This was sent to me today in an e-mail from a very good friend of mine. (Love ya Gracie!). In any event, I just wanted to share.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings.

Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being

the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy

of not having to be at work. Either way, the first

few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the

garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one

hand and the morning paper in the other. What began

as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those

lessons that life seems to hand you from time to

time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of

the band on my ham radio in order to listen to

a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way,

I came across an older sounding chap, with a

tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind;

he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business.

He was telling whomever he was talking with something about

"a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen

to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with

your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you

have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe

a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week

to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's

"dance recital" he continued. "Let me tell you something that

has helped me keep my own priorities." And that's when he began to

explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic.

The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know,

some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live

about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came

up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that

the average person has in their entire

lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting

to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to

think about all this in any detail", he went on,

"and by that time I had lived through over

twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to

thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I

only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.

So I went to a toy store and bought every single

marble they had. I ended up having to visit

three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles I

took them home and put them inside a large,

clear plastic container right here in the shack

next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one

marble out and thrown it away. I found that

by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more

on the really important things in life.

There's nothing like watching your time here on

this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign

off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast.

This morning, I took the very last

marble out of the container. I figure that if I

make it until next Saturday then I have been

given a little extra time.. And the one thing we

can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend

more time with your family, and I hope to meet

you again here on the band This is a 75 Year

old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!" "GOD BLESS"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band

when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us

all a lot to think about. I had planned to work

on the antenna that morning, and then I was

going to meet up with a few hams to work on

the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up

with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and

the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?"

she asked with a smile "Oh, nothing special, it's

just been a long time since we spent a Saturday

together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at

a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles. Life's way to short

A friend sent this to me, so I to you, my friend.

And so, as one smart bear once said..

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.