I used to be a ball player.  Not so much anymore.  I have lots of friends who are ball players though.

But as such, you get the inside scoop on these matters.  Dugout Dissin’ and all.

Oh, for a little instance.  Like…..

Did you know that Cinderella was kicked off her softball team?
Sure enough.  It was because she ran away from the ball.

She didn’t mind though.  Her team was terrible.
You see.  They had a pumpkin for a coach.

At any rate.  Once she quit, she went back home.  And, since she was still in the softball mood, and all …. she decide to bake a cake.
She used oven mitts, bunt pans, and lots of batter.

With that nice big cake on hand, she called up her friend.  Her friend also happened to be the umpire.  The poor guy was pretty darn heavy though.  It seems he was always cleaning the plate.

Okay.  Enough of all of that.  The best part of softball is learning life lessons.  Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the other team still wins.  I don’t know why this is.  But it is true.  It is true of life too.   But perhaps…. there is more than one way to win.

“Wherever you are– be all there.” – Jim Elliot

Esther looked up from her nap.
Suddenly, the reality hit her.  She was not a Diva of the  New York Metropolitan Opera.  No.
This truly was just a barn yard.
She really was just a cow.  And.  This was her mundane cow reality.

Yet it all felt better somehow.  She mooed.  It sounded good.

The rest of the cows immediately arose, and gave her a standing ovation.

“Be that self which one truly is.” – Soren Kierkegaard

Will Shakespeare hawked the phrase… yep.  It was plagiarism.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, he said.
Now. Whoever first said…. “A rose by any other name is still a rose”…..  was pretty right about that.

But this is universally applicable.

It can be said about anything really.
Organic apricots.
Tiddly-Winks.
Cheeseburgers.
Pillows.
Anything.
Dog crap by any other name is still dog crap.
Not nearly as poetic.   And yet…..

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Helen Keller

And tonight…. the notion of parallel realities occurred to me once again.
I was in the company of a six-year-old.  He and I are pals.  We decided to play a video game… because he loves video games.  What the heck.  So do I.

We were engrossed in the perils of the game.  We crossed a dangerous swinging bridge, and once we arrived on the other side… we were attacked by a four-legged hoofed creature.  We did not put up a fight.  We ran like scared little Zelda Dudes.  But we got away safely.

Meanwhile, outside.   Mary was with the three-year-old.  They were playing at the swing set.  That is what they like to do.  Suddenly, in the midst of their game, they were charged by a doe….  a large healthy doe with four legs and hoofs.   They too, ran like little Zelda Dudes.  But they got away safely.

Parallel Realities.  In our own little space….. within a 100 yards of one another.

I can’t even to imagine the number of whirls and swirls.. going on at this very second… in all the universe.  At the very same moment.  In all of infinity.

“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” – John F. Kennedy

Every day, I find a mystery or two.
I like that about days…. the little mysteries which amaze, amuse, scare or delight me…. depending on the  uncertainty factor.

And today, I had several.
But perhaps the greatest of them was this photo.  I found this in a box of my Mom’s photographs.  I asked her if she knew any of the people pictured.

She was very sure of herself when she answered.
“Well sure honey.  I’m in the middle, then on my left is Betty Thorkenberry, and next to her is Velma Rodderhoff.  Then on the other side is Rose Caplan, and on the end there is Carol Hodert.”

“Mom… what do you think about putting your glasses on and having another look?”
She put her glasses on and had another look.
Same answer.  This surprised me to NO end.

The woman in the middle is not my Mom.  I am pretty dang sure of it.

And yet…..I am not sure if she just couldn’t see it well enough… or if she truly thought it was herself.

She stared long and hard at it again… and said…  “And look how THIN I was in this picture.”

Sure enough.  Thinner than she’s ever been in her whole life.
And we see what we do.  All of us.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” – Marcus Aurelius

Happy is as Happy does.

Everyone seems to be in search of Happiness.

But for me.  It comes down to this.

There is nothing quite so happy as a sock monkey on a swing.

