All I Really Need to Know…
If you are at all familiar with you know the whole of that quote is “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten,” which is the title of a book and a fount of wisdom by Robert Fulghum. I have always felt a little slighted by such a book title, as where I grew up there was not a county/state school system kindergarten and it did not become a required thing until some number of years after I started school. I have always joked, knowing the basic contents of the book, that it is no wonder I don’t like to share and am not good at playing well with others – as I didn’t attend kindergarten. I had a realization this morning as I attended church, which was the first time in a long time for such an occurrence mind you. My realization was that the kind of things that were being taught in kindergartenI learned in conjunction from my Mom and Sunday school – long before the age of the typical kindergarten attendance. I mean lets face it things like if you make a mess with something clean it up and put things back where you got them and share with others and don’t take stuff that doesn’t belong to you is what we learned both at both home and almost every Sunday morning. I have a younger brother who is less that two years younger, so believe me that all of these things were re-enforced on a very regular basis around the house in which I grew up. I can remember many a time when we didn’t get to go out and play on a warm spring day until our room was cleaned up and all our toys put away on the inside. This sometimes even included dusting things off as we organized it all nicely and neatly. Of course the organization sometimes took a long time as we would get distracted with one toy truck or tractor hauling all the rest of the stuff to its proper destination, but heck – that is another lesson of wisdom learned that is not included in the original. If you have fun doing your job it does not seem like near the chore it could otherwise be – which is similar and perhaps another way of saying find something you love to do. So, as I noted this additional one, I thought it would be a good exercise to note the original ones and some additional things that I learned from the same time frame in my own life that are just as important pieces of little wisdom. So, here are the original need to knows:
- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don’t hit people.
- Put things back where you found them.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
- Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
- Wash your hands before you eat.
- Flush.
- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
- Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
- Take a nap every afternoon.
- When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
- Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
- Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
- And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.
So to that list I would like to add the follow couple of additional ones that I learned either from my Mom or in those few hours on Sunday mornings that at the time sometimes seemed like such a drag of time.
- As already noted above, find a job doing what you love and make it as much fun as you possibly can have given the task at hand.
- Ice cold things on hot summer days are just as good as chocolate chip cookies and milk, maybe better. Things like frozen peaches and frozen strawberries are among my personal favorites.
- Food that you personally had a hand in is the best, especially if it growing it from scratch and eating it still warm out of the field, but even just picking things like berries makes them better than store-bought.
- Taking care of you animals in your care should come first, even if it means you have to sometimes run late or even miss other things – thanks George and your majestic big horses. Wish I had remembered this one all my life, sometimes I forgot.
- Loyalty is something that is a great quality to have, through thick and especially thin is appreciated by those you are loyal too and those observing note your character traits – thanks Eddie Cartwright.
- To forgive all, even the biggest wrongs done to you, is a God like thing to do and what we should practice.
- Sometime or another we all color outside the lines, some of us even get over on the table its okay – our unique expressions in art and other things we do in life is what makes us different and our own person.
- Sometimes life is just boring and it can’t be helped – but a flirting wink with the good-looking woman behind you, a peppy snack, or just shouting out about how you feel about the guy boring everyone up in the front will make you feel better and help everyone else deal with it too.
I am sure there are a few more of these kinds of things that I will think over the coming days and I will come back with additions as they come to me. Anyway, I have got to wrap up and on down the road. My coffee shop closes at 5:00 on Sundays. 
