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Month: October 2025

Be Happy!

The happiest, most contented people I have ever known are those who focus on others. The ones that find pleasure in giving, encouraging, supporting others, even some who devote their lives struggling to do the right thing, make the world they found at birth, better by the time of their death.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

The negative always focuses on oneself, finds faults in others and rejects responsibility.

Both positive minds and negative ones are contagious, even taught, so choose positive, supportive and happy.  Positive minds produce positive lives, while negative ones produce negative ones.

Richard Kimball

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

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Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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Burn Baby Burn

With all the life-molding first time experiences that would come that day for me and my best buddies, Stevie and Butchy, it wasn’t Mr. Franklin, our neighbor, first to see the smoke billowing over the neighborhood doing that spectacular rendition of Paul Revere. Nor was it the distant approaching sirens that converged on the scene, not even the odd smacking sound my mother’s lips made when she heard it was me, that sticks most clearly in my mind. It was the speed at which a Zippo lighter could turn solitude into Armageddon when it touches a few blades of dried grass in a breeze under a forest of parched desert trees.

I can’t remember what happened to Stevie that day, I wasn’t able to see him for a month, but I did hear from my brother about Butchy, who clearly had the best strategy; he ran into his house and immediately bolted himself in the bathroom. After considerable time, his parents finally managed to convince him that he would not be put to death, and he dared to unlock the door.

I, on the other hand, would be put to death immediately. My mother, having struggled with this odd, stupid, and now clearly dangerous child for some years, cracked. She took me back into what we called the maid’s room, although we had not had a live-in maid for years.

Forced to explain what we had done and how we had done it, she then told me to take off my belt.

(book excerpt)

Richard Kimball

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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THE PANTIES REPORT

Raising your hand in class!  I had actually seen other people do this in my third-grade class. I could not understand what compelled them to jump off such a cliff, but they did. Some like Lacy Scanlon jumped all the time. Lacy, clearly more deserving of existence than any other child I knew, knew everything. All that she did was perfect. I became convinced of this one recess when Stevie Bogard, my neighbor, best friend, and classmate came up with an extraordinary idea.

Until Stevie’s brilliance burst forth, we had been resigned to recess games involving spitting, making fart sounds, or just about anything we could do in the dirt. His idea would require courage, athleticism, cunning and some exhilarating aspects of which we were not quite old enough to grasp but were very exciting nonetheless.

He called his game “The Panties Report.”

Understand that this was the 50s and schoolgirls still wore flouncy dresses. The basic idea was to chase each other around, one at a time and at the key moment push or trip whoever’s turn it was and have them roll under some unsuspecting girl. With that you were able to return to the group with the “Panties Report.” The reports were almost always of white panties, color was a rarity, but on one fabulously triumphant occasion I excitedly reported back, “purple polka dots!!” It was so rare as to be unbelieved by my classmates. I was immediately tackled and piled on by every giggling boy in the group. In the dirt and spitting out dust I looked out from under the pile of classmates and across the field, there was Lacy. She was standing with her friends in a crisp clean yellow dress with a satin bow around the waist. All of them were quietly ignoring us and playing a game of hopscotch. As I looked at her from the grit and grime, I knew, as I have known ever since, that Lacy Scanlon and all her kind were of a different, more advanced sort.

Richard Kimball

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When old, it is key to remember that you will not remember.

So, use tricks!

Generally, my most successful tricks preparing for a new day include standing my toothbrush in my prescription bottle, placing my appointments Post-it on my wallet and my car keys in my coffee cup.

If I am seriously worried about an important event, I will put a book, glass or maybe my shoes where they shouldn’t be as a morning get up reminder.

Warning: that last one can have unintended consequences for those of us that multi-pee each night, the tripping time might not be just right.

Instead, you might try placing some large object that can’t be missed clearly out of place elsewhere and hope a significant other doesn’t correct your “stupidity” before you get a chance to stumble upon it.

Oh Ya! And when it comes to turning on the stove or hose, get serious. Use your phone alarm less charcoal or that cruise turned into a water bill is to your liking.

Richard Kimball

Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org

or

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

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