Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2018-07

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IN THIS ISSUE

• In HeroicStories, Ruth Edwards writes about getting a brother for $28
• Tom Telfer confesses to owning a number of electronic toys
• Catherine Nesbitt forwards an essay about the Silent Generation
• Irene Harvalias sends this example of a martial misunderstanding
• Burke Dykes shares a story about learned helplessness
• Barbara Wear explains what women´s expressions mean
• Tom Telfer suggests interesting sites

Ruth Edwards of Somerville, Texas, writes about

A BROTHER FOR $28

I arrived in Japan at ten years of age, with my missionary parents and older brother. The sights, the smells, the culture were all new and mysterious. We moved into a Japanese house at the edge of a large elementary school yard where hundreds of children played after school each day. They were tattered and poor, as most of the Japanese people were in the early fifties, right after the war.

None of our family spoke the language yet, though I quickly learned Japanese with a fluency that can only be accomplished in early childhood. This early lack of language abilities presented some unique problems for my family. The simplest task of buying eggs, for instance, could prove to be a challenge.

Among the many who watched us foreigners with great fascination was ten-year-old Kenji. He had no fear of us; in fact he was quite bold. He was a rascal for sure, always up to something. But Kenji proved to be very helpful to us while we were adjusting to the newness of a different culture. He would bike off and come back with eggs, or onions, or whatever we were able to get across to him that we needed by drawing or motioning. He was instrumental in my learning Japanese quickly, though I later had to unlearn some things that were not ladylike....

Kenji began to pick up some English and, as naughty as he was, we came to love him dearly. He quickly familiarized us with the layout of the community, and taught us where we had to go for what we needed.

But one day Kenji was missed, and when he continued not to show up we went to his home just down the block and asked about him. We found out that his parents had sold him to a farmer for 10,000 yen (about $28.00 in those days). This was a great deal of money to a household with eight children, six of them younger than Kenji was. Of course we were devastated, but through much haggling my parents were able to pay the farmer back and take Kenji into our home. He fitted in well and we enjoyed having him as one of the family.

He grew up, married, and went into business for himself before we left Japan for good. I have visited since then and he was right there to pick me up at the airport and taxi me to where I needed to go.

Though we are an ocean apart, he´ll always be my Japanese brother!

ED. NOTE: For a free subscription to Heroic Stories, click on HeroicStories.org

Tom Telfer discloses his

CONFESSION

As long as you can keep my confession a secret, I will reveal to you my newest toys.

My first portable radio was huge. Over the years, I have added a computer, a tablet, an iPhone, and an Apple Watch.

Now I have an Amazon Echo Dot, given to me by a good friend in Florida. Since it was programmed to operate in the USA, I had to make a few adjustments. Now the opportunities are endless. To activate it you need to say "Alexa" before every command. Alexa, what is the time? weather? CBC news? etc.

It even tells jokes. You can program your lighting, thermostat, and even open and close your curtains. There is lots to learn. As with life, there is always something more to try.

Now, even before I have mastered the Echo Dot, another toy has arrived - a Google Home. Did I need it? No. But it is fun to learn new systems. They say it keeps us young, but my date of birth stays the same - 1936 ;)

But, as time flies by it appears that calendars are shrinking. We just learned to write 2018, and it´s already February!

Catherine Nesbitt forwards this essay about

THE SILENT GENERATION

Born in the 1930s and early ´40s as children of The Greatest Generation, we exist as a very special age cohort. We are the Silent Generation.

We are the smallest number of children born since the early 1900s. We are the "last ones."

We are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

We are the last to remember ration books for everything from gas to sugar to shoes to stoves. We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans. We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren´t available.

We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the morning and placed in the "milk box" on the porch.

We are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of our grieving neighbours whose sons died in the War. We saw the "boys" home from the war, build their little houses.

We are the last generation who spent childhood without television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.

As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood "playing outside" and we did play on our own. There was no little league. There was no city playground for kids.

No television in our early years meant that we had little real understanding of what the world was like.

On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave us newsreels of the war sandwiched between westerns and cartoons.

Telephones hung on the wall and were one to a house, often shared (party lines).

Computers were called calculators, they only added and were hand cranked; typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the carriage and changing the ribbon.

Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news was broadcast on our table radio in the evening by Gabriel Heatter.

As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.

The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to receive an education and spurred colleges to grow. VA loans fanned a housing boom.

Pent-up demand coupled with new instalment payment plans put factories to work.

New highways would bring jobs and mobility.

The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.

