I am camping. It’s cold outside. I am about to freeze.
The elderly people in the campsite beside me are from Pittsburgh. Mary and Herbert are their names.
Mary has white hair. She wears a pink sweatshirt and Velcro tennis shoes.
Herbert has two hearing aids, no hair, and he wears a khaki jumpsuit—the kind auto mechanics wear.
Herb putters around his campsite all day, doing things that don’t actually need doing. Like picking up pinecones and tossing them into the woods.
I wave to Herbert on my way to take my morning shower in the bath house.
“Have a nice day!” I call to him.
He smiles. “Nope!” he says. “Haven’t seen him!”
“I said, ‘Have a nice day!’”
“When was that?”
This is getting me nowhere. So, finally I shout, “HAVE A NICE DAY, HERB!”
He smiles. “Dangest thing! Haven’t seen any of those all week!”
And he resumes throwing pinecones into the woods.
I guess I’ll have to forget about communicating with old
Herb today, and wish YOU a good day instead.
I know we don’t know each other, but I can still wish you well. It’s a free country, you can’t stop me—not even if you threatened to tickle me to death.
So wherever you are, I wish you the best day you ever had. Ever. I really mean it. I hope the weather is bright, sunny, and warm. I hope someone you haven’t heard from in years calls you unexpectedly.
That’s what happened to me yesterday. I got a phone call from a friend I haven’t heard from since I was 10 years old. We were buddies back then.
Once, he and I got in trouble for putting frogs in the girls’ restroom sinks at school. Before the principal interrogated us, he made us place our hands on the Bible and…