Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
The first time I noticed that some things seem to shrink as you get older (waistlines being one of the obvious exceptions) was years ago while I was dating a woman who taught in my old first-grade classroom.
She was ticklish in the extreme, but that’s another story.
I was 20-something, and this was the first time I’d been in that school since becoming an adult.
Standing in front of the place, I remembered how enormous it seemed on my first day of school. Inside, it had been absolutely cavernous, but by the 1970s, it had shrunk — and so had my old first-grade classroom, where Miss Knott once gave me a proper butt-warming for trying to strangle one of my classmates.
Say what you will about the deleterious emotional effects of inflicting corporal punishment upon youngsters, but not once since then have I tried to strangle another human being ... although the temptation has arisen on more than one occasion.
I looked at those old seats and thought, “I used to fit into those things. Now, if I tried to sit in one of them, they’d have to call the fire department to come and pry me out.”
Since moving back into the home where I was raised, I have noticed that my back yard also has shrunk.
At one time, it was big enough for me to play baseball and football, to hunt Easter Eggs, and to chase after baby ducks, my little cousins, or Rusty — my Cocker Spaniel puppy — with plenty of room left over.
Now, my yard has shrunk just like my old first-grade schoolroom did ... except when I have to mow it. At those times, it seems not only to be even bigger than I remember it, but also a lot less flat.
My yard is only about 40 feet wide by 60 feet long, but it has elevated sections and branches off into odd-shaped nooks that force me to heave and haul my power mower around, and I am 61 years old.
It is to my credit that I have grown wise enough to do about half of it and then go and sit down for a few minutes before finishing the job.
Each time I go out to mow my back yard, I think about my dad. He had polio that affected his right arm when he was 2 years old, but he used to mow that yard with a heavy old wooden-framed reel mower that I found difficult to push when I was a kid ... let alone try to do anything useful with it.
He was a man, if ever there was one. He used to come in from mowing the lawn, looking like someone had turned a garden hose on him — he was that soaked with sweat.
One day, he walked into the living room like that and saw a big glass of unsweetened iced black coffee that my mother had put down and walked away from.
Dad thought it was a Pepsi and shotgunned it, and the nature of his reaction to that torrent of unanticipated bitterness was such that I wish I had it on tape. Some of his comments were so imaginative and to-the-point that there have been times in my own life when I would have found them useful.
I’ve now reached a place in this account where I’m sort of stuck and not sure how to proceed, because I want to tell you about a friend of mine.
He’s a very private person, and I respect that; believe it or not, so am I. On the other hand, he deserves to have something nice said about him, and I want people to be aware that folks like him exist. He is much loved by those who know him.
The only reason I’m mowing my lawn these days is because this fellow has been doing it for the past several years. This year, he has taken a break of sorts.
He’s somewhat younger than I am and befriended my dad after he started getting up in years. This included mowing the lawn and performing other acts of kindness for him. After Dad died, he said he wanted to keep on mowing it for me, and I told him that was fine. It turns out he does things like this for a lot of other folks around town.
This guy is sometimes hard to track down, but a couple of our mutual friends keep tabs on him for me, and one of them recently told me where to find him. I called the information desk and asked what room they had him in, then went to visit him.
The first thing he did was try to apologize for not having mowed my lawn. He said he’d gotten behind on all of the things he liked to do for people. I told him not to worry, because I get a certain amount of satisfaction out of mowing my lawn and need the exercise it provides.
Besides, I said, he has other things to take care of, first. Was there anything I could do for him?
“You can pray for me,” he said. I told him I’d started doing that even before I met him.
He said the doctors have told him the outlook in his case is hopeful, because a lot of advances have been made in the last few years, and what they’re already doing for him seems to be working. He should even be home by the time you read this.
My friend and I are both fortunate to still be alive today, and we’re wise enough to realize that.
“I’m here for a reason,” he told me, “and I believe that I still have a lot of work to do. You are here for a reason, too. All of us are here for a reason.”
One of his reasons is in college, well on the way toward a career that will benefit everyone who comes into contact with him. He’s as fine a young man as I know and already a credit to his role model.
I hope that my friend and I both hang around long enough to see what wonderful things he does with his life.
I won’t tell you his name out of respect for his privacy, but still would ask that you join me in praying for him.
The Lord will know who you’re talking about, and that’s all that matters.
