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OpEd
Those jars have held a lot
I had bedded down to go to
sleep when I heard something fly
irtg about and bouncing off the
walls. I opened my eyes to see a
small light descending from the
ceiling in the general direction of
my face. I swatted, catching
enough of the critter to make a flo
rescent smear on the covers, but he
buzzed away virtually unscathed,
taillight intact.
It took me back. Few things are
as precious in life as those near
forgotten childhood moments at
twilight when a spontaneous light
ning-bug hunt breaks out. They
were all the more fun because we
were supposed to be in by dark,
but our Moms made an exception
and even helped prepare a proper
receptacle. Transparency being a
must, Mason or Ball jars with
holes punched in the lid were pre
ferred.
I had a loosely-formed ambi
tion to pack a jar full of lightning
bugs and somehow get them to all
light up at the same time, creating
a virtual lantern. I never succeed
ed. I’m sure a good psychologist
could parlay this failure into a
complex and provide me with an
excuse for some of my adult short
comings.
Kids love to catch things and
put them in jars, even creatures
that don’t light up or anything. My
father always made me turn them
loose before they died, and I’ve
tried to do the same with my kids.
Countless frogs, lizards, turtles,
spiders, and even snakes have
found themselves prisoners of
Bramblett children. Once, when I
was about six, I found a huge snap
ping turtle upside down in a drain
pipe and fished him out. I was
purely terrified of the monster, but
he was a living trophy and I could
not bear to part with him. Every
kid in the neighborhood came
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r ’ k
10 Walker
Wjßramblett
around to see him. He made me
famous.
Without failure, the adults who
admired my big turtle told me if I
allowed him to clamp his jaws
down on me, as he tried to do on
an ongoing basis, he would not let
go until it thundered. I have mixed
feelings about the propriety of
telling such tales to children. I
remember the fear struck in me
upon being so advised as I stood
beneath the cloudless summer sky
with a double hand-full of snap
ping turtle. But that memory is off
set by the shear glee of passing the
same lie down to other kids now
that I’m grown.
One day several years ago,
when my son Kyle was a little boy,
he met me at the mailbox as I came
home from work. He couldn’t wait
to show me what he had in his
plastic bag. Reluctantly, I gazed
inside at a rather fat and seemingly
dead water moccasin. He swore
then and still maintains today that
he threw a stick across the creek,
thus killing it without getting close
enough to let it bite. Besides,
somebody’s mother had looked it
up in the encyclopedia and deter
mined it was not poisonous. When
he left his quarry unguarded on the
ground for a few moments, it dis
appeared.
The largest animal captured in
a container by a Bramblett, to the
best of my knowledge and belief,
was a possum. But the proper
telling of that story requires facial
expressions. Some tales are just
that way.
Joe W
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If you would like a free financial
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write to: Joe Poirot do Forsyth
County News, P.O. Box 210,
Cumming, GA 30130. Joe Poirot is a
Financial Consultant with The
Robinson Humphrey Co., Inc.
We all contribute to life’s puzzle
One of the things that my family
and I love to do while on vacation
is to go to small library’s old book
sales. Here we look for hours at the
old books, magazines, and other
assorted items that have either gone
out of circulation or have been
donated to the library for the sale.
(We Danners really know how to
have fun, don’t we?) We always
return with boxes of “treasures”
purchased for almost nothing. Most
of the books are sold for 50 cents. I
have never found a book I didn’t
like, and there’s enough bargain
hunter in my family to make these
sales great fun for us all. On one
occasion, I found an old, out-of
print book for 25 cents which I had
been searching over two years for.
The same book retailed for over
$125 in an antique book store in
Atlanta. Now, that’s a bargain.
At our last sale my son Thomas
picked up a 750 piece jig saw puz
zle which reminded him of home. It
was a picture of a columned man
sion with live oaks surrounding it. It
was only a quarter and we thought
it would provide him with some
entertainment, so we bought it.
When we got home Thomas
cleared off the coffee table and
began to pull out puzzle pieces. To
his delight (and mine) about one
third of the puzzle was already
together. He quickly laid out the
pieces and began to work. It wasn’t
too long, (minutes) that he grew
tired of not finding any pieces that
fit and went on to other things. Now
I must admit that I am not very
good with puzzles, so for days the
puzzle sat unattended on the table.
Coverdell in dispute with Kennedy over health care
By Paul Coverdell
U.S. Senator
U.S. Senator Paul Coverdell (R-
Ga.) charged Senator Ted Kennedy
(D-MA) with filibustering the
health care reform bill for calculat
ed political gain, while millions of
Americans are left without the
health care protection afforded by
the legislation.
“Sen. Kennedy often cites he’s
in his 80th day of filibuster on this
popular health care reform bill
because the conference report
might include Medical Savings
Accounts. He feels that is not the
right thing to do because it wasn’t
in the Senate version - although it
is in the House version. That is
what conference reports are all
about- to work out the differences
between House and Senate propos
als,” Sen. Coverdell said in a spe
cial orders speech from the Senate
floor.
Sen. Coverdell continued, “In
the Washington Post, an article
quotes David Nexon, who is Sen.
Kennedy’s health policy director,
‘lf it (the Kassebaum-Kennedy
Health Care bill) fails, just a nar
row political calculation, it helps
us, the Democratic side, more than
them, the Republican side, because
then we can credibly blame the
Republicans for killing it.’”
