Wisdom of the Ages

You accumulate a large amount of wisdom in life, if you just pay attention. Some of this is very deep, but much of it is mundane. For example, it doesn’t take long to learn that it hurts to touch a hot stove burner or that throwing yourself backwards while having a temper tantrum just hurts you and makes you even more mad. Both of these are learned at a very young age. The longer you live, the deeper and harder the lessons are.

I have been reading Proverbs in the Bible. This is a book of wisdom passed from father to son and from king to successor. There is some great stuff in there and some funny stuff that you just know there is a story behind. I realized that it is important to pass on life wisdom. So, I’ve decided to put down the life wisdom that I learned. None of this is the deep stuff and none of it is the mundane. The following life lessons fall in between somewhere, but I promise you that all involve a painful lesson.

Life lessons that I would like to pass on:

When you are powdering an infant’s bottom, be sure that there isn’t a fan on in the room. This is especially important if the fan is aimed at you.

When carrying several gallons of paint through the church office, be sure that the handles are not loose. An additional lesson here is that latex paint cleans up well and even comes out of carpet if you jump into action immediately. And, the pastor won't find out about it until years later when you tell him.

When your mom says, “don’t play swords with sticks, you can put your eye out”…She is right. And, pulling large wooden splinters out of your eye hurts a lot. Eye patches are cool for awhile, though.

When seasoning a cast-iron pan, do not try to speed things up by spraying PAM on it while it is still extremely hot. Also, when you put out the kitchen fire, be sure to get out of the room for awhile so you don’t breathe too much smoke.

If you are going to ask a girl to go steady with you, be sure that you aren’t wearing roller skates at the time. Also, falling on your rear when she says ‘yes’ is no way to look cool.

Playing tug-of-war with a group of college age guys is fun, but broken tailbones take months to heal and are excruciatingly painful.

When your dad says you can light the grill for the first time by yourself and runs inside to get matches…don’t dump the rest of the bottle of lighter fluid on the coals because you don’t think he put enough on. It is important to note that eyebrows and the front part of your hair take a little while to grow back.

If you are riding your bicycle up a steep hill and think it might be cool to ride up the ramp into the back of a trailer, try to remember that a 50 degree angle + a 30 degree angle = a 80 degree angle which is a bit much to expect to be able to pedal up at a slow pace. By the way, landing on your back in a bike crash knocks the wind out of you.

When running to catch a bus at dusk, don’t take a shortcut behind a grocery store, jumping over a short 2 foot high retaining wall. The other side of the wall is the low end of the loading dock and is six feet lower. A further lesson here is that you can’t run to catch the bus anymore when you have twisted your ankles.

If the woman in the upstairs apartment says she is moving out of state and is selling every piece of furniture in the apartment, don’t buy anything. When the sheriff comes with the rent-to-own store employee a week later after she calls them to tell them where to pick up the stuff, they’ll just take the stuff away from you and you can’t do anything about it.

If you’ve had a little too much to drink last night, don’t let your friend mix macaroni, tuna casserole, and cream of mushroom soup and microwave it for breakfast. Urrrp.

If you are the chubby, nerdy kid in ninth grade and a star player on the football team asks you to tutor him, take advantage of the opportunity. Who knows, maybe there will come a time when a bully has threatened to beat you up after school and a certain star player on the football team beats him up and throws him into a barb wire fence for you.

The newspaper should not publish warnings about the dangers of mixing certain household chemicals when there is a chance that a teenage boy can read those warnings. Also, mixing pool chlorine and a certain automotive fluid does cause instant and intense fire which will burn your friend’s hand. Please note that I did not list which automotive fluid.

Encouraging a friend to put a bunch of salt in his older brother’s brand new coffee pot will get him in trouble. Salt does not come out of a brand new coffee pot once it has gotten inside the works.

Ford Aspires do not take turns well on sandy roads in the middle of nowhere. Yes, time does seem to slow down when in an accident and you can watch an airbag slowly unfold in front of you (even though it is going several hundred miles per hour). Yes, it hurts a lot to have the skin rubbed off of your face and your nose broken by the airbag. A lot.

When you are locked out on a balcony at a hotel and you think that it isn’t that far to drop down to the pool deck; you are wrong. It is much, much farther than you thought and, as I said before, getting the wind knocked out of you is no fun at all. Also, the pool deck entrance door is locked from the inside because the pool is closed for cleaning, so you are still trapped, but now you are in pain too.

When public speaking, always check if your fly is zipped, your tie is clean, and your suit-jacket is not buttoned in the wrong holes.

On your first day at a job, do not have lunch anywhere that you might possibly get food poisoning. Explosively vomiting on yourself, the carpet, and the restroom door is not the way to impress your new boss. However, a good dry cleaner can get puke out of a suit.

If you feel it necessary to comment on a person parking in a handicap space who is not handicapped, be sure to check first to see if the person is built like a linebacker and ready to beat the hell out of the person commenting on them parking in that space.

When you are playing on a frozen creek with your friend, do not push him out onto the deep part where there is still water flowing; it just isn’t as funny as you thought it’d be as you are trying to pull him out of the icy water. Also, it takes an eternity to run back to the house through the snow, while you are soaking wet.

If you are in the back of the band room leaning on the backs of chair during band practice and your best friend kicks the chair legs out from under one of the other guys, making him fall to the floor... Don't laugh. Trust me on this one. The band director will look back and see your best friend (who caused all the ruckus) helping the fallen guy up and he will see you laughing. Who will he think did it? That's right - one free ticket to the office for you.

If you are an agnostic or atheist arguing about the Bible, be sure that you don’t argue with a pastor who knows what he is talking about and is highly educated or he might just make you look like a complete fool as he uses logic and facts to disassemble every argument you’ve ever used.. Then again, that’s why I am now a pastor, so go ahead and do it.

These are just a few of the many life lessons that I have learned. I invite you to comment and share any life lessons that you have learned.