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Where Does It End?

My wife, Donna, told me that my son, Bo, who was six years old, had been hit by another boy and had come home crying.

It was time for “The Talk.”

Bo, 6, waiting for the school bus.
Bo, 6, waiting for the school bus.

“Bo,” I said, “when some boy hits you, you have to hit him back.”

And he said, “And then they’ll hit me again.”

“Probably,” I said.

“And then I’ll hit them again.”

“Absolutely!”

“And then they’ll hit me.”

And I said, “Well, yea, they might. Probably.”

“That could go on forever,” Bo said.

Postscript: I found out later that the boy I had urged my six-year-old son to slug it out with was several years older.

BONUSThis is not a real story, but it’s a fun story.  An old friend, Pat Stumpf, sent it to me:

Tom was a single guy living at home with his father and working in the family business. He knew he would inherit a fortune when his sickly father died and he decided he needed to do two things to prepare for that day:

Learn how to invest his inheritance

And find a wife to share his fortune.

One evening, at an investment seminar, he spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her beauty took his breath away.

“I may look like just an ordinary man,” he said to her, “but in just a few years my father will die and I’ll inherit $20 million dollars.”

Impressed, the woman asked for his business card.  Two weeks later, she became his stepmother.

Women are so much better at estate planning than men.

Coming Monday: The Senator’s Proof

Take Her Or Leave Her

One of my mother’s nurses at Holy Name of Jesus Hospital in Gadsden, Alabama, was a 20-year-old woman named Mary Sigrest Harrison.  A few

Mary Stith
Mary nursed my mother

days before Mother died, in June 1947, Ms. Harrison stopped by her room while my 21-year-old brother, John F. Stith Jr., was visiting.  Mother introduced them.

John and Mary Stith
John and Mary Stith

“Mary, this is John,” Mother said.  “John, this is Mary.  Take her or leave her.”

And John replied, “I’ll take her.”

John and Mary went on their first date, to a movie, on June 22, 1947. They were married one year later, to the day, and stayed married until John’s death on March 1, 1987,  almost 40 years later.

Coming Friday: Where Does It End?