Is This The Beginning of Something?

Recently I saw a picture online of the inside of the inside front of an Uber driver's car.  In the middle under the console there were a bunch of things like tissues, water, candy for riders, but there was something that really stood out.  There were a number a colorful index cards on them with writing. The driver told me that one day a passenger wrote a note and stuck it on his seat in appreciation for the ride.  Soon, other people were leaving notes with all different messages and he's collected them.

Could that happen in an airplane? Yes, it can and this is the story. Southwest flight attendant, John McKay took a notebook with him on a flight in 2023 and gave it out to passengers and offered them the opportunity of writing something in his book. The response he got was incredible. People wrote inspiring messages, favorite poems, drawings, jokes, and personal feelings about what they are going through in their life. People hugged him and thanked him and it was very rewarding for him.

His first notebook is complete and he is working on a second one which is now called, "This is the Beginning of Anything You Want." He said, "You can kind of tell sometimes that somebody needs to see something. And I've gotten some really amazing responses from it. People have told me that it feels like medicine to them."

He said that he likes to, "Brighten people's day," which is something I can relate to. He got the idea when he read on the internet of a frequent traveler who had done something similar. 

You never know when one good idea can give you another good idea.  Spread your sunshine the way you want to.  You never know what can happen-maybe this is the beginning?

What About King Tut?

I recently saw a clip of comedian Steve Martin doing his surprise hit song, "King Tut," back in 1978. The next day, I read an article about the discovery of King Tutankhamun's tomb on November 4, 1922 in The Valley of the Kings in Egypt.  A week later, it was in the news that they just discovered the first royal tomb since King Tut and it's the tomb of King Thutmose 11.

King Tuts' Tomb had been hidden for over 3,000 years and they found 5,000 artifacts in the tomb.  There were a few items that I found very interesting, so here they are with my comments.

1. THE MANNEQUIN: We might as well start with it since now I know that I had something in common with King Tut-we both had mannequins.  He had a very large wardrobe and was supposedly, "A snappy dresser." I wonder what that really means in 1300 BC.  They found hundreds of his clothes and he used this mannequin to put clothes on it to figure out what he should wear.  I'm just glad my wife doesn't have one of these.

2. BOARD GAMES: Since Monopoly and air hockey were not invented yet, his board games looked a little primitive.  They only found four games and this was one of the them below. The games were made of wood, ebony and ivory too.  They played, "The game of 20 and Senet." The game of 20 was not, "20 questions," which came much later. Board games were a very big thing in ancient times.

3. SANDALS: The mummy was found wearing these sandals and they are 11.6 inches long.  He did not wear them when he was alive and it's a very good thing. These do not look comfortable.  I have enough problems walking in the sand, this would make it almost impossible to do that. I think it would hurt.

4. THRONE: It looks nice, but would you sit in this for more than a minute? I don't think so, it looks very uncomfortable and I think with his wealth he would have bought a La-Z-Boy.  Especially, when he was a boy, right?

5.  BREASTPLATE:   Would you put this anywhere near your chest? It's colorful, but I can't imagine wearing that. And women complain about wearing a bra? Maybe it was for his afterlife?

6. CANOPIC JARS: Yes, they are jars and inside the jars are not cookies or jam.  This is where they preserved his organs. His liver and lungs were found in the below jars among other things.  I believe when he showed off his palace, he probably did not explain what was going to go in these.

7. THE WOODEN BOX: You would think something that looked so spectacular would have a much better name, right? There are hunting scenes all around this box.  I guess he really liked to hunt.

The legend was that if you disturbed King Tuts' tomb, you would die. Howard Carter is given credit for the discovery and although he lived another seventeen years, his benefactor did die suddenly soon after one of the great discoveries in all of history. 

Steve Martin, the comedian, is alive and still funny.  This is how he looked singing, "King Tut."

               

"My Colon Had The Highest Score"

Sometimes it is impossible to avoid writing a blog about something.  This is not just something, it's my wife's colonoscopy this past week.  It's pretty serious stuff as you probably know. My wife got great news and now she is very proud and told me at the dinner table, "My colon had the highest score."  

I always brag about my wife and how amazing she is and all the incredible things she does well.  Now, I can brag about her colon. She got a 9 score out of a possible 9, perfect, for cleanliness. I would have shared pictures of her colon with you, but she might be framing them. Before we went to bed that night, she said, "I love the pictures." This picture below shows how happy she is.

This is not a picture of my wife jumping, her body was not in the jumping mood when we got home.

You take a whole day before the big event cleaning yourself out.  You drink only liquids and then drink "Drano" and hope that it all comes out.  And it certainly does-more than you ever thought could come out.  You hit 10,000 steps going to and from the bathroom and just like on a treadmill, sometimes you pick up the speed to get where you need to be.

The big event took 11 minutes and we spent 3 hours and 20 minutes at the hospital.  I am not complaining.  I read eighty pages of a book that was published forty-five years ago.  In the recovery room, the nurse was Joe, and he was a true professional.  My wife told him he had a great voice and could be in radio. She was still a little groggy, but I'm sure it made his day.

My wife told me the secret to her colon success: she did everything she was supposed to do to prepare for the big event. She said that some people don't follow the detailed directions they are given.  Are you kidding me? Spend a day in the bathroom preparing and forfeit your chance to have a perfect colon and you don't follow the directions?

My wife and I are a good team, she has a perfect colon and my eyes at age 64 don't need glasses and probably won't in my seventies!(I do have it in writing from the optometrist) The next time she mentions her perfect colon, I will tell her this: I have perfect eyes.

Saying Goodbye to Success

It's time again to say goodbye to a few things I have had in my possession for over forty years.  They all involve success and they may be helpful to someone else down the road.  

1. First up is this poster I think one of my daughters may have had and I got it from her.  The words were published in The Wall Street Journal by United Technologies Corporation in Hartford, Connecticut.

It says: "Don't Be Afraid To Fail: You've failed many times, although you may not remember. You fell down the first time you tried to walk. You almost drowned the first time you tried to swim, didn't you? Did you hit the ball the first times you swung a bat? Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot. R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.  John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times but he also hit 714 home runs. Don't worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don't even try."

It's great advice. It reminds me of the very famous quote from the great Thomas Edison who was asked how he felt about failing 10,000 times to discover the light bulb.  He said this:

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

2. I had this hanging in my dorm room in the late 1970's and I've had it hanging in my office for most of the years since. I'm not a skier or a mountain climber or someone who takes great risks, however, this framed poster means a lot to me.  My wife says it's worn and old, but to me it looks great.  The guy is walking on air and pulling himself across to a snowy mountain and the message is pretty special.

To live your life in your own way, to reach for the goals you have set for yourself, to be the you that you want to be-that is success.

3. I bought this somewhere, but it's title is: "21 Suggestions for Success," by H. Jackson Brown. Jr. I'm going to combine five of them and then list the other sixteen. They are all very good.

Five of them: "Be generous, loyal, honest, a self-starter, and have a grateful heart.

#6 Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

#7 Work at something you enjoy and that's worthy of your time and talent.

#8 Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

#9 Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

#10 Be forgiving of yourself and others.

#11 Persistence, persistence, persistence.

#12 Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary.

#13 Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

#14 Commit yourself to constant improvement.

#15 Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect.

#16 Be decisive even if it means you'll sometimes be wrong.

#17 Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.

#18 Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did."

#19 Take good care of those you love.

#20 Don't do anything that wouldn't make your Mom proud.

"See you in another life." (Quote from the television show, "Lost")

Are You Ready to Find Your Lost Luggage?

This is one of those things I've never heard of before.  Have you ever lost a piece of luggage? Where does it end up? It ends up in Scottsboro, Alabama.  The Unclaimed Baggage store is 50,000 square feet and it receives 7,000 new items a day from around the country.

How did this start? Doyle Owens had a friend who worked at Trailways bus service and his friend told him he had mountains of unclaimed luggage and he didn't know what to do with it.  Owens, borrowed $300 and sold a Chevy pick-up and drove to Washington D.C. to get the luggage. He put ads in the newspaper that they were having a sale and mobs of people showed up.

How popular is this place? They get 1 million visitors a year which is more than some real tourist attractions. Items are sold for 20-80% less than retail.  They once sold a Rolex for $32,000 at half price.

They also have a museum in the store with unusual items like a suit of armor, a set of bagpipes, and a Gucci bag with Egyptian artifacts.  There are some people who visit the store more than once a day to find bargains.

Will this ever end? It's not likely since 7 out of every 1,000 pieces of luggage are lost each year. Although 99.5% of those bags get back to the owner, the others wind up in your friendly neighborhood unclaimed baggage store in Alabama. 

