What follows are my random thoughts. Some will make you think and some won't. I will add and subtract from them whenever the inspiration hits. So if you enjoy these thoughts, feel free to check back.

I Will Miss Leo

I remember getting the call from my mother five years ago. A friend of hers wanted to fix her up with a date with a man named Leo. My mother hadn’t been on a date in many years and so she didn’t know what she should do.  “You should go,” I answered enthusiastically, even as her son I could see that as 80 years old women went, my mother was a hottie.

“But there is a problem she said, he wants to pick me up in his car, and he’s 90.” My tone immediately changes and I became like a father protecting my teenage daughter, “You are not getting into a car with a 90 year old!”

Despite my warning my mother did go on the date and it was magical. With 170 years of life between them, my mother and Leo immediately shed those years and became like two teenagers in love. He would call her, “Sweetheart,” spoken with his Brooklyn accent, and my mother would melt. They would dine out and always share an entrée with my mother insisting that one meal was plenty for the both of them. The entrée they shared would be whatever was on the menu that pleased my mother because, “Whatever you want sweetheart,” was what Leo insisted. Then after dinner they would go to one of their homes and put a music station on the TV and dance together.

After that first date with Leo life changed for my mother. I would get constant calls from her, “Leo told the funniest story,” or, “Leo did the cutest thing.”

Leo had been married for 65 years and had been a widower for just a few months before meeting my mother. Once they started dating a friend questioned him, “Leo, you were married so long, don’t you think you should wait for a while before you start dating?” To which Leo answered, “I’m 90. How long should I wait?”

For the next five years they would walk together for miles each day, and Leo never stopped driving my mother places, though I stopped worrying about it. Their love affair was the kind which movies are made of and for both of them their time together was five years of walking on air. When I mentioned Leo’s age worrying about it myself, my mother would say, “We are both just living each day.”

Leo taught me a few lessons I won’t forget. He taught me that that “old” is only a word, but not an attitude. He never used a computer as much as my mother begged, but he taught me that a person can keep learning new things in life even without the need for Google. Most importantly Leo taught me that being in love isn’t something that cuts off at 40, or 50, or even at 95. Those are all good lessons. I will miss Leo, but I know my mother will miss him more, even while she continues to live each day.       

The Surprise Slot

When I was 8 years old I lived close by a movie theatre called the Tivoli. Every Saturday my father would drive my sister and I there for the kiddies matinée. In addition to the 25 cent admission, we were each given 10 cents to buy candy. There was no concession stand but instead there was a candy machine in the lobby where we would spend our dime. Some memories last forever and I can still recall every detail of that candy machine. If I had a dime in my hand right now my fingers would still know exactly where to find the coin slot. 

The candy machine had 12 levers and above each lever there was a window that showed the candy bar you’d get if you pulled that lever. Except for the very last slot, there was no candy bar at all in that slot but just a sign that said, ‘Surprise!’ If you pulled that 12th lever you didn’t know what you were going to get. Perhaps it could be real disappointment. Or, it could be a candy bar that was just alright but nothing special. Or, you could hit the jackpot! Maybe the candy falling down when you released the lever would make your eyes bug out—the candy bar of your dreams.

I was 8 years old in those Tivoli Days, but even then I knew that — for me anyways — that 12th lever was always going to be the right one to pull. The passage of time has since taught me that the word ‘Surprise’ was about much more than just candy. Pulling the ‘Surprise Lever’ as often as I could has been my philosophy for living life. It hasn’t always led to good surprises, but if it always did then where would the surprise of it even be, and the fun? When I got married it was a surprise lever. Having children were surprise levers too. Moving to Arizona was a surprise lever. Giving up a real estate career to write books was another surprise lever that I pulled.

When next you go eyeball to eyeball with your own candy machine with your dime parked in hand and you’re trying to decide what to do, then I highly recommend pulling the Surprise Lever and taking a chance on what lies ahead with that pull. Life is just so much more interesting that way.

My Three Nights In A Haunted House

A few years ago I bought a brand new infill house that had been built on a lot where an old house had been torn down. As it always is with move-in days I was exhausted, and with my new bathroom having a Jacuzzi tub I decided this would make the perfect end to a very long day. My bath caused the bathroom mirror to fog up with steam and that’s when something rather bizarre occurred. Images began to form on the mirror, and soon after an entire family of stick people were clearly visible on the steamed mirror including one stickman who had a hangman’s noose around his neck with the words underneath, “Kill George.”

Okay, this was unexpected to say the least, but soon after the steam cleared up and with the mirror then dry the strange stickmen disappeared. I was left to wonder whether such a scene had happened at all or if it had been just the byproduct of my overtired imagination. So then imagine my bafflement the following evening when during my Jacuzzi bath the same strange stick family reappeared. Okay, this was now getting seriously weird!

