John was our roommate at college. He was not a great cook and had little money, and for that reason, he decided he could live totally on beans. The problem was that they created in him an atomic cloud of methane that was driving the rest of us to near suffocation. The situation was becoming desperate.
Celese couldn't believe the low price on one home they looked at. When they walked across the property, they found it went right down to the edge of a slow-moving river. Property like this in California would probably cost around thirty times the price being asked for this one. "How come the price is so low on this place?" Celese asked.
One day as I was heading home, I ran into my roommate, David. "Hey, Daris," David said. "Would you do me a favor? I have some things to do, and Annie is coming over to our apartment. I was wondering if you would mind visiting with her until I can get back?" I thought that it was a strange request. She was his girlfriend, and I had never visited with her without him there. "Uh, yeah," I said. "I'd be happy to visit with her."
Of all the people that my mother tried to teach the piano, I was surely the one who tried her patience the most. When it was my morning to practice piano, my mother would get me started then leave to do her own work. But the minute she walked out of the room, my attention would turn to anything but the little dots and lines on the page. It wouldn't be long before I would hear her call, "I can't hear any piano playing!"
Cell phones were new, and the university made me carry one because I was the director of internet systems. They wanted to be able to get hold of me if something went wrong, which, with the internet in its infancy, it often did. Messages from my office phone were also routed to my cell phone and beeped me at the most inconvenient times. Shandy's messages always beeped me at the worst times of all.
One of the jobs that I have as Scoutmaster is to help teach the boys about serving others. Winter is good for that. There are always people who need wood chopped or hauled, and in a winter like this one, there is lots of snow to shovel. One winter, we were receiving more requests for snow shoveling than my troop could keep up with. The moisture was coming down as slush and freezing solid on everything it touched.
What does a person do with the skin of a skunk? Well, Rick decided that it might make a piece to use for a practical joke. He placed it on his doorstep, and he loved to watch people do a double take when they came to his door. Some people would see it from a distance and not even come to his door. Rick saw that as a definite plus. Rick thought fewer interruptions in life was always good.