Stitching up the Chink

Guys are NOT raised to get all emotional where I grew up. We're Scots and Saxons, not limp-wristed Frenchies. We put on our emotional armor before we go out of a morning. But it's all a front. We scions of the warrior-poet races also know that writing poetry attracts women. That's why, at first, that we tuck a pen into our belts beside our sword.

The flip side of being a poet is that the act of creating poetry opens up that soft spot we've all been protecting with the armor (I personally think it's also the manly knees). It's like wearing a chain mail shirt and a kilt. Women are drawn to that perceived vulnerability in strong men. Good ones are drawn, but then so are the other sort and, it seems, they are drawn in larger numbers. Or perhaps the romantic poets are right and soulmates are indeed most rare.

Let's face it, most guys don't find the missing half of themselves we were created without. Otherwise the divorce rate would not be so high. I looked for years and could not find her. The train of not-hers I encountered managed to stab me enough times through that poetic chink in my armor, until I was, at last, driven to my knees. And while I was there I prayed.

And in His mercy God answered. She is my world. She fits in places where I did not know I had places. Forty-five years later, our bodies worn and wrinkled, I still see in her eyes that fiery Scots-Irish-Indian girl I married. The one who gave me purpose and the strength to do those manly things I was raised to do. Because of her I stitched the chink in my armor with her, tucked neatly inside where I can keep her safe. She is the gift by which I know that God is good.

Marriage Is NOT an Antiquated Institution

The day my life got better.

The other day someone made the comment that she didn't think that marriage was "important' anymore. The group immediately chimed in with various comments about how it was an antiquated institution and not really needed anymore. "In patriarchal societies," opined one newly minted college-grad, "marriage was a matter of survival." Apparently not any longer according to this batch of millennials. The whole thing started over a lament about the divorce of "Brangelina" - a relationship begun in unfaithfulness in the first place. In their disappointment over the end of another "true love", the ladies were prepared to say marriage was obsolete as an institution in the modern world.

I beg to differ. The survival of my own 42 year-long love affair with the one and only woman I ever married, has long depended on our refusal to don our parachutes at the altar. Standing in front of Pastor Milton Reiber in a country chapel in the piney woods of Mississippi, Sheila and I made a lifelong commitment to each other. Promises were made that brooked no backing out. The idea was never considered. We signed the pledge in writing. I still carry my now faded, wallet-sized marriage license with me wherever I go. What has not faded is the commitment that little blue document represents.

While others of my generation were pledging "till we fall out of love", my wife and I pledged, "Till death do us part." And we meant it, even though we had no idea of what a rough ride it might prove to be. Because of our stubborn determination to honor that pledge, through tragedy, trial, struggle, good times and hard times, we have both known that we could always look over and find our best friend and lover always there beside us. 

Are we the perfect couple? Hardly. Neither of us is perfect. We understood that going in. We did, however, know that we both served the same master and we both had chosen that our lives should end up at the same place. We tried our best to believe the best, do our best and trust each other's love no matter what. It's never been easy. Life isn't. Not with the devil our adversary walking about like a roaring adversary seeking whom he may devour. But for all the struggle we've endured, I would not trade the love I've shared with my precious wife for anything on this Earth - not fame, not wealth, or power.

We have traveled this life together as God has led us, she and I. God has promised to be our teacher and so we did our best to sit still in the classes. We did our best to learn, however uncomfortable the lessons being taught. Over the past four decades, we've done our best to serve our children, loved ones and our fellow human beings as best we knew how. It has not made us rich. Quite the contrary. But, it has, I believe, left the world a slightly better place for our having passed through it. That was our intent at any rate. God must be responsible for the outcome.

There are two kinds of people in the world - those who give and those who take - those who mostly wish to be entertained and to have others meet their needs and those who strive to meet the needs of others. The love that we chose, was the consciously giving kind - the sort that reveres the Golden Rule as opposed to lusting for the power of the gold that rules. We chose to give love rather than wait around to receive it. I truly believe that choosing to believe that love was something we do rather than something we strictly receive has made all the difference.

I'm a firm believer in marriage. It's God's teaching tool; something of a crucible in which the souls of a married pair are purified and strengthened, molded and melded. Marriage is not, of itself, some touchy-feely emotional state. It's doing first, putting someone else before your own self. It's living life deliberately and with principle. It's giving 100%, not 50/50. When you do that you have a relationship that always is more than what any one person can create on his or her own - it is always a relationship that is more than 100%, for when one is weak, the other is strong. And when both are strong, the two are more powerful than they can be separately and alone. If you've put the effort into it, the emotional state comes with it as a bonus and you are strong and faithful and powerful. 