The radio network expanded from three stations to thousands of stations.

Our parents were suddenly free from the confines of the depression and the war and they threw themselves into exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren´t neglected; however, we weren´t today´s all-consuming family focus. They were glad we played by ourselves until the street lights came on.

They were busy discovering the post-war world.

We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity; a world where we were welcomed. We enjoyed a luxury; we felt secure in our future.

Depression poverty was deep rooted. Polio was still a crippler. The Korean War was a dark presage in the early ´50s, and by mid-decade, school children were ducking under desks for air-raid training.

Russia built the "Iron Curtain" and China became Red China. The Berlin wall was built in 1961. Eisenhower sent the first "advisers" to Vietnam. Castro set up camp in Cuba, and Khrushchev came to power.

We are the last generation to experience an interlude when there were no threats to our homeland.

We came of age in the ´40s and ´50s. The war was over and the cold war, terrorism, "global warming" and perpetual economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.

Only our generation can remember both a time of great war and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise and plenty. We have lived through both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was getting better ... not worse.

We are the Silent Generation - "The Last Ones."

More than 99% of us are either retired or deceased, and we feel privileged to have lived in "the best of times"!

Irene Harvalias sends this example of a

MARTIAL MISUNDERSTANDING

Women just don´t understand the kind of stress a man has to cope with on a daily basis. Here´s an example of how men and women record things in their diaries:

Wife´s Diary: Tonight, I thought my husband was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a nice restaurant for dinner. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment on it.

Conversation wasn´t flowing, so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk. He agreed, but he didn´t say much. I asked him what was wrong. He said, "Nothing." I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said he wasn´t upset, that it had nothing to do with me, and not to worry about it.

On the way home, I told him that I loved him. He smiled slightly, and kept driving. I can´t explain his behaviour. I don´t know why he didn´t say, "I love you, too."

When we got home, I felt as if I had lost him completely, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there quietly, and watched TV. He continued to seem distant and absent.

Finally, with silence all around us, I decided to go to bed. About 15minutes later, he came to bed. But I still felt that he was distracted, and his thoughts were somewhere else. He fell asleep; I cried. I don´t know what to do. I´m almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else.

My life is a disaster!

Husband´s Diary: A two-foot putt ... who the hell misses a two-foot putt?

Burke Dykes shares this story about

SHARK BAIT

During a research experiment a marine biologist placed a shark into a large holding tank and then released several small bait fish into the tank.

As you would expect, the shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish.

The marine biologist then inserted a strong piece of clear fibreglass into the tank, creating two separate partitions. She then put the shark on one side of the fibreglass and a new set of bait fish on the other.

Again, the shark quickly attacked. This time, however, the shark slammed into the fibreglass divider and bounced off. Undeterred, the shark kept repeating this behavior every few minutes to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around unharmed in the second partition. Eventually, about an hour into the experiment, the shark gave up.

This experiment was repeated several dozen times over the next few weeks. Each time, the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack the bait fish, until eventually the shark got tired of hitting the fibreglass divider and simply stopped attacking altogether.

The marine biologist then removed the fibreglass divider, but the shark didn´t attack. The shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish, so the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.

The moral: Many of us, after experiencing setbacks and failures, emotionally give up and stop trying. Like the shark in the story, we believe that because we were unsuccessful in the past, we will always be unsuccessful. In other words, we continue to see a barrier in our heads, even when no real barrier exists between where we are and where we want to go.

(Read "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck MD.)

Barbara Wear explains what women mean by various expressions in this

MANDATORY CONTINUING EDUCATION

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don´t Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That´s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That´s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you. Do not question, or faint. Just say "You´re welcome." (I want to add in a clause here - this is true, unless she says "Thanks a lot." That is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say "You´re welcome." That will bring on a "Whatever."

(8) Whatever: Is a woman´s way of saying Go to Hell!

(9) Don´t worry about it; I´ve got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing herself. This will later result in a man asking "What´s wrong?" For the woman´s response refer to # 3.

* Send this to the men you know, to warn them about arguments they can avoid if they remember the terminology.

*Send this to all the women you know to give them a good laugh, because they know it´s true!

SUGGESTED SITES

Tom Telfer forwards this link to a compilation of people skating, skiing, and snowboarding in what appears to be very dangerous conditions:

Tom also sends the URL for a site where you are invited to draw a stick man and other creative objects and watch what happens:

This sad-looking dog who was looking for kids to read to him in a library is now all booked up:

In this TED talk, Sarah Jones gives samples of her spectacular character range: