago, I might have somewhat believed in New Year’s resolutions. That “BAM,” suddenly something would change significantly for the better. I eliminated that thought many years ago.
 
Instead, as you age and mature, you come to better understand the nature of life, how situations and actions evolve and have consequences, and how long it takes to change behaviors or patterns to eliminate bad stuff in your life. Or, consequently, refine the good stuff in your life.

I use the word “refine” purposefully. Because you don’t pull a lever and find money pouring out of the faucet into your pockets. You don’t eat one less meal and suddenly lose 12 pounds. Any change of significance takes time, effort and diligence.
 
We have those qualities inside of us. And, collectively, we have those qualities as a nation. With concentration, we can move our country and personal lives in more positive directions. It will not happen overnight. It will not magically make bad things go away.
 
Setting goals are good. But, they must be realistic. I think far too many people imagine that putting down a number for the weight they want to lose in 2021 is all there is to it. Yes, saying you want to lose 25 pounds in 2021 is a legitimate goal, but you need to figure out the incremental and sustained steps to get there.
 
You can get there. We can get there. We can work on mild progressive improvement in our behavior and attitude towards others. “Please.” “Thank you.” Those three short words go a long way. Our mom emphasized them as we grew up, and I use them repeatedly, and it astounds me how they still bring smiles to people’s faces when you address them with those words.
 
Use them. Don’t be rude. Over the holidays, I watched a man get out of his minivan at the airport and go up to a police car behind him, which was trying to keep the traffic moving. He screamed, using the F bomb at the top of his voice. I thought to myself, “What the heck is wrong with you?” I still wonder what the result of the incident was, as I did not stick around to find out. BTW, the guy was white. Ponder what would have happened if the person vehemently cursing at the police officer was black.
Yesterday I finished refereeing two basketball games and complimented the staff at the scorer’s table, as someone had perfectly folded our warmup jackets and left them in the locker room for us. “Whoever folded those jackets did the best job in the history of jacket-folding for sports officials,” I said humorously. You should have seen the dude beam who had done the folding. You’da thought he won the lottery.

If you’re mature, you know there’s not going to be a nirvana moment to radically change your personal life or society. Sustained, focused effort though will lead to improvements. We can all commit to making that happen.

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Procrastination as a Good Thing

1/3/2021

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​Procrastination is a good thing. We’re taught otherwise.
 
Humorously, it’s good because you don’t have anything to do in the immediate sense. No deadlines. So, you can mess around, daydream, doodle, take a nap, do something just for fun. And, when you procrastinate, it means you always have something to do tomorrow to keep you busy.
 
Here are the things I procrastinate about:
1.
 
Humor aside, we all procrastinate. Maybe you only do it occasionally or on small things, but we all put things off that we don’t want to do, for some reason or another.
 
I put off minor projects around our house that in my mind I deem not to be of great importance. “Don’t need to get done in the next week. That can wait till next year.”
 
You probably have a similar version of rationalizing. Fundamentally, you jdon’t want to do something. We think it’s easier to pretend it will go away, or someone else will do it, or something more important will come around to engage us so we then have an excuse on why we didn’t paint the window trim on the house for three consecutive years.

Now, if not painting that window trim caused a leakage in the house from rain, which then wrecked the floor, well, you can bet you’d more than likely jump on that paint job, and also find a way to better seal the windows. Crises have a way of taking over. It’s the human condition.
 
It’s one reason we can’t wrap our hands around SOLUTIONS and ACTION to changing climate conditions. We haven’t been hammered enough to determine it’s a crisis, so we wait and wait, and la de dah, keep going about our lives as if the climate will just stop reacting to all the carbon emissions we eject into the atmosphere on a daily basis. Maybe the problem will just go away.
 
One of my best buddies is a classic procrastinator. He would not study in college, then pull a couple of all-nighters in a row to cram for his finals and survive till the next semester. I’m not sure he learned any more or less than I did in college, and the system worked for him, but it sure wasn’t healthy. Maybe “not” procrastinating means developing healthy planning habits in life.
 
What do I procrastinate about? 1) Filling out forms. Don’t you hate them? 2) Having dicey discussions. Don’t most of us avoid those talks we KNOW we must have with someone that can cause anger or controversy, or force us to bear our emotions?
 
3) Taking on a new task that you know nothing about. Most of us face fears learning something new. We don’t think we’re good enough. 4) Taking tests. If you have to take training tests in your job, and you hate tests in general, or believe you typically do poorly on them, then you avoid that training for as long as possible.

We procrastinate to avoid cognitive dissonance. We procrastinate because we’re lazy. We procrastinate to avoid conflict and get out of work.
 
Why do you procrastinate? It’s an interesting question with a lot of answers.

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