Saturday

Charging the Human Battery Not long ago, I received a letter from one of our customers.

She said...

"Mac, I love getting your newsletter and had to send you this beautiful story. I don't know who wrote it, but I hope you can find a way to share it with your customers."

I did love it, and thought it would be a great ending to my book titled,Charging the Human Battery . It's called: 3,900 Saturdays.

An excerpt from Charging the Human Battery by Mac Anderson The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital," he continued; "Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail," he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.

It was nice to meet you Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 year old man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast."

"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile.

"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."

What I love about stories is that they can speak to our soul. This is only one of many great stories in my book, Charging the Human Battery...50 Ways to Motivate Yourself.

Charging the Human Battery

Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless. ~Bill Watterson

Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them. ~John Shirley

There aren't enough days in the weekend. ~Rod Schmidt

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend. ~Chuck Palahniuk

The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Why wait for the weekend to have fun ~Loesje, loesje.org

Only Robinson Crusoe had everything done by Friday. ~Author Unknown

Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy. You've had about seven hours of sleep since Friday. No wonder you feel that lost sensation. You're sunk from a riot of relaxation. ~Ogden Nash, about weekends

Every man has a right to a Saturday night bath. ~Lyndon B. Johnson

Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through. ~Anthony Burgess

Of all the days that's in the week I dearly love but one day And that's the day that comes betwixt A Saturday and Monday. ~Henry Carey

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. ~Joseph Addison

Most people are in a factory from nine till five. Their job may be to turn out 263 little circles. At the end of the week they're three short and somebody has a go at them. On Saturday afternoons they deserve something to go and shout about. ~Rodney Marsh, 1969

Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend. ~Zenna Scha

There is little chance that meteorologists can solve the mysteries of weather until they gain an understanding of the mutual attraction of rain and weekends. ~Arnot Sheppard

Weekends don't pay as well as weekdays but at least there's football. ~S.A. Sachs

How pleasant is Saturday night, When I've tried all the week to be good, And not spoke a word that was bad, And obliged everyone that I could. ~Nancy Sproat

I hate weekends because there is no stock market. ~Rene Rivkin

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still. ~Jean Rhys

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends. ~Richard Rorty

Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you. ~Ogden Nash

Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on. ~Ed Howe

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