"The Fruit of the Month Club"

Have you ever had something happen in your life and you immediately flashback to something you saw on a television show? One day we got a large box and it was filled with different fruit.  It looked like it came from our health insurance company.  Why would they send us a box of fruit? So we would eat better? 

On September 13, 1996, the very first episode of the comedy "Everyone Loves Raymond" aired and it ran for nine years.  In the first episode, Ray, (Played by comedian Ray Romano), and his wife sent a box of fruit to his parents.  His parents suddenly had more than a dozen pears and his mom asked, "What are we going to do with all these pears? There is so many of them."  Ray suggested that she give them to her friends and she said, 'Who am I going to give all the pears too?"  One last comment was while talking with someone on the phone she said, "I can't even think straight, there's so much fruit in the house."

When she found out that another box was coming each month for a year, she said to her husband, "They have gotten us into a cult." Finally, Ray had to give in and said he would cancel the fruit deliveries.  This scene was a running joke in other episodes over the years.

We had only a couple pears and we ate some of them and some other fruit, but we never expected to get another box.  I'm not sure which box this was, but below is either the second, third, or fourth box of healthy food we received.

We did eat some of the food and gave away some also. We talked about calling our insurance company to stop it, but we never expected more boxes.  After the fourth box we called and was told that they only send four boxes of healthy food.  We didn't ask why, but the idea that we were getting the fruit of the month club kept us laughing each week. 

My Favorite Rider Comments February 2025

He ran with the bulls in Spain and said, "It was the most horrifying, terrifying experience in my life. I'm glad I did it, but I would never do it again."

I asked the married couple, "How did you meet?" He said, "We were cadaver partners in medical school."

The birthday girl, (28), said about herself, "I'm so funny, but I'm unintentionally funny." I asked the occupational therapist who works in a hospital, "How do you get your patients laughing, what do you talk about?" She said, "Body fluids, we have a lot of them in the hospital."

On vacation in Saint Lucia, the couple had three large suitcases and a smaller one.  The bag checker there said, "Is that luggage all yours? I've never seen two people with that much luggage?" She said, "We're here for two weeks." He replied, "Are you moving here?"

I asked, "Have you ever gotten a gift from an Uber driver? " Yes, he opened his trunk and had a cooler and gave us each a cold Miller beer."

The older woman said to her friend, "Look at his pictures, he's looking for famous people. You won a contest." Her friend replied, "That was a hundred years ago." Me: "If you won a contest a hundred years ago, I want to know about it." (Former Miss South Carolina and first runner-up for Miss America)

Seeing my picture of four riders from Nigeria, the former Navy guy said, "Did they tell you about the kill factories?"

From Mississippi and getting married in May, she said, "I wanted to elope with 20 people, but we invited 230, the venue holds only 200 and we expected to have 160-180 there."

She: "When you live near the beach you can go there with your problems and the waves can wash them away. In a place like Colorado, you have to climb a mountain to work out your problems."

Returning from Hungary, she told me, "It's not a lot of fun going home when you have a lot of shit to do."

The Navy guy said, " Navy pilots are nerdy, not cool like Tom Cruise."

He: "When I was practicing to be a barber, I accidentally cut off my older brother's dreads."

He: "My dad was a welder who helped build the Ravenel Bridge. (In Charleston) When he was taking apart the old bridges he kept one of the lights on top of the bridge."

I asked them how they met and they said, "We met in Istanbul working at a camp."

"With the two old bridges the Ravenel Bridge replaced, cops had to regularly help remove cars of tourists who were too scared to cross the narrow bridges; they just stopped and blocked traffic."

"I'm a cost accountant, but I'm really a problem solver."

She told me, "Laughter is the best medicine."

In psychology, she told me, "The reason some people are afraid of mannequins or dolls is called "uncanny valley." (It's a psychological effect that people have when something looks human but isn't)

After telling her I met my wife working at Burger King, she said, "I met my husband working at Wendy's."

COMMENTS ABOUT LILY BY MANNEQUIN

She had some sight issues and after getting in the car she asked, "Is that your wife or daughter?"

"She's iconic."

COMMENTS ABOUT ME AND MY CAR

He is one of my most frequent riders and he said, "You'll always have a place in my heart."

Starbucks manager: He said, "It was worth getting a flat tire to meet someone like you."

She: "This was awesome, you made my day."

"This is so nice, you're blessed. You have the personality for this."

"This is so unique, I've never been in a car like this."

"You are very committed."

"This is such a great idea."

"You have been amazing."

"This is the coolest Uber I've ever had."