Monday, March 07, 2016

Article: When I Was Your Age... By Mike Moore


Have you ever noticed that we often end up doing and saying things we vowed we never would? 

When I was a teenager I asked my Dad for a ride to school after a severe snowstorm covered Sault Ste. Marie to a depth of six miles. The school was about two miles from my home and I was trying hard to convince my Dad that my death would be on his conscience if he made me walk in that kind of weather. His response was predictable.  “When I was your age I walked to school in snow drifts up to my neck. ”

 I always doubted him when he said this as I knew he grew up in Ingersoll in southern Ontario.  I don't think Ingersoll ever got snow drifts as high as Dad described them.  Anyway, I got his message and headed out to school under my own power. I recall thinking as I ploughed through snow, I will never, under any circumstances, say to my kids, “When I was your age.”

The years rolled by, I got married and fathered four wonderful children.  On many occasions I found myself uttering the very words I vowed I would never would, “When I was your age.... ”.  I am sure their thoughts were the same as mine, “I will never utter those words when I have kids of my own.”  But, I was wrong.

Years later when my son Kevin was in his early twenties he got a summer job harvesting tobacco.  It was a long, hard, dirty job and he would come home each night with his buns around his ankles. 

One evening he stood in front of me with a smile on his dirty, weary face and said, “Well now I've got my own, when I was your age”. Someday I'll be able to say to my kids, “When I was your age I worked on tobacco from dawn to dusk in the heat and humidity, never complaining.......” And so it continues


This is just one of the stories from my popular book, “Light Up with Laughter”. Check it out at

 
 

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