On of Lifes lessons

I'm about 4 years old in this picture. That's my fort my Dad and I just built. I can look down in the valley below and no body can see me! This is my own special place.

Years later when I was in class in my grammar school I had an experience that helped shape some of my attitude about "acting before you think."

I had a ketchup bottle, not a real one but one that looked like a ketchup bottle but was plastic and had a string coming out of the top, you know, the kind you find at a hotdog stand! At parties and with friends I'd have this ketchup bottle and pretend to squirt the ketchup out of the bottle on a friend. It was only the red string that came out of the bottle. We'd laugh and laugh and had more fun with that! One day I took my ketchup bottle to school. The teacher was late so we were all talking and having a good time and I took out my ketchup bottle and squeezed it on a girl. She screamed and then realized that it wasn't real and we all laughed. The teacher rushed in and saw the ketchup bottle and demanded
that I bring it up to him! He told me that he would keep the bottle until the end of the year. Why did he do that? All he had to do was tell me to put it away. That experience had a lasting impression on me. I didn't have the bottle anymore to have fun with my friends. As I grew older I would see people fly off the handle and accuse people of doing this or that. I learned to "think before I act."

At the HotelTriton, their was a mistake(human) on a customer's bill. The customer would immediatly accuse the hotel of cheating, when all they had to do was point out the mistake and a simple correction could have been made and all would be normal. Many times I witnessed similar situations where if someone had just calmly asked or inquired about a situation everything would be fine. To all my friends reading this, don't jump to conclusions. Life and friend are precious, slow down, enjoy life!