Category: Feel Good Story

April Fool’s Day

Believe it or not, April Fools, which is an unofficial holiday celebrated on April 1st, has been around for hundreds of years and is observed across the world by playing pranks or jokes on an unassuming person. This is usually followed by yelling “April Fools” when the prank has been executed. You may not get this unless you speak French, but I found an article on History.com that explains that the origins of April Fools potentially dates back to when France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Those who were behind the times and still celebrated the New Year during the last week of March/first week of April were considered “April Fools” and would often have pranks played on them, such as sticking paper fish on their backs. This is why in French, these folks would be called “poisson d’avril,” which would have been nice to know when I was a kid. But I digress…

I thought that today, instead of a top-heavy post with tons of information, I’d keep things light and share some of the pranks I’ve had played on me through the decades. I can honestly admit that I was never one to play the pranks, myself. I usually found myself being on the receiving end. So without further ado, here are some of the top pranks I’ve had played on me by others…

Years ago, I was a manager for a fast-food chain and was working a tandem shift with another manager through a reasonably busy dinner period. Some of the younger staff knew me as an easy-going supervisor and had no qualms about pranking me. At one point, I get told that the employee at the drive thru window badly needed change for the customer currently at her window. They said it was a rush, since it was holding up the line. I responded accordingly and ran down the drive thru hallway, which my loyal staff had sprinkled with floor soap (without the water). The result was my so-called “no slip” shoes sending me careening down the hallway and slamming into a wall, with half a dozen teenagers laughing hysterically as I picked myself up. I thought having them mop up the soap would have been deserved justice, but they considered it a small price to pay for the laughs they got.

Some time ago, I was working at my computer and I had my supervisor come running past me while strapping on his gear saying, “Come on, Shawn! We have an emergency, we gotta go!” I jumped out of my seat, grabbed my coat and slammed my arm through the sleeve only to be rewarded by a showering spray of shredded paper flying out of the hand-hole and littering the floor. My co-workers dropped their panicked facade and doubled over laughing, once again making me the butt of the joke. Don’t even get me started on how my field coach used to throw a quick squirt of pepper spray into my morning coffee when I wasn’t looking…

There’s a lot more, but some of it isn’t suitable for print and some are rather embarrassing. I know, I know… That’s probably the good stuff you’d love to ACTUALLY hear about. But I also want to keep this post reasonably short. The point is, I’ve never really been much of one for playing pranks, but they can be fun in the right context. The important thing is to make sure you do nothing that has the potential to cause damage or injure anyone. And if playing pranks on your co-workers, be sure to keep it appropriate to the work environment AND the person you’re doing it on. We don’t all have the same sensibilities… ☯

A Little Something To Inspire…

I usually write my posts ad nauseam, and often require a number of edits to eliminate them being twice as long as they are once they’re posted. Once in a while, I like to post something that simply to look at, without all the necessary background, citations and references. So, here’s what I found last week while randomly surfing the web…

I forget exactly where I found this little gem, but I’ve seen it floating around in a few places. What I love about this photo is the absolute look of intensity and determination on the kid’s face, despite the fact he’s tethered to what appears to be an oxygen tank. I’m ignoring the fact that he appears to be one belt shy of black, despite his young age. Let’s not go there.

But it goes a long way towards showing how much determination can pay off in the long run, and the fact that motivation has to come from within. This little guy reminds me of myself when I was younger. All guts and determined to live and grow stronger, despite the pitfalls and medical challenges that life threw at me. As long as you keep fighting, may lose some battles but eventually you’ll win the war. ☯

Two Strikes, You’re Out…

I think it’s a pretty fair assumption to say that war is a horrible thing. Although will will, by definition be a winning side and a losing side, I think we can all agree that everyone loses when war becomes the only viable option. It should be obvious that I would oppose war, given that it kind of goes against the whole “don’t spread suffering” thing that we Buddhist likes to tell people. But in an effort to let go of this morning’s sarcasm (like I could ever do that), there have been countless wars throughout human history; many of which we don’t even know about as they haven’t been covered by mainstream media.

Every war and/or battle has its horror and losses, but few have resonated with the world quite like the dropping of the atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. Japan has always held a special place in my heart, as I’ve grown up and been exposed to its history and culture almost more so than my own. And once in a blue moon, while researching one thing I’ll stumble upon something else. This brings me to Mr. Tsutomu Yamaguchi.

I was following a routine for a while where I would write about an influential martial artist that either inspired me through their films or impressed me and drew me to the martial arts through their skills. But it dawns on me that the martial arts incorporates a lot of values that are rarely discussed. Things such as indomitable will, perseverance and survival instinct. And those values can be inspiring as well. Yamaguchi’s story resonates with me, because it shows how indomitable a person can really be, even when faced with lethal devastation.