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”   – Dalai Lama

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” – Dalai Lama

First there was the Dragon Slayer.
Then, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Now it seems… my family has collectively become…  The Bunny Slayer.

Frances and Ollie have been hard at it.  You may be familiar with the phrases…. Hoof-and-Mouth, Foot in Mouth, Tongue and Cheek….but around here… it is Bunny in Mouth.

Even, Max… back in the day… would nab a little Cotton Tail.

The saga continues.

Today, while I was driving down Eaton-Lewisburg Road… a speedy rabbit dashed out.  The ding-dong ran out when I was nearly past.    Rear wheel AND…… Thwackity Thwack.
In fact, I never saw the thing… until after the fact.  Yes, the horrid course of events played out in my rear view mirror.

Bunny Slayer.  I do not wear this Badge of Distinction with Pride or Honor.  NO.    I loathe this title.

I am guessing the other human in the house may have Mario Andretti-ed a few bunnies in her day too.

And.  Tonight…. as I was working outside… Ollie bounded up to me…. to proudly display her latest catch.
“Oh Ollie.  Not another.  Please drop it… so I can at least give this little baby bunny a proper  burial.”

Honest to goodness… Ollie went over and buried the thing in the mulch.

So there you have it.  Bunny Slayers.  With a Conscious.
Not to mention… we are all ears.

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.” – H.L. Mencken

When we were kids, things were very different.  For sure.
The times I am most thinking about tonight, is young childhood…. when you would go out with a friend or two, and you would come up with a game to play.

Just suiting up for some skinned knees, and all.  But the game creation ….. was very creative in it’s own right.  It was usually some sort of hybrid construction, consisting of Tag, Hide-N-Seek, Leap Frog, Twenty Questions….. whatever the heck we could throw together.

As if that wasn’t enough.  We would make up our own rules as we went.  Yes.  We would “roughly” assign some sort of general workings prior to the onset of the game.  Yet, as it evolved, so did the rules.

My good friend Plinky Watherton was great for this.  (And no.  I have no idea why he was called Plinky.)

But back to the game afoot.  Plinky was… for lack of a better term…..  a Game-Changer.

“Okay, you can only touch the tree for five seconds, and then after that, you have to spin in circles until you fall down….OR… you can crawl backwards over to the back steps…..  Got IT?”

Got it.

And away we would go.  Yet….. if things were going great in the game… we NEVER changed the rules.  We only switched things up when the “flow of the game” or “the course of events” wasn’t quite going right.  Pretty smart kids.

We could learn from the past it seems.  If we are smart adults, we learn to implement this behavior when we grow up.

You know.  If the way we are banging our heads up against the wall isn’t quite working out how we planned, perhaps we should try something else.  Perhaps.

When the same behavior produces the same results, over and over and over again….. and the results do no have a favorable outcome…  we should change the behavior.

Another one of life’s little gems.  And once again…. it seems ….  easier said than done.

At any rate, thanks for reading tonight.  I’m done touching the tree….. so now I have to go start spinning around in circles until I fall down.  Yeah Baby.

Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from flowers.
It seems that when a flower stands strong in its own beauty, everything around it…. is complimentary to its existence.   And all of it, as a whole, becomes more beautiful.

Yeah.  But let’s face it.  I ain’t no stinkin’ rose.  Not by a long shot.

“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.” – David Hume

Commodity.

I typically think of “commodity” as a positive word.  Yet, I had a conversation with my brother the other day.  I said that “someone” was a real commodity.  He thought I was speaking of them in a negative manner.

In the business world… I guess… a commodity is a material or product that can be bought or sold.   However.  In other terms….it is also defined as something useful or valuable.

Two takes on the same exact word.  Homonym.

Good thing I didn’t say it was a fluke.
That could be a flatworm, a fish, the end parts of an anchor, the fins on a whale’s tail…. or it could be a stroke of luck.

And that is how most of my my days feel.  Like Homonyms.

Which may, or may not be… a commodity.  I guess it all depends on how you look at things.  At anything.

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” – John Lubbock