God said it was not good that man should be alone. He was right. I know that for a hard fact. As poor as we are in this world's riches, as disabled as we both are in body and mind, and as tough as life sometimes gets for us, God has given us each other, two hearts beating as one, and that is enough for this life. The next one promises to be incredible and the great thing is that we get to start it as two hearts which have already become as one thanks to an intertwined life guided by the loving hand of He who set the universe to spinning.

You can't beat that with a stick.

© 2016 by Tom King

Forty Two Years and Counting

Every day I get a friend request on Facebook from one or two narcissistic females who post nothing but selfies on their home page. Are these girls really so desperate for compliments that they are willing to post photos that objectify themselves? It's kind of sad. Most are pleasant enough looking girls, but is that all they've got? Is there no brain back there with ideas and dreams and passions (and I don't mean long walks on the beach and cuddling by the fire)?

Have some self-respect girls. Any man worth his salt isn't interested in a girl he can use. He is looking for a woman who is his match in every way; one who challenges him, inspires him and who cares enough about him that she takes the trouble to "get" him in a way that no one else does.

That's how you get to your 42nd anniversary like my Sweet Baboo and I did today. You find someone real who uses her brain for something besides filler for a big hollow thing to which she attaches hair extensions, applies colorful paints and hangs big dangly earrings.

And to the woman for whom I would give my life, "Happy Anniversary, my darling." I look forward to millions more.

Love always and forever,

Tom

© 2016

Coffee - To Drink or Not to Drink - That is the Issue

Ours is a mixed marriage - not racially mixed or even divided over religion. The great divide in our marriage was over coffee. You see, I grew up in a small Seventh-day Adventist college town in Texas. We rolled up the streets at sundown on Friday and rolled 'em back out at Sundown on Saturday. Adventists, especially in college hive towns, are pretty strict about things like Sabbath observance (we don't work, play army, or watch TV on Sabbath), alcohol (we don't drink period), meat-eating (we didn't sell it in any stores in town - you had to drive 7 miles to Cleburne to get a hamburger), AND coffee.  Oh, there were those who smuggled it in and drank it on the sly, but those folk were committing sin and they knew it and didn't care.

I never got the big deal about coffee. My step-dad liked coffee, but to me it always tasted like the liquid my Mom would pour off a pot of burned pinto beans. Don't ask how I know - it's one of those inexplicable things one does in childhood to find out about stuff. I could never get past the taste.

Also, caffeine has virtually no discernible effect on me other than as a sleep aid. I have ADHD. I once chewed up and swallowed two No-Doze (at that time roughly the equivalent of 20 cups of coffee) in an effort not to fall asleep while driving on I-20 in Louisiana. It did not work. My wife had to keep picking fights with me to keep me awake the rest of the way there. We got to her parents house a half hour later at 1am. I immediately went straight to bed, chock full of caffeine. I must have rolled and tossed for 3 or 4 minutes before I fell asleep. I slept like a baby. So without the "hit" you get from the caffeine, coffee for me was all about the taste and for those of you so caffeine-addled that you missed it, coffee doesn't taste very good. If I put a lot of milk in the cup with a half pound or so of sugar, I can just about drink it, but only to be polite to my relatives for whom coffee is a religious rite.

My Sweet Baboo, unlike me, was weaned on coffee - literally. Her mother used to drink 3 or 4 pots of the stuff a day, so my wife was already on massive doses of caffeine in utero. Miz Bea's breast milk was probably the equivalent of a Red Bull for caffeine content. Sheila went straight from breast milk to coffee at around 18 months. I think her mom used to lace her baby bottles with it.

Sheila's constitution is quite different from mine with respect to caffeine. If she drinks a Coke after 6pm, she'll spend half the night sitting up in bed quivering with her eyes peeled open like a hoot owl. You should see her clean a house after a couple of cups of morning coffee. It's like those old Mr. Clean commercials. She's like a white tornado. Me and the dog go hide when she gets cranked up. 

And there's the taste! My wife growing up always envisioned sitting around the breakfast table with her handsome husband, talking about feelings and drinking a morning cup o' coffee. It had to be coffee in order to complete the picture. Chocolate milk would NOT do. Orange juice in a coffee cup would not do.  And MILK absolutely ruined the tableau for her.

Unfortunately, I just really hate coffee. It has been a forty year long source of grief to my poor wife, for whom sitting on the porch talking doesn't really work without a cup of coffee in everybody's hand. That's how it was done back home and pouring a diet Dr. Pepper into a cup fools no one. It keeps making bubbles and a fizzy sound and coffee aficionados are not fooled. They also think you're a sissy if you don't drink coffee and that's not something you want to be among people from Louisiana (or East Texas for that matter).

Trouble was, I didn't really like the SDA official coffee substitute either. The folk at Post used to make a grain-based beverage called Postum. Charlie Post, was the guy who stole the idea for corn flakes from John Harvey Kellogg who ran the Adventist Sanitarium in Battle Creek (yeah, that Kellogg). Post developed enough of an SDA following that he dug back into Civil War alternatives for coffee and created a coffee substitute aimed at the Adventists and Mormons who don't do caffeine and the unfortunate folk who can't tolerate it. I don't know if they make it anymore. I haven't seen it around on store shelves lately.

Fortunately for me Loma Linda foods, and SDA vegetarian food manufacturer does produce a product called Kaffree Roma, which is actually pretty good. It looks like coffee, but with a little milk, sweet n' low and vanilla flavoring, it comes pretty close to hot cocoa for taste without the caffeine.

Sadly, it may be a little late for this mixed marriage to get the same boost from sharing a hot coffee-like beverage on the porch or over the breakfast table. Once you get old, it's hard to reset your habits. Besides, my Sweet Baboo has decided to quit her caffeine habit and she's drinking decaf these days. I'm not sure decaf will work as a substitute for the old morning cup o' joe.  Rituals tied to beverages are hard to recreate with substitutes. It's one of the reasons smokers and alcoholics have such a hard time quitting.

Still, I think I'll make me a cup of coffee substitute when I fix up Miss Sheila's morning cup of decaf. Who knows. We may get her fondly remembered ritual going again.  Just without the kick it once had.  I did save some of the evil caffeine kind of coffee in the freezer, just in case Mama needs a jolt to get her housework done or I need help falling asleep.

© 2016 by Tom King

When One Plus One Does Not Equal Two

 

“Let the wife make her husband glad to come home and let him make her sorry to see him leave.”  

  - Martin Luther

There is a little trick I have learned over the years that has made a huge difference in the quality of my relationship with my beloved wife. It is the pause and the quiet breath before speaking. In that moment, whatever is happening, being said or done, I try to think before I speak. What is really going on? What is she really trying to say. What does she need. It's merely an application of the Golden Rule - Treat others as you want to be treated. But it is more than that. It's putting yourself in her place and trying to understand what need I can fulfill. Sometimes it's not exactly the one being requested or the situation is not as it seems. If you are confused or do not understand, even if you are hurt or offended, stop and think about her first. Take that long quiet breath - careful, it's not a sigh you're going for. It's oxygen to the brain.

She does this for me all the time - thinks of me over her own needs. It is why we've lasted 39 years. It's wonderful to be loved so much, but what is even more wonderful is to love so much. In this way, 1 plus 1 equals wonderful.

© by Tom King

Unhorsing Your Knight

My niece posted one of those snarky female comments about men the other day on Facebook.  The quote read, "Every Girl Is Entitled To A Knight In Shining Armor, Mine Just Took A Wrong Turn, Got Lost, And Is Too Stubborn To Ask For Directions."

Wow, it has been almost 24 hours since I heard a variant of the "men won't ask for directions" complaint from a woman. I feel compelled to respond, if only to warn my niece of the danger inherent in blithely accepting that a man's reluctance to seek directions from some stranger is necessarily a bad thing.

This female obsession with her Knight in Shining Armor's asking for directions reveals a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the male of the species. This misunderstanding, I believe, has lead women to a classic psychological double bind where their men are concern.

First women seem to want strong, capable hero-type guys as their mates.

Then, they want them to ask for directions, help with the dishes without being asked and spend long hours talking about feelings.

And women everywhere are now saying, "Yes, exactly!"

Men everywhere are rolling their eyes and picking up the TV guide to see if there's a Thursday night football game on this week.

Let me explain something. We knights in shining armor don't ask for directions because we know where we are! We're right here. Finding the place we're going is the whole point of the quest. The journey is the worthier part. Give us time to find our own way, girls. You'll like us much better if you do.


