Editor Note: Due to situations in the newsroom the past couple Saturdays, we were unable to publish the column. The stories for the past two weeks and this week’s installment will be published today. – JL

Heroes
How many Heroes do you know? I’ve met a few. Some of those were family and friends. And a few were nationally-known.

My dad Bill was a long-time newspaper editor, and interviewed several. I rarely saw him get flustered. But he met one guy who impressed him beyond words.

Dad talked to Neil Armstrong — first man to walk on the moon — at a long-ago trade show. I saw him speak briefly to the famed astronaut. But he was visibly awed.

“He was a friendly man,” Dad remembered, “but I couldn’t stop thinking that I was talking to a man who’d be remembered forever, an explorer like Christopher Columbus.”

Have you ever talked to a hero? I’ll never forget meeting Stan Musial, the Hall of Fame baseballer from the St. Louis Cardinals.

He spent a few moments with me, and asked me — a ten-year-old outfielder — about my baseball skills. He was kind and gracious…a great man.

Heroes are all around us, and they inspire us to be greater. Who are your national heroes? Who are you family and local heroes?

Next time you talk to one, I urge you to tell that person how much you respect them. Real heroes make the world a better place, and set positive examples for us all.

Age
How old are you? Do you want to be older or younger?        

There’s a great book by Andrew Postman called What’s in an Age? Who did what when, from age 1 to 100. Did you know that at the age of six, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart performed concerts in Europe?

Or that Joy Foster became the Jamaican women’s table tennis champion at age eight? (At the age of six, I was still counting my toes, and at age eight happily discovered I had 13.)

Some people do great things when they’re young. Others perform spectacularly as senior citizens.

Sophocles wrote the play “Oedipus at Colonus” when he was 90. At age 100, Ichijirou Araya climbed Mount Fuji.

Most of us are older than six, and younger than 100. So what will we do with this 94 years of middle age?

We can stay in school, or go back to it. We can learn a new profession, or develop a specialty in our current one.

Unfortunately, there’s no rewind on life’s video. The only way we can move is forward.

So if I could pick one single age, it would be the Age of Enlightenment, which begins for everyone each new morning.

Want Rix to record One Minute Stories for your company? For details, e-mail him at [email protected] or call him at 817-920-7999.

Football
Since football season is here, let’s talk about it The game begins with the entrance of referees, people with striped shirts who enforce the rules.

Occasionally, somebody else with striped shirt and long stick may also appear. He is a “lost golfer,” and must be removed.

Next come the cheerleaders, who bounce onto the field, often with skimpy uniforms and bare midriffs. And those are just the guys.

The girls look even better. And all of them jump around, waving their arms and yelling stuff like “Indeed, our team is outstanding” and other motivational material.

Then comes the team “mascot.” This is sometimes a farm animal, or a human dressed like one. Mascot uniforms can be silly, and are not appropriate clothing for, say, a wedding.

Next come two teams that wear different colors, plus a helmet to hide their identities from the opponents they’ll tackle later. Pay attention to the quarterback, who controls the football.

Sometimes he throws to a teammate. That’s called a pass. Or he may hand the ball to somebody. That’s called a handoff.

Or occasionally he might tiptoe to the sidelines, and give some cheerleader a big, wet kiss. This is called the “quarterback sneak.”

Want Rix to record One Minute Stories for your company? For details, e-mail him at [email protected] or call him at 817-920-7999.