My Dad's SecretsWritten by Gary E. Anderson
My Dad's Secrets (from book Spider’s Night on Boom) Gary Anderson www.abciowa.comI've only begun to understand my dad since I became a father myself, and it's amazing to me how I'm constantly being reminded of lessons he taught me 40 years ago—lessons that I never even knew I was learning. As a kid, my life was like a black-and-white kid's adventure movie, composed of disjointed, but sometimes very exciting scenes. My parents played parts of supporting actors in movie of my life, and although my dad would have rated large letters in opening credits, his character would have been reviewed by a critic “needing to be fleshed out." Even so, I saw my father as supremely confident. He could fix anything, he always seemed to know exactly where he was going, and knew most efficient route to get there. I never saw a look of worry on his face, never heard him express any doubts, and I certainly never saw him cry. His air of confidence made our home a safe place to my brothers, sister, and I—a place to grow with total loving support. But since mantle of "Daddery" has been passed to me, I've come to realize that my dad must have had moments of genuine doubt and confusion, just as I do. But I never really knew how he felt, deep inside. It never showed, and we never talked about it. When I became a father, I suddenly began to appreciate my own father's sacrifices as he worked tirelessly to provide for his family. I began to get a glimpse of precarious balancing act he faced every day: wife, children and family vs. dampened fires of his own soul. It was only after I left home that I began to hear stories about my dad's dreams—sacrificed in name of being a "father." I heard about a young man who gave up a promising baseball career to become my dad. There was no long debate; that's what dads did. They set aside their personal dreams to pursue what was considered a higher calling—that of giving next generation an opportunity to pursue their dreams.
| | I Can't Weight (One Man's Diet)Written by Gary E. Anderson
I Can't Weight—One Man's Diet (From book Spider’s Big Catch) Gary E. Anderson www.abciowa.comLike many people, I've decided I need to take off a little weight from holidays—the holidays of six years ago. But I've never dieted before, so being a conscientious kinda guy, I logged into my favorite web browser for some advice. I found 3,978,158,342 sites offering help with losing a few pounds. (In fact, I was so overwhelmed, I had to grab a sandwich before even tackling search.) As a public service, I'll try to encapsulate what I learned, although I may have gotten a little confused by some of terminology. Most of sites spent considerable time talking about calories, so maybe we should start there. As far as I could make out, a calorie is defined as amount of heat it takes to raise a gram of water from 58 degrees to 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Immediately, that fact brought several questions to mind. First, who decided that? Why 58 to 60? That’s not even hot enough to take a bath in! Next, if one calorie raises temperature of water 2 degrees, and human body is 90% water, why don’t millions of Americans boil over during holidays, after consuming billions of calories at one sitting? That definition implies that a person should be able to eat a million calories a day, as long as he spaced them out, to avoid boiling over. You could eat, let your body cool back down, then eat a bunch more, and never gain any weight – it made sense to me. That concept must be common knowledge to world at large, which would explain why you so rarely see people boil over in public. But since I’m new to this dieting business, it came as exciting news for me.
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