Have you ever noticed that the first thing women complain about after they get their husbands successfully domesticated is that they have become boring? Teach us to ask for directions and next thing you know we're couch potatoes, taking our cues from television. After that, we don't go anywhere that no one has gone before. We no longer do anything unless it's safe.

For a young man, life is a grand adventure stretching before him.  There are worlds to conquer, mountains to climb, damsels to rescue!

Pack up your knight's armor and domesticate him at your own risk ladies.  He may be easier to handle, but he'll also be a lot more dull!
 
I could be wrong...but I don't think so.
 
Tom King
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Honesty, Thy Name is "Honey Bunch"

Someone once told me that if you want to know who's really in charge at your house, at bedtime tonight, when you get back up to go turn off the light, just before you flip the light switch, turn around really quick and look at the bed.  Whoever is in there - that's who's in charge!

I sang special music at church yesterday.  I was asked to.  I figured it I would do it just once, one of two things would happen.

1. It would kick off my musical career (unlikely).
2. They would never ask me to do that again (probable).

Don't know how it came out yet.  I got a couple of compliments I couldn't immediately identify as either serious or sarcastic, but that's all.  My daughter left church early for some previous engagement and wasn't around to give me the brutally honest opinion to which the women of my household feel I am entitled, but she said she'll watch the video next week and let me know.

I'm all a-quiver with anticipation.

I didn't really tell my Sweet Baboo I was performing. Her critiques of my rehearsals aren't terribly confidence building, so I practiced upstairs in the kitchen or out on the deck where the dog sat through it all, looking puzzled and vaguely dyspeptic.  She waited till I was through and then threw up on the deck.

When I got home from church yesterday, I casually mentioned that I had "done" special music for church that morning.  She asked what I sang.  I told her, "Sweet Hour of Prayer".

"I mostly played the instrumental part on the guitar and didn't sing but 2 verses," I assured her.

She shrugged, made a "Hmmmph" sound and went back to surfing her Facebook page on my laptop. She's recovering from a bout of pneumonia, so I didn't expect much of a reaction. In this I was not disappointed.

This is a totally different reception than the one my kids get when they play a special for church or some other public event.  Sheila will hunt them down and make them perform the piece in its entirety for her. I have to obtain any photos or video that is available for historical archiving.  She always tells them how beautiful their song was and what clever children they are to be able to perform so well.

They are 29 and 36 respectively, but their Mama never misses an opportunity to give them encouragement and emotional support.

I on the other hand am under sentence of brutal honesty in my household. All the females in my family understand this and support the execution of this judgment.  Even the dog, who generally likes me, refuses to lie to me for the sake of my ego. My ego, apparently needs no encouragement.

In many ways women stand in as the voice of almighty God in a man's world. A man may surround himself with sycophants, flatterers and toadies, but let him get himself a wife of any quality whatsoever and he soon finds himself in possession of a veritable mirror showing him his own character, talents and failings without mercy or shading of the truth.

In sea-faring times captains were god-like in their power aboard ship.  He could flog you, hang you or promote you at the slightest whim and no one would question his power to do so. But, sometimes captains put to sea with their wives on board.  Sailors called such ships "hen frigates" in reference to the alteration of the command structure onboard such vessels. It is a testament to the power of women that the mere presence of a wife could so undermine the authority of her captain husband who held what was undoubtedly the most omnipotent of military ranks while the ship was at sea operating independently.  It's why the practice was discontinued in naval vessels.  It's why James Kirk, Jean Luc Picard and Jonathan Archer were single throughout their Star Trek careers.

God gives a man a wife to prepare him for heaven. They are quite good at it. I suppose we should not be resentful.  Besides, if our egos need fluffing, we can always go visit our mothers.

(Our wives believe they spoil us most shamelessly.)

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King

35 Years and Still Makin' Music!

Tomorrow I will have been married to My Sweet Baboo for 35 years.

That seems like it ought to be a long time and there are time it feels like we've always been together. I have, after all, been with the Missus for more years than I was with anyone else.

It has been a ride. I met her in the ladies room. I was working as a janitor in a nursing home and she was an aide and taking my great great aunt to the potty at the time. I was scrubbing the toilet at the time. I remember being struck by this leggy Louisiana girl and as she walked back down the hall to get Aunt Ethel, I stuck my head out the door and watched her walk away. It was an inspiring sight.

