How to Eat an Elephant ~ Chapter Five: Don't Be So Busy Making a Living That You Forget to Make a Life

Growing up, my dad never really had one career that he did day in and day out. Most people don’t know that he had a degree in law enforcement from BYU. But he never used that as a way to support his family. My first recollection of him working is when he owned Peterson Oil. He had a tanker truck and he would go around the valley delivering fuel to farmers. I remember riding with him in the truck in the summer time while he was doing his deliveries…. When that ended, he was the delivery driver for Garrett Freight and he would deliver freight around the valley. (I’m still bummed that Dustin ended up with the Garrett chair….!!) He was also a delivery driver for Frito Lay and drove to neighboring communities to stock chips at grocery and convenience stores.  My dad liked to have jobs that would offer him the flexibility to not be stuck in an office. He worked hard at his job and taught us the value of hard work. Because we didn’t have a money tree growing up, I remember doing things at a very early age to earn my own money. I would get up while it was still dark in the summertime and go pick raspberries and I worked at lots of different jobs such as fast food and cleaning motel rooms. I learned to work hard!

I don’t remember a time when money wasn’t tight. We didn’t go on grand family vacations to Disneyworld or Hawaii or Mexico, and when I was younger I was envious of my friends whose families did things like that, but looking back now….what we did do was so much better!!!

My dad loved two things… sports and the great outdoors.

In the winter time, the gym was our playground. He would find a reason to be at the gym almost every night. If he wasn’t playing city league or church ball, he was refereeing the games. My brothers and I would tag along and the bleachers and hallways at the gym on Main Street were where we played.  As I got a little older, he always talked me into running the scoreboard or keeping the book.

In the summer time, our only limit to fun was our own imagination. The ballpark was our nightly hangout on the week nights and many weekends. My brothers played and my dad coached little league and he played city league and, like basketball, if he wasn’t playing or coaching, he was umpiring. We had lots of fun hanging out at the park. (We didn’t have handheld video games back then, in fact, I remember when he came home one day with a new TV that had Pong on it. We were the coolest kids on the planet because we had PONG!) Because we didn’t have anything electronic to take with us to the gym or the ballpark, we had to use our imaginations to keep us entertained for hours at a time.

My dad also lived to go camping. The woods became our playground almost every weekend. I have little recollection of what the adults did during the day when we were camping, but I have some very vivid memories of what the kids did.

The kids would scatter and do our own things and when we got hungry, we would find our way back to camp. I remember being appalled one time because aunt Pat put pickles in the tuna fish…LOL… but we played hard, so we were hungry and I ate every bite… not as bad as I thought it would be. We were always in a hurry to eat so we could get back to our imaginary lives, so dad taught me that I could finish lunch faster if I put the potato chips ON the tuna sandwich. That way you can grab the sandwich and be on your way and you didn’t have to wait around to finish the sandwich AND the chips!

We learned to use our imagination by doing some pretty creative things and most of the time, we got away with doing whatever we wanted. I remember one time, we were camped below the dam and a friend (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty) and I decided it would be fun to build a little rock dam in the stream below the spillway so that we could create a pond of sorts to land in when we slid down the spillway on our behinds! We worked all day stacking rocks across the stream and building it up. It never really did anything except make a mess of the watercress. There wasn’t a lot of water coming over the spillway at that time…Just enough to let some algae grow in the center of the spillway, which made for a very slippery slide.  It never occurred to us that the algae would stain our white shorts black and that we would totally get busted for doing something dangerous… not to mention ILLEGAL!!! My dad was not upset… he was very concerned that we had done something dangerous and that taught me to think about consequences before I planned any more dangerous (or slightly illegal) activities in the future. He also made us go back to the watercress and remove every rock that we had placed across the stream. He had a love and appreciation for the great outdoors and taught me to respect that and to enjoy being there, but also to leave it the way you found it and not be disruptive to nature.

My dad set an example of how important it is to work hard, but he also taught us to play hard. He never really made much of a living, but he understood the importance of making a life.

I have learned to appreciate the tiny moments because life ends too quickly. In hindsight, the lesson was there for me to learn growing up. I regret that I didn’t do a better job of abiding by the lesson while raising my own kids…. But the lesson is this:  Take time to watch a Braves game, play catch with the kids in the back yard, go to their ballgames or sporting events to support them, play games together, sing like you know the lyrics…. (that is another lesson) Hug more, say I love you more, don’t leave things undone or unsaid… take time to create memories and traditions, because after a loved one moves on, that is really all we have left to cling tightly to… until we meet again!