To provide a bit of background, Yamaguchi was employed by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as an engineer. On August 6th, 1945 he unfortunately found himself in Hiroshima when “Little Boy” was dropped. He had been in Hiroshima for a period of time on business, and was a only a couple of miles away from the spot that Little Boy exploded. He suffered several injuries, including temporary blindness, ruptured eardrums and radiation burns. But he managed to make his way to a bomb shelter and take refuge. He spent the night in this shelter before returning to Nagasaki the following day, which is where he lived.

Now, I want all of you to think about this for a second… A massive explosion takes place, miles away from where you’re standing. Not only does it still manage to knock you off your feet, but you find yourself temporarily blind, deaf and burned. But you still have the sheer strength of will and wantonness to survive and crawl yourself to a shelter. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty badass, all things considered. I don’t know if I’d have that much fortitude and I think that a good percentage of people in today’s society would likely curl up into the fetal position ad wait to be rescued. I’ve seen some people do that for non-lethal injuries. But I digress…

On August 7th, 1945 Yamaguchi returned to Nagasaki and on the morning of August 9th, he reported to work. Are you kidding me??? I’ve seen coworkers of mine call in sick because their SPOUSE didn’t get enough sleep but this guy survives a nuclear bomb drop and goes to work just over 48 hours afterwards, despite being injured? Like I said… badass! Anyway, to add salt to the wound, Yamaguchi was at work describing the Hiroshima blast to his boss when “Fat Boy” was dropped on Nagasaki. Once again, he found himself at a couple miles away from the blast and survived once again.

Despite being present at both atomic bombings, Yamaguchi went on to live a long and reasonably healthy life before succumbing to stomach cancer and passing away in 2010 at 93 years old. He kind of reminds me of my grandfather, with the exception that my grandfather was a soldier when exposed to war. The takeaway is that Yamaguchi was an engineer, a civilian and the unfortunate reality is that the innocent always pay a cost when wars are fought.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s story is inspiring to me because he continued to push on and fight, despite the deadly adversity he faced throughout that period in history. He was a husband and father of two daughters and live nearly a century. His will to survive was incredible and if nothing else, the man deserves a tip of the cap for his work ethic. I’m pretty certain that if an atomic bomb got dropped in Regina today, I likely wouldn’t be reporting to work a couple days later and discussing it with my boss as though it was nothing.

There were apparently many people to survive both bombings, but Yamaguchi became the only one recognized by his government as having done so. Either way, he may not know of the impact and influence he’s had on the world as a result of his will to survive. But he definitely inspired me. It’s important to keep on fighting the good fight and survive no matter the obstacles you face. You’ll be all the better for it. ☯

Virtual Karate Dojo

It should come as no surprise that just about everything has moved to some sort of online forum in the past year. In my household, we’ve even started doing some shopping and Costco orders online and had them delivered; something we had never done prior to the pandemic. Considering that most things have been slowly moving towards online options in the past decade or so, the pandemic has been that last little push that was needed to force us to do everything else without face-to-face-contact. This week, the karate club I train with started having classes on Zoom.

Our Zoom Meeting Dojo (That’s me in the blue!)

It was a strange and different experience, that much I can say. As you can see from the image above, we all met via Zoom and took instruction from Master Harding as he guided us through an hour’s workout. It was interesting to see everyone who had made do with whatever space they had available in living rooms, basements and home dens. I was among the lucky ones that had a large, open space to work with that included my black, foam workout mats. But as I’ve written in previous posts, karate doesn’t require much more than a four by six-foot space to train in. And the group proved that, over the sixty minutes that followed. ☯

International Women’s Day

You all know that I have a tendency to rag on most of these modern, Westernized holidays. Especially when you get these ridiculous ones, like National Donut Day, Coffee Day, Beer Day and Poutine Day… Granted, I LOVE all of those things, so I’m more than willing to observe such days, despite the frivolousness of them. So it dawns on me that it’s SUPER easy to observe a day dedicated to the aspect of my life I love the most: my wife. Today is International Women’s Day.