My third evening in my new house my 10-year old daughter spent the night, and when she tried out the Jacuzzi tub and the same mysterious occurrence happened for her, as frightened as my daughter was, and even with her insisting that we had to sleep that night with every light in the house turned on, I had to admit that I was relieved. Someone else had seen it too, as verifiable proof that I wasn’t crazy. Or, at least crazy when it came to the stick family living on my mirror. The next day I visited my sister and recounted the astonishing occurrence. As a Realtor she had sold houses before where people insisted after moving in that they were haunted. My own home had been built on the site where an old home had been torn down, and so the only logical conclusion my sister and I could reach was that the spirits were ticked. My sister however insisted on calling a mirror company just to see if they could shed any light amid my protests that the mirror people would assume we were nuts in inquiring about mirror ghosts.

Much to my surprise the mirror company told us that ours wasn’t the first such ghost call. Then we were given the explanation that had nothing to do with spirits. Apparently there is an invisible ink that writes on mirrors and can only be seen when the mirror is steamed. For mirror installers this presents a golden opportunity to play jokes on unsuspecting home owners like me. George of, “Kill George,” fame was probably their overbearing boss. I off course thought it was hilarious once given the explanation along with the assurance that the ink and the images would wear off within a month.

Someday I would like to purchase a bottle of the ink myself. Imagine the fun that could be had while staying at a hotel. My favorite being to write, “Your wife knows what you are doing.” Think about how that would impact a scoundrel! Called to account, and by the bathroom mirror. 
As to my house not being haunted, a part of me was disappointed. I have always wanted to spend a night in a haunted house, and it still remains on my list. So if you happen to have a ghost or two in your home lounging about, I am waiting for my invite.     

The Two Doors

Let’s say you wake up in the morning and when it’s time to leave your bedroom and enter the world for the day instead of your normal bedroom door you are greeted by two new doors and you must choose one or the other to walk through. Door One is painted black and has a sign on it marked “Miserable.” Underneath the sign is a warning that if you choose to pass through that door then the rest of your day is going to be lousy. You’ll spend the day in a foul mood—sad, lethargic or irritable most of the time. You’ll fight with people constantly, and just about everything that happens to you throughout your day will be annoying, frustrating, or a catastrophe in your eyes, each incident then adding more bricks to your lousy frame of mind.

Door Two is painted sunshine yellow and has a sign on it marked “Happy!” The explanation under that sign says your day will be full of excitement, energy and joy. Your relationships will be ones of fun, laughter, caring and affection. You’ll spend your day sporting a smile and feel just great. Little setbacks will happen, as setbacks always do, and of course they’ll challenge your mood. Even so, you’ll just shrug your shoulders or laugh them off, or better yet, turn little negatives into positives further brightening your day. Your day will then end with satisfaction and excited anticipation for the next one. 

Given the choice of those two doors to go through, which one would you pick?

Now here’s the good news. There are those two doors when we wake up each morning. But because they are not painted yellow or black and do not have actual signs on them with explanations, we don’t even notice these doors are there. But when we start each new day we do choose one or the other door to go through. After we make our decision of going through the “Black Lousy Day Door” or the “Yellow Happy Day Door” with our choice then made, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, and that is the way are day almost always then shapes itself to be.

So, it’s tomorrow morning. Which door do you choose?  

The Dinner Party

I like questions and here is a favorite one of mine. Let’s say you could throw a dinner party and could invite any three famous people living or dead, who would you invite and why? I have asked this question numerous times over the years and it almost always leads to a great conversation. Some of the most common answers I have heard over the years have been Mother Teresa, Princess Diana (who coincidentally died only 5 days before Mother Teresa did), John F. Kennedy, Steve Jobs, and then amongst the living Brad Pitt, Warren Buffet, Stephen Hawking, and Beyoncé.  

Here are my own top three choices: My number one is Albert Einstein, not so much because of who he was a physicist which is a subject I know little about, but because of Einstein the philosopher and as an overall character. There is a toast I give at weddings which uses one of the lesser known quotes from Einstein. Einstein was once asked to define relativity in such a way that the average person could understand it to which he gave a parallel, “When you put your hand on a hot stove for seconds it feels like hours, but that when you spend hours in the company of a beautiful woman it feels like seconds. And that’s relativity.”

For my number two dinner guest, even though it’s tempted to go boy/girl, boy/girl at my dinner party and Marilyn Monroe would be an intriguing choice, the writer in me has to go with Mark Twain, in my opinion the greatest American writer and satirist ever, and a true progressive. Samuel Clements, Twain’s birth name, was born at the time of one of Halley’s Comet’s rare passes. Throughout his life Twain predicted he would die when the comet next returned. Sure to his prediction, Mark Twain died the day after Haley’s Comet next visit, 74 years later.

For my third dinner guest I’ve chosen Leonardo da Vinci. He was an amazing forward thinker and as an inventor he designed the first helicopter, parachute and scuba gear 300 years before they were first made. My main reason though for wanting da Vinci at my dinner party is a self-serving one. I happen to have a paint-by-number Mona Lisa in my storage room. If I could get Leonardo da Vinci to sign my Mona Lisa at my dinner party, can you imagine what it would fetch on eBay?