Maybe not Profound, Certainly not Flashy, but....

   As I walked this morning, I was reminded of a memo that I wrote to myself yesterday. There were a couple of notes that I needed to write today, to a couple of men that I wanted to encourage.

   One of these men is a guy that I play tennis with sometimes. He will be 80 in a few days, and his wife is asking people that he knows to send him a note, nothing too profound, but just a remembrance of some times spent together, that he can enjoy. I remember when he could not play because of the cancer in his throat. He still can't talk, but if he presses in on the little button in his neck, he can get some words out. But, he presses on with his tennis game, and I enjoy having him as my partner when we get the chance to do so.

   The other man is one that I hardly know at all. When we lived in Blacksburg, he and his wife lived at the end of our street, and they had two big rottweilers, black and ferocious looking. These dogs would charge out through the front door when a person walked in front of their house, come to their invisible fence, stop and growl. I admit I was scared when they first did this to me, but after a few times, I knew, and hoped, that that was as far as they would go. One day, the wife was in the front yard and talked to me as I walked by. She said the dogs, although looking very mean, were really just big babies, and I should just talk to them. She even began to leave treats in her mailbox for me to give to them when they appeared. Before long, I could walk into their yard and give them a treat, talk to them, and go on my way without being menaced.

   This lady, died of lung cancer a few weeks back. She had never been a smoker, but contracted the disease anyway. I still remember her kindness to a stranger on her street and just wanted to tell the husband of my appreciation of those acts.

   There is certainly not anything great about any of this, but the prompting is there, and I do not want to let the opportunity pass me by.

   Will the men that receive these small notes really care? I would like to think so, but that may not be the important thing about the whole process. It is the right thing to do, and that is all that matters in the long run.

   Now to just figure out what to actually write......