It was a typical request from a grandfather to a grandson: “Go put the rat snake on the bird feeder.”
What? That’s not your usual Thursday evening entertainment?
It all started when I got a text message from a friend. It was a picture of a large snake on the top of a fence with the text: “Yikes! What is it?” I considered responding, “Relax — it’s a fence. They’re common.”
If there is one thing that a little brother can’t stand, it’s his big sister telling him what to do. I am reminded of this roughly 54,00 times a day.
This was on exhibit recently when I was at the movies with my kids and my two nephews, who are both seven. I opted to take four kids to the movies because I am a brave, brave man.
Here’s a little known fact I bet you didn’t know: If you walk down 1,000 feet of stairs to the bottom of a gorge, if you want to get back to the top, you will probably have to walk back up those very same steps.
I don’t know much about electricity.
I know it exists. I know it is necessary to watch Sportscenter on my TV in the mornings. And I know that if you touch an exposed wire of a light fixture that you thought was turned off at the breaker but wasn’t, it hurts. Bad.
Centuries from now, it is my hope that people of the future, when faced with adversity and challenges in life, will say what will surely become a reassuring phrase for the millennia: “May I overcome my challenge just as Mike Gibbons did.”