Further, Sen. Coverdell said
Kennedy’s delaying tactics are part
of a larger scheme to revive gov-,
emment-run health care.
“Another quote: ‘We’re going to
get this done and we’re going to
keep coming back at it. If we can
get a big Democratic sweep of the
House and the Senate, we’ll get
single payer (health insurance).’
That means government run health
care. Who said that? The senior
Senator from Massachusetts,” said
Sen. Coverdell.
“It is getting more and more
clear as to why this filibuster con
tinues. The Clinton Administration
and Democrats want to stall the bill
in Congress, and hope that the
American people will once again
change the balance here in
Washington. Then, they can get
back to pursuing their ultimate goal
of a national government run health
care program with massive new
taxes to run it and an opportunity
for the government to be expanded
beyond 50 percent of the American
economy. It has been the intent of
the other side to shut this Congress
down and deprive Republicans of
any accomplishments,” Senator
Coverdell concluded.
In addition to the MSA plan,
opposed by Senator Kennedy,
which would make insurance more
affordable by eliminating the front
end deductible and the back end
co-payment, the bill would also
provide for:
Then my new son-in-law came over
and started working on the puzzle.
Being a carpenter he just
seemed to know how things fit
together and made some real
progress. We could see the sem
blance of a picture taking shape.
When he left, I concluded that I
should give the puzzle a try. I
worked for days and hours meticu
lously studying each piece and
searching for just the right piece for
the particular spot that was missing.
Progress was slow but steady. I
counted comers, compared colors,
and did ail the intellectual things I
thought you had to do to put a puz
zle together. Occasionally my son
would come by and say, “When is it
going to be finished so we can put it
on my wall Daddy?” This did little
to speed up the process. Each day I
would get stuck trying to find one
particular piece and would confide
to my wife that there had to be puz
zle pieces missing. I believed some
one with sinister intent had donated
the puzzle, deliberately removed
pieces and was now gleefully
laughing, thinking of the sucker
who would buy a used puzzle. My
wife would then come over and in
about 30 seconds or less find the
piece that I had been looking hours
for in vain. She would look at me
with the sweetest expression and
smile, as I shook my head and
determined that there was a reason I
was not a puzzle person.
I finally had the puzzle down to
about one hundred pieces and was
stumped yet again in about three
places. It was getting late and I
announced that at least three pieces
- Small employer pooling to
reduce the costs to small business
people when buying group insur
ance for their employees;
- 80 percent tax deductibility
for health insurance purchased by
the self-employed (up from today’s
30 percent deductibility);
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FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS - Wedne.day, July 17,1996
were missing and that Thomas was
going to be disappointed. My wife
sat down and for the first time said,
“Let me give it a try.” I looked on in
stifled amusement as she was just
picking up pieces at random and
began turning them this way and
that, seeing if they would fit. I
thought to myself, she’s not even
analyzing the shapes of each piece.
She’ll never get anywhere with this.
My amusement turned to
absolute wonderment as she began
to rapidly put the remaining pieces
together. With seemingly no
thought her hands sped across the
puzzle rapidly trying pieces here
and there and was succeeding.
What had taken me literally hours,
she was completing in minutes. My
amusement changed to respect and
I commented on how she could do
that without the painstaking con
centration it required of me. She
commented, “You just have to do it.
You don’t have to think about it.”
Suddenly the differences inherent in
each of our personalities were obvi
ous. My wife was the doer. I was
the thinker, and my son was the
acquirer. I joined in as the pieces
began to number only four or five.
And then there was one piece
remaining. The problem was, how
ever, there were two spaces left. I
immediately began to think of the
evil person who would donate a
puzzle with a missing piece. Then I
began to think of the piece we had
recovered from our dog’s mouth
and wondered if he had consumed
the missing piece. My wife and I
scoured the room for that missing
piece to no avail. She, always the
- Portability or guaranteed cov
erage for workers who leave one
job and move to another or who
lose their jobs;
- Penalty-free IRA withdrawals
for large medical expenses and for
the unemployed to pay health
insurance premiums.
Phil JHFI
optimist said, “Maybe you could
make the missing piece from some
thing.” I was not so optimistic. We
both began to think how our son
would take the news and realizing
there was nothing we could do went
to bed.
The next morning familiar foot
steps were heard upstairs and then
Thomas bounded downstairs glee
fully shouting, “ I found the miss
ing piece!” “Where?” I inquired. “I
found it right on the puzzle itself
and put it in.” And indeed he had. I
forgave the dog and the anonymous
donor immediately. After reflecting
for a while I realized that the puzzle
had taught us all some important
lessons.
We all approach life from our
own point of view. We all try to put
the puzzle together in our own way.
And while each way is different,
there’s a place for doers and
thinkers in the web of life. All of us
contributed to the puzzle, some in
small ways, and others in large
ways. Just as all of us, young and
old, reflective and impulsive,
patient and impatieht, contribute to
this wonderful thing called life.
Now that’s a lot of entertainment
and education for a quarter. Don’t
you agree?
While Sen. Kennedy is holding
up the health care reform bill based
on his opposition to MSAs, other
Democrats including Senate
Minority Leader Tom Daschle and
House Minority Leader Dick
Gephardt have previously support
ed Medical Savings Accounts.
PAGE 9A