Then I asked around and found out she was engaged. I remember telling my best friend it looked like all the best ones were taken. I did, however, discover that she liked to play gospel music for the residents on Saturday afternoons after she got off work. I started showing up with my guitar and playing with her and Mrs. Nix, an LVN who joined us on the piano - she had a powerful left handed Southern gospel style. The seniors loved it.

Then Sheila's fiancee found out she was playing music with some long-haired local boy and he showed up with his guitar. I remember him standing across the room looking at me like I was a rattlesnake. We had some intense music that afternoon, but the future Mrs. King seemed blissfully unaware of the tension between us. She was all about the music.

We went off for the summer - me to camp, she to some youth ministry deal in Oklahoma. When I got back to college, I'd been dumped by yet another girl. It was my 7th time being dumped. I was tired of it, so I got down on my knees and prayed. I told God I was through looking and if he meant me to find someone, He'd have to take care of it.

Two weeks later, Sheila asked me to sit with her on the bus to a Bible Conference and play some music. She'd just broken up with her fiancee and I'd just been dumped so neither of us were looking for a new romance. We circled round each other all weekend. Both our exes were there, but we kept bumping into each other. Finally, on the bus ride back, we'd just finished a song and were trying to think up another one to do. Suddenly it was as if someone smacked me on the back of the head. I literally saw a flash of light and it was like God said, "Hey, stupid. This is the one!" She had the same exact experience (except God didn't call her "stupid") at the same instant. We fumbled for each others hands and in that moment we knew this was it.

Everybody told us it was a mistake. Our exes even tried another run at us to no avail. Her ex even tried to beat me up in a student association haunted house where he poured fake blood over my head and pushed me around. My best friend warned her against me and almost succeeded in breaking us up, but God would have his way. We were perfectly pitiful lost lambs and our marriage should have been doomed, but God apparently knows his stuff.



We soon had 3 wonderful kids - all with sweet dispositions and tender hearts and we love them dearly. We struggled, worked in one nonprofit or mission type project after another, We've done well. We've been flat broke. We've had every bit of the "in sickness, in health, for richer, for poorer" the world can throw at us.

But God knows his business. I needed her gift for creating peace and orderliness because on my own, my life is chaos. She needed my mule-headedness, patience and gift for handling crisis. Together we complete each other. We fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

So, tomorrow, we're 35 years together going on billions more. We plan to share digs in heaven and the new Earth since neither of us can imagine doing anything remotely fun without the other. She'll have her music back and I hope to be able to carry a tune without needing the bucket. Ya'll come by the house and sit a spell. Bring your banjos and your fiddles or whatever else you play. We'll raise the rafters together......

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Practice Doesn't Make Perfect

Our home has grown by three souls. God gives us what we need. We don't always understand why He does things as he does. We don't always know what in the world He means for us to do. Sometimes all we can do is take one step after another and figure things out as we go.

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I know this, however. There is nothing like a grandchild to bring a smile to your face. It's weird. I'm back to helping someone with their English homework (and driving her crazy like I did my own kids). They always complained that I took over their writing projects. Really, all I did was make them do it over and over till they wrote it so that it made sense.

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The problem with the way English is taught in high school today is that they give kids one shot essays and papers to write. Then they give them a grade and that's that. The way I used to teach was that I made the kids rewrite until their papers made sense. I tried to teach them to write the way they speak. All three of my kids are pretty good writers. Micah and Matt both wrote poetry. I'm not sure if Meg ever tried it. She's pretty secretive (like I was at her age). There could be volumes of her poetry somewhere that I don't know about. I know she did a beautiful video about Micah for his memorial service. She organizes programs for church that are pretty amazing. Her wedding was a work of art. I missed all that when Micah died and Meg moved out.

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There's an old saying that goes, "Practice makes perfect." It doesn't

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Perfect Practice makes Perfect. If you practice incorrectly, you will never learn to do a thing correctly. That applies to the life you live. Christ calls for us to be perfect. Actually in the text where he says that, the word actually is in a strange tense - something like a continuing future perfect tense. It really should read "you will therefore be becoming perfect..."

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Becoming perfect is a continuing process. You work at it and as you do you get better at it, whether it's good writing or good living.

