2023 Nov-Dec RETA Breeze

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Volume LIV The Shade Tree Mechanic

NO LIGHT FOR YOU! So there are times, where we say to ourselves “What would momma want me to do?” You’all notice I didn’t go asking myself what was “right”. I asked me self “what would my sainted momma, lookin down from heaven, want me to do?”. Sometimes they are different questions. So’s let me give you an example. I was on this here air-o-plane the other day. I took me a book about D-Day on the flight. You know a lot of me kin, fought over there. So I read about the “Day” a lot. Uncle Burton lost an arm in the big war and a few years ago we lost him. Uncle Vern died in the Phillopean’s free’in them folks. So readin about it brings back memories of their sacrifice. Anyway, I was readin a little and decided to see what was on the TV. You know they have little TV’s right in the seat. Damedest thing. Anyway I laid’t my book down for a moment to look at the TV and the lady next to me shut my reading light off. Now there wasn’t much worth watchin so I probably would have read the whole flight. But now I gotta problem. You see if I turn the light back on, I’m being a jerk. Obviously my readin’ light was bothering her. But I didn’t want to spend the flight bored as heck either. So what do I do? In her defense she did eventually ask if I wanted the light on. But again I’m stuck, if I say yes, I’m bein a jerk. I had the light on, I had a book. There was no doubt I wanted the light on. So if I says “yes, I want the light on” knowing she wanted it off, I’m a jerk. Momma would pull my “Chivalry card”. So your probably thinkin, “well heck, it’s your reading light. Turn the darn thing back on. That would be the right thing to do”. It would be the legal thing to do. Heck, some

people woulda said, yes turn my light on, or people may try to make the light brighter. Heck some people woulda turned her light back on too. But here is the important part. My momma wouldn’t. My momma woulda sit there with the light off forever. Momma would have thought about the lady that shut it off. Momma would have assumed she had a light sensitivity. Or she was havin a bad day. Or she just wasn’t raised proper. Momma would not have turned the light back on. By the way. Momma would not have shut someone else’s light off either. Momma had a tendency to let the little things go. Avoid small confrontations. Momma raised me to be the same way. Little slights that may annoy her or situations where she could prove she was right, or just, with the end goal to make herself feel superior or vindicated, just wasn’t her style. I try very hard, to avoid having it be my style either. Now don’t go getting the wrong idea. Momma could roll out some whoopa*s when she thought it was justified. She would turn into a wolverine when someone else was wronged. One time I gotta a whippin from her that still hurts, a story for another time. My point is that this happens. It seems to happen at work a lot. Someone will start a kerfuffle, just to prove they are right, or to prove someone else wrong. Or make someone feel bad. Is it really that important? Most of the time it’s not. Hold it, that’s not correct. Dam near all of the time, it’s not that important. All ya gotta do, is stop and think a second. What is your motivation. Does it matter? Will it hurt your relationship later? Is your moti-

vation just to win? Ask what momma would do. Ole, George Washington had a bur up his saddle about things like this. He was against the two political party system, because he believed it would create a system where beating the other party became more important than the issues being debated. “They beat us last time, so we’re gonna do what we gotta do to win this time”. That’s a bad road to go down. Hey, at work no one’s keepin score but you. I will guarantee that the coworkers around you aren’t keepin score. But they are watching you. If you act like a jerk, even when you’re right, they will wonder when you’ll do it to them. So please keep that in mind the next time you think you gotta win. So what did I do about the light lady? I sit in the d*m dark until they turned off the “fasten seatbelt” sign. Then I got out my laptop and started writtin this article. To be honest, maybe I was hopin that she was readin it over my shoulder. Sorry momma, I’ll keep trying. The shade tree grows outside of the little town of Broughton, Ohio. Where everyone is always welcome, the beer is always cold, and something is always needin fixin.

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