Life Support Systems - Steve Goodier

The man looked a little worried when the doctor came in to administer his annual physical, so the first thing the doctor did was to ask whether anything was troubling him.

"Well, to tell the truth, Doc, yes," answered the patient. "You see, I seem to be getting forgetful. No, it's actually worse than that. I can never remember where I park my car, where I'm going, or what it is I'm going to do once I get there -- if I get there. So, I really need your help. What can I do?"

The doctor mused for a moment, then answered kindly, "Pay me in advance."

Actually, forgetfulness isn't all bad...especially when we decide to forget all that pain from the past that threatens to ruin the present. Like one song says, "There ain't no future in the past."

Has this ever happened to you?

The day after we moved to a small town in Colorado my wife Bev did grocery shopping. We moved few food items with us so she filled four grocery carts full. She asked if she could pay with an out of state check. "We just moved here," she explained, "and don't have local checks yet."

They said, "Yes, no problem." But when she began looking for her checkbook, she discovered that she had left it at home.

All of the groceries had been checked and sacked. "I'm so sorry," she said, "I thought I had it with me. If I could just leave the groceries here for a few minutes, I'll run home and get the checkbook."

"Don't worry about it," the cashier told her. "Take the groceries home. The next time you're in the store you can pay for them."

We had just moved from a large city and she couldn't believe what she was hearing! This clerk had never seen her before. But she treated her as if she were a VIP. She was somebody!

You may recall that for centuries people believed Aristotle was right when he said that the heavier an object, the faster it would fall to earth. The philosopher was regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of all time, and so it follows that he must be right!

Advice comes in all shapes and sizes. For instance, someone gave the sage advice: "If you dance with a grizzly bear, you had better let him lead." No argument here.

Or this, found in a fortune cookie: "You are a poor, pathetic, gullible fool who seeks advice from bakery products."

Conrad Hilton, hotelier extraordinaire, was asked on national television if he had one vital bit of advice for listeners. "Please," he said, "place the curtain on the INSIDE of the tub."

Work sometimes has a bad reputation in our world. But there is something worse than work, and that is boredom. At least that is what Drs. Kathryn Rost and G. Richard Smith of the University of Arkansas say. After analyzing the mental health of heart attack survivors, they concluded that one factor which greatly reduced the chances of depression was going back to work.