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You Can Put Your Eye Out That WayA couple of weeks ago we celebrated Independence Day in America, complete with fireworks. This reminded me of when I was a youth and enjoyed setting off fireworks myself. I always found the instructions printed on fireworks rather amusing which said simply, "Put on ground, light fuse, run away." I didn't know exactly where they wanted me to run away to, I had already been to the circus, so I just stood back a few feet and watched the firecracker explode. Fireworks drives mothers crazy, and I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard my mother warn me, "You can put your eye out that way." I think this was the standard warning for just about anything I did, be it riding a bicycle, playing baseball, swimming, running, or breathing. It is the first cardinal rule each mother must learn in order to bear children. I wasn't alone either, all of my friends' mothers admonished them with this same expression regularly. So much so, that we thought our mothers had formed a conspiracy or some secret society for the sole purpose of maintaining our eyesight. The power of mothers is rather interesting. Years ago, Jay Leno commented that mothers had the uncanny ability to sniff out just about anything, even better than a bloodhound, such as your secret copy of Playboy you kept stashed away in your bedroom. Back before the Iraq war started, he said we should not have wasted time sending in a team of UN delegates to look for weapons of mass destruction since they never found anything. Instead, they should have sent in a team of mothers who would have pulled Saddam Hussein out by the ear and cleaned up the situation right away. It would have probably saved us all a lot of grief. Mothers are full of little axioms they use to keep us in line, but I have to think, "You can put your eye out that way," has to be their favorite with "Stop it or you'll go blind" coming in a close second. Other articles by this author »
About Tim Bryce
Tim Bryce is a writer and management consultant located in Palm Harbor, Florida. You can find his work on the Internet at: http://www.phmainstreet.com/timbryce.htm He can be contacted at: timb001@phmainstreet.com Copyright Related
And here is another random article you might be interested in... Buy a Home in Winter and Save MoneyWhile most people are accustomed to shopping for homes between Memorial Day and Labor day, that may actually be the worst time of the year to buy a house. The best time of year to go house hunting may be the dead of winter, rather than the summertime. Most houses are bought and sold in the summer for a good reason. That's when children are out of school. Parents understandably want to avoid disrupting their children's' lives if they can possibly help it and moving when school is out of session is a big help towards avoiding some trauma. Granted, one doesn't always have the opportunity to shop for houses at one's leisure; many people move because of job transfers or job changes, and with those, you pretty much have to move when the even occurs. But if you have control over when you start house hunting, you might do better to wait until the snow comes. Why is that? The summer creates a seller's market. Buyers are working on tight schedules; they want to get settled into their new houses before school starts again. That being the case, sellers have an advantage, because most of the people who are shopping in the summertime want to get settled quickly. The opposite is true in the winter, when there are fewer homes for sale and far fewer buyers. Most people who have houses for sale in the winter months do so out of necessity. At this time of the year, the buyer has an edge, as sellers are more likely to be looking to sell their home quickly from a much smaller pool of potential buyers. As such, buyers who shop in the winter may find sellers to be more flexible. They may be willing to haggle a bit more on the price, they may be more willing to allow concessions for paint or carpeting, and they may be more flexible on a closing date. All of these things work to the advantage of the savvy home shopper. If it suits you to do so, the winter is a great time to buy a house. Related
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