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God was kind to Sheila and I. He gave us two beautiful grandchildren and one has moved in with us along with my sweet daughter-in-law and my eldest son who works much too hard. Our other granddaughter who is in college does come over here to do her homework. They are both sweethearts and have been a joy to both of us. This photo is the first one I have of my Sweet Baboo smiling in more than a year. Children and grandchildren draw you beyond yourself and your narrow view of life and give you the chance to perfect your character by practicing love. And they love you back which is really cool.

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Meg & Will were over here over the weekend and we had a lovely time. Family is important if we are to survive in this hard cold world. We hang together and hold each other up or we wither and die. When we lost Micah last year, I wasn't sure we would survive. Grief still overcomes me sometimes and I live for the day I will see my child again - all of them together. We're planning a big cookout and party at our new house in heaven. I can't wait.

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Till then, we thank God for our children and grandchildren. They keep us alive....

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Just one man giving thanks....

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Tom

A Prophet Hath No Honor in His Own Country

Question:

Why will a woman take house building advice as thought it were gospel from a 19 year-old high school dropout with tool belt and a battered pickup truck that has "Kurt Kobain Konstruktion" painted on the side of it, as though it were gospel and reject out-of-hand the gentle suggestion of her own husband who loves her and has a master's degree in architecture?

Jesus said, "A prophet hath no honor in his own country." He had that right. As I recall his own family gave him no respect in Nazareth!

You can have a Ph.D. in English and 20 years teaching experience in an ivy league university and your wife will call up her sister the high school dropout who lives in a trailer park in Akron, Ohio and ask her to write a letter for her because she's "so good with words...".

She'll take medical advice from someone named "Master of the Q-Tip" on an Internet chatroom rather than from the highly trained physician that you just paid $600 to and who has actually examined her (especially, if he happens to agree with what you've been telling her all along).

You could be an astro-physicist working at NASA and your wife will argue with you about tourist accommodations aboard the International Space Station because she heard from her cousin Bob, who's into "space stuff" that they "used these artificial gravity generators to keep your poop from floating out of the toilet!"

You could be a neuro-surgeon and your wife will get one of the kids to bandage her finger because "...you never can put a band-aid on right!".

You could be a Grand Prix race car driver and she'll nag you about how you are driving.

You could be a psychiatrist and she'll tell you that you don't understand her.

You could be an FBI hostage negotiator and she'll tell you to "...shut up and let me do the talking!"

You could be a lion tamer and she wouldn't let you own a kitten because you'd just let it die if you were in charge.

You could be a jeweler and she'd get her brother Elton, the thrice-convicted burglar, to repair her broken necklace because he knows so much about "valuables".

You could be a Certified Public Account and she wouldn't let you balance the checkbook without double checking your work!

You could be president of the country, making decisions about the fate of nations and your wife wouldn't let you decide what necktie to wear!

I wonder about these things.

You always hear that women will ask if you will "respect them in the morning" before they sleep with you the first time. Maybe the better question would be, "Will she respect me in the morning if she sleeps with me?"

Rodney Daingerfield had the answer to that one. "It's tough to stay married," he said. "My wife kisses the dog on the lips.. but she won't drink from my glass!"

You've been a great crowd!

Tom King

If God had trouble what makes you think you're gonna get off easy?

To those of us who have children in our lives, whether they are our own, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, or students...here is something to think about.. Whenever your children are out of control, you can take comfort from the thought that even God's omnipotence did not extend to His own children.

After creating heaven and earth, God created Adam and Eve. And the first thing He said was, "Don't."

"Don't what?" Adam replied.

"Don't eat the forbidden fruit," God said.

"Forbidden fruit? We have forbidden fruit? Hey, Eve.. . we have forbidden fruit!"

"No way!"

"Yes, way!"

"Do NOT eat the fruit!" said God.

"Why?"

"Because I am your Father and I said so!" God replied, (wondering why he hadn't stopped creating after making the elephants).

A few minutes later, God saw His children having an apple break and, boy howdy was He ever ticked off! "

Didn't I tell you not to eat the fruit?" God, as our first parent asked?

"Uh huh," Adam replied.

"Then why did you?" said the Father.

"I don't know," said Eve.

"She started it!" Adam said,

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"DID NOT!

Having had it with the two of them, God's punishment was that Adam and Eve should have children of their own. Thus, the pattern was set and it has never changed! But there is reassurance in this story. If you have persistently and lovingly tried to give children wisdom and they haven't taken it, don't be hard on yourself. If God had trouble raising children, what makes you think it would be a piece of cake for you?

Tom King