The following came to me in an E mail from Island Girl. I have some comments on it that follow. I have edited it to remove parenthetical, folksy color designed to hold one’s attention, but it loses me, so … out.

An old fellow, sort of in my age range, was on a radio talk show. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about a thousand marbles.

Here’s what he had to say, minus the chuckles and finger on the side of his nose.

The average person lives about 75 years, some more and some less, but that's the average.

I multiplied 75 times 52 and got 3900, the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.

I was 55 before I thought about all this in any detail and by that time I had lived through over 2800 Saturdays. I thought if I lived to be 75, I only had about 1000 left. So I went to a toy store (several, actually) and bought 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.
**End of the old man, so to speak.

Teal says:

Well, that’s his story and I am supposed to be inspired to focus on the really important things instead of, perhaps, playing Free Cell. But I am not inspired. If I had a clear plastic container with the marbles in it that presumably represent my remaining Saturdays, I would be paralyzed, glued to the chair in front of the container, watching my life slip away, moving my body each week only enough to remove and toss one marble. "There it goes," I'd think, "sob." My priorities would disappear because who can think of those while watching life go?

No, I’ll just tool along in ignorance, and maybe I will and maybe I won’t get some things done. What the hell.

xx, Teal