(I know it’s Saturday. My Fridays are occupied by clinicals at the moment).
I opened Facebook this morning and it had a “memory” for me. It was this picture with the caption, “Awww, just like Dad.”
I guess I got this in a fortune cookie 8 years ago today.
So. . . The story behind the caption. . . Still laugh about this today! I told this story to my brother in law just a few months ago at my mother in law’s funeral.
When I was about 16 years old, possibly 17, I was going to be flying on an airplane for the first ever. I was in a choir at Hamilton High School. We were called “Schola Chantorum,” and *we* were invited to compete in a competition in Atlanta, GA! By this time in my life I had only traveled to the surrounding states—California, Nevada, and Utah. I was thrilled! I needed something to pack my things in. So I asked my dad if I could borrow his duffel bag. He told me he let Neal borrow the week before for a young men’s camp out and that he probably still had it. So I went to brother and asked for the duffel bag. On handing it to me I noticed it had some weight to it. I pulled a brick out of the bag and looked questioningly at my brother. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It was in there when Dad gave it to me.” Knowing that the door to my bedroom also closed on its own he suggested I used the brick as a door stop to keep the door open. Thinking that was an excellent idea I placed the brick in front of my door. It was heavier than most bricks and did its job nicely.
I went to Atlanta. It was amazing. Another flashback post for another day. . . I had been home for about a week when my dad came in my room, red faced and sweating. He calmly and slowly said, “Do you have the duffel bag you got from Neal?” I went to my closet and pulled it out, handed it to him. Disappointed when it felt so light he asked, “There was something in here at one time. . . “ I didn’t even let him finish. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I interrupted him. Pointing at my door stop, I said, “That?!” He exhaled a sigh of relief and picked it up. I said, “I was using it as a door stop because my door closes by itself.” He said, “Well, you were using a brick of gold for a door stop!”
Now, my next questions was, “How many bricks of gold does one have that one could lose one, or forget one in a duffel bag. Then Dad reminded me that every year for Christmas my mom buys him a new safe. . . So he can store all his bricks of gold, or silver or whatever it is he collects.
Every time he got paid he’d always turn his money into something else, something not as easily exchangeable. He taught me this lesson when I got married. My grandfather had given us a $100 gift card to Costco. but we didn’t have a Costco in Virginia at the time. So my dad said he would buy it from us, but all he has was silver. So he gave us 15 oz of silver for the Costco card. He told us to just watch: if we used the Costco card the money would be gone and whatever we bought would eventually be used up or thrown away. But with the silver, we technically have money if we absolutely need it. But because it takes more effort to exchange it into spendable form we aren’t likely to spend it. We’re more likely to find some other way to get our hands on cash or just to get by without whatever it is we thought we needed the money for than to change out that silver. And here we are, almost 18 years later, and I still have those 15 oz of silver.
I told this story some time ago and Dad overheard me. He did correct me and say that the bricks were silver, not gold. So that’s the truth of the story. But like Gandalf says in Lord of the Rings, “Good stories deserve a little embellishment.”
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