Lunch with God

While I call it my "Humor File," many of the pieces I have collected over the years are not at all funny -- just inspirational.  Before email became mundane, folk were fond of forwarding uplifting stories.  The ones I like best have a touch of humor to them.

In my devotions on Saturday I read the following quote from General Frederick Coutts' book The Call to Holiness:  "Humor is not joy, though a near cousin.  With some folk, however, humor and holiness are poles apart ... 'A believer must be a killjoy' ... The life of true holiness is a complete answer to that folly.  We are called not to unhappy holiness, but to a holy happiness."

So I chose for my post today an email I received in 2002 captioned "Have Lunch with God."  It is titled Twinkies and Root Beer and can still be located on the internet.  My email concludes with the sender saying "Thanks for touching my life."

Twinkies and Root Beer

A little boy set out to meet God. He thought it could be a long trip to where God lives so he packed his suitcase with Twinkies and a six-pack of root beer and started his journey.

When he had gone about three blocks he met an old man. He was sitting in the park just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat down next to him and opened his little suitcase. He was about to take a drink from his root beer when he noticed that the old man looked hungry so he offered him a Twinkie.

The elderly gentleman gratefully accepted it and smiled at the lad. His smile was so pleasant the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered him a root beer. Again, he smiled at him. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word.

As it grew dark, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave, but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old man, and gave him a hug. He gave him his biggest smile ever.

When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, “What did you do today that made you so happy?” He replied, “I had lunch with God.” But before his mother could respond, he added, “You know what? He’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”

Meanwhile, the old man, also radiant with joy, returned to his home. His son was stunned by the look of peace on his face and asked, “Dad, what did you do today that made you so happy?” He replied, “I ate Twinkies in the park with God.” Before his son responded, he added, “You know, he’s much younger than I expected.”

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Embrace all equally! — author unknown

"Official" correspondence can be fun IV

Another Bulletin from the creative mind of Ron Wendt:

"Official" correspondence can be fun III

Before email, important information was sent from Territorial Headquarters on yellow paper captioned BULLETIN!  My intrepid session-mate Ron Wendt occasionally sent his own creations to trusted friends on official Bulletin stock.  I did not keep a copy of his most famous Bulletin, which recounted the story of injuries sustained by women in Africa as they were overrun by a herd of water buffalo while marching to a Home League Rally.  It got Ron in trouble because someone shared it widely as if it were genuine.

I received this Bulletin while the Corps Officer in Old Orchard Beach ME.  It came on band practice day, so I shared with a few bandsmen that evening -- including the former Territorial Commander Commissioner Bramwell Tripp.  He was relieved to hear that it was a joke.

"Official" correspondence can be fun II

The last two days I posted pieces about the travails of micro-management.  I am grateful that management principles in The Salvation Army, while valued, do not override personal relationships.

When I was the Corps Officer in Old Orchard Beach ME, the Divisional Secretary sent a letter to all units congratulating the Corps that had submitted their statistics on time.  My Corps was not listed, even though we had a spotless record of timely submission.  It turned out that our DHQ mail was hand-delivered to the DHQ mail room where, instead of being distributed to recipients at DHQ, it was sent back to us in OOB.  After I commented to Major Fred Van Brunt about the circumstances of OOB's omission from the "thank-you" letter, I received the following:

Not missing management redux

The following is a wonderfully creative response to an actual management report (not like yesterday's bogus one).  It is taken from standards for Salvation Army social service programs.  This response was shared with me, although it obviously was not submitted.

Sometimes the best way to cope with burdensome management expectations is with humor.

Standard:

• All program/corps forms and policy and procedure manuals should avoid run-on sentences and complicated language that is not easily understood by the reader.

