My son came to me this morning and asked me did my mother tell me the story about Junior. I said, I don't recall it. He said, its funny, ask her to tell you. My mother kept a lot of the good stories, for my children it seems, maybe because when I was young, like most children, at some point I stopped listening to my parents stories, and instead would be more interested in what the kids were doing outside the living room window.So I asked her about the story she told my son, and when she told me this story, I thought, huh, if she had told this story, and I wasn't listening, it was my lose, because not only is it humorous, it has a moral, that is fitting for a life filled with possibilities.When my mother was a young girl, she was one of a group of friends that gave performances around the town. They did plays. And they sang, and danced, at various venues. They were in the entertainment business. One day, they were getting ready to go do a performance and were running behind schedule. They were most concerned with one friend in particular, who hadn't even begun to get ready, and they were sure he was going to make them all late, his name was Junior. (As an aside, and to Junior's credit, he grew up and became a Professor at Tuskegee.)When Junior was young I guess he must have had a punctuality issue. He was known to be the last one to get out the door. So on this day, unlike any other, when everyone else was dressed and ready to go, he hadn't even gotten started. So as usual he was forced to rush through everything, including taking a bath. As everyone sat, fairly annoyed, Junior flew up the steps to his room to get himself together. He hollered down to his friends, no doubt wanting to calm their nerves, and said to them, "Don't worry, I'll be quick." Then he added, paying no attention to how it was coming out of his mouth, and loud enough so that everyone, including his mother, heard him, "I'll wash up as far as possible, and I'll wash down as far as possible." His mother, upon hearing this, stopped what she was doing, hurried over to the stairs and hollered up, "And wash possible too." My Mother and her friends roared with laughter, at what she was humorously, implying.Besides, being humorous, I thought how relevant to the situation of the possible. Life affords us infinite possibles. Creative thought processes. They're like apparatuses, or variables, or dimensional perspectives that assist us in reaching our intended endeavors via an uncharted route, or offers up an altogether new endeavor. But sometimes we ignore possibles, even to our detriment. The timing's not right, the result isn't clear enough, or the possible requires us to step outside our of comfort zone. We even sometimes approach the possible halfheartedly, with statements like "If only", "keep dreaming", "Wake up and smell the coffee", "Get real", "Impossible", and so on, or maybe its someone else possible, and we really aren't that into anyone else possible, even if it might possibly benefit us, or vice verse, someone can't see our possible, and somehow we think we need their validation, to make our possible possible. Sometimes we simply can't see the possible, for the trees, and the forest, even when its staring us right in the face, or more, still, there are simply too many possibles that our senses get overwhelmed so that no possible gets acted upon. What ever the causes may be, what is certain is that too many possibles are tossed away, like spam into the trash bin, without serious consideration, and end up on some island for misfit possibilities.Junior's Mother, was clearly being witty, and was not referring to the possibles or possibilitiesafforded us in life, but in her in humor is found a rather useful moral, pertaining to the treatmentof possibilities, and that is, the possible should always be treated as a valuable important aspect of the whole scheme of your life intentions, and not be taken for granted.So I guess if you were to ask what's the moral to this story, I'd had to say it's, 'Don't ignore the possible; it's a valuable commodity.'
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