Response:

We certainly agree and will endeavor to do our best to never let this happen because we know that it can be a drain on the reader, not least a client -- but even some of our staff have a hard time keeping things straight, so of course we would want to do that for both reasons and also our Divisional Program Secretary, who is a stickler for things like this, especially typos, would be very upset to know that anything under her Program auspices was not done well and with a professionalism that is due the reputation of our great Army (The Salvation Army) so that is another reason why we would be checking very carefully, being sure to avoid run-on sentences -- another impetus, so to speak -- to not annoy or confuse the reader who is really just interested in either knowing their rights if (for example) they are a client, or if it were to be a staff person reading, we know that they just want to know how best to do their jobs, which are so important to carrying out the mission of The Salvation Army to preach the gospel and meet human needs in Jesus' name (that was, of course, an abbreviation of the mission statement which I won't repeat here in full because of the very subject at hand), but we definitely understand the importance of appropriate sentence structure, brevity -- I once had a professor who said that the best sentences were the shortest most concise ones because, for many reasons which I won't summarize now (but just one example is one runs the risk of using the same word in the same sentence which is generally frowned upon for many reasons) -- in essence short is sweet.  I could elaborate more if you or others wish, but simply, to summarize, we definitely agree.

Thanks, Tom Dressler!

Not missing management

This piece of paper in my humor file is only 15 years old.  In fact, the joke is still available on-line.  This version is copied from a blog called jokemail.  The blog says, "Like most people with email I've been receiving jokes of dubious quality from friends with email for a number of years.  I thought I'd post them on a blog site.  I make no apologies for the fact that you've probably read them all before." This one is dated 9/28/2006.  So nine years later, I post it again as an even older joke.

There are many things I am missing about active officership in these early days of retirement.  But there are are some things I am more than happy to be spared from.  Among the latter are the challenges of getting things done and communicating well in a management-driven environment.  This pokes fun at Management Reports and their review:

The saga of management reviews of reports

Question: How many feet do mice have?

Original reply: Mice have four feet.

Management comment: Elaborate.

Revision 1: Mice have five appendages, four of which are feet.

Management comment: No discussion of fifth apendage.

Revision 2: Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet and one is tail.

Management comment: What? Feet without legs?

Revision 3: Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per mouse.

Management comment: Confusing. Is that a total of 9 appendages?

Revision 4: Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail per body.
Management comment: Does not fully discuss the issue.

Revision 5: Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail. Each leg is equipped with a foot at the end opposite to the body; the tail is not equipped with a foot.
Management comment: Descriptive but not decisive.

Revision 6: Allotment for mice will be:
FOUR LEG-FOOT ASSEMBLIES, ONE TAIL.
Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets.
Management comment: Too authoritative, stifles creativity.

Revision 7: Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system. Also attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non functional and ornamental in nature.
Management comment: Too verbose and scientific. Answer the question.

Final Revision: Mice have four feet.
Management comment: Approved.

Punctuation counts

I love jokes that are timeless and persist.  The following was sent to me by my brother Bob in 1997:

A panda walks into a saloon and growls, "Gimme a sandwich. After wolfing down the sandwich, he draws a six-shooter, plugs the piano player dead in the back, and heads for the door.

"Hey!" the bartender yells. "Where are you going? You haven't paid for your sandwich!"

"Idiot!" the panda replies. "I'm a PANDA! Look it up!"  and he leaves.

The bartender looks up 'panda' in the dictionary and finds: "A large furry marsupial of the Asian continent. Eats shoots and leaves."

This story became the basis of a book in 2003 by Lynne Truss titled Eats, Shoots & Leaves:  The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

grammarly.com refers to the final comma before 'and' in a list as the Oxford comma.  Its importance is illustrated by its absence from the following:

From Sky News:  Top stories:  World leaders at Mandela tribute, Obama-Castro handshake and same-sex marriage date set ...

A book dedication:  To my parents, Ayn Rand and God

Describing a documentary about Merle Haggard:  Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

Times of London:  Highlights of Peter Ustinov's global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year old demigod and a dildo collector.

Since commas count as characters on Twitter, one wonders if the days of the Oxford comma are numbered.