International Women’s Day actually came into existence in 1911 in Canada, and is observe in order to celebrate all things woman! And there’s a lot! I’ve been lucky enough to grow up, work and befriend so many strong, capable women in my life. And even luckier still to have found and married the best one. In the daily grind of our lives, it can be easy to forget or miss just how much the women in our lives do for us. I, for one, am grateful that I found a woman who shows me every day that despite the lonely nature of life, I never have to face anything alone. ☯

How I Discovered I Had Type-1 Diabetes

I’ve been a huge fan of Cobra Kai since it was released to YouTube and I was absolutely over the moon when it came to Netflix and even more so with the release of Season 3. About a year ago, I scribe to Mary Mouser’s channel and discovered that she was Type-1 Diabetic as well, and she had made a rather heartfelt and emotional video about how she was diagnosed and how’s it’s affected her life. In that spirit, I decided to do the same and the video below explains the when and how that I was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes in 1982, and the impact it’s had on me. Enjoy! ☯

The Perfect Hemoglobin A1C

One of the biggest challenges faced by Type-1 Diabetics is maintaining a good A1C level. I’ve been struggling with it for most of my life. In fact, in 2014 I started with an A1C of about 8.4%, which is a level that’s considered to be the beginning of a dangerous level. In this video, I explain exactly what an A1C is and the fact that for the first time in over 15 years, I achieved my goal of dropping below 7.0% with a result of 6.9%! ☯

Happy Valentine’s Day ❤️

Happy Valentine’s Day! Hopefully amidst the state of the world, y’all have someone special to curl up under a blanket and stay warm with. And if you don’t, remember that loving oneself is just as important and something special can still be done. Despite my typical habit of being sarcastic and making puns, I genuinely mean that and am not trying to be lewd or suggestive. Here are a few quick facts about the origins of this particular day:

Valentine’s Day is based on Valentinus, a martyred saint that is thought to have defied the Roman Emperor by continuing to perform marriages in secret for young lovers after they were outlawed;

Some historical writings suggest as many as three different men who may have been the actual “Valentine,” who were all martyred and executed;

One of the stories depicts Valentine being imprisoned and falling in love with his jailor’s daughter. When Valentine sent her a note prior to his execution, he signed it “From your Valentine,” which is the popular phrase still used today.

I’ll keep this one short and I don’t have any sources to cite. These are just facts that I’ve read about throughout the years that have stuck with me. There are even articles that explain how Valentine’s Day was created by the Christian church to cover up and outlawed pagan holiday called “Lupercalia.” But I ain’t gonna get into any of that.

In modern days, Valentine’s Day has become heavily commercialized, with the sale of cards, chocolate and various “romantic” trinkets becoming a huge cash cow for retail locations. I’ve always been a fond believer that if you’re genuinely in love, you don’t need one specific day of the year to express it. Such a thing can be done on any day of the year and in fact, should be done all days of the year. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some chocolate to go eat… ☯

My New YouTube Channel

Hey folks! I know I’m not in the habit of drafting two posts in a day and it’s a bit late in the game to be posting a second one, but I’ve decided to put my face on camera and started my own YouTube channel. I only have one video on there, which is scheduled to go live in about ten minutes. But I’m hoping to use the video aspect to discuss and demonstrate things that are a bit difficult to explain with words and photos. If y’all wouldn’t mind visiting the channel and clicking those little “like” and “follow” buttons, I can start pumping out videos in tandem with my blog posts. For any one interested, here’s the link to the YouTube channel.

Check out this first video, which I recoded tonight…

Hopefully, it doesn’t bore everyone any worse than my long-winded posts usually do. I look forward to sharing more in the future. If anyone has any thoughts on something I should be posting in video format as opposed to in written form, please let me know in the comments. ☯

Family Doesn’t Always Share Blood

I think one of the more important things we learn in life is that family isn’t always a blood relative. I can certainly attest to the fact that I’ve met a number of people who have had a profound effect on my life and have become family to me, without having any sort of blood relation to me. The best and most obvious example of this would be my wife. She’s family, and I couldn’t imagine what life would be like without her in the daily grind of my life. But often there are people who introduce themselves into our existence unintentionally, and leave a lasting impression.

A couple of years before I started karate, I met Guillaume (we just call him “Guy”). Guy was the same age as me, in the same class at school and lived in the middle of my Point “A” to Point “B” walk to school. We got to know each other reasonably well, and started befriending each other. Although we had some things in common, Guy was a bit of a complemented reflection of me. I was short, he was tall. I was stocky, he was thin. He had an obvious athleticism and was actually able to participate in sports, both at school and intramurally. But he also had a deep curiosity for science and the way things worked; a fact that was made obvious from the time he somehow made an incendiary powder from a kid’s chemistry set. But I digress…

I think one of the things that always drew us to befriend each other was the fact that both of us were outcasts and were picked on and bullied by a lot of people at school who considered themselves better and “cooler” than we were. Back then, there was no such thing as cyberbullying or using words to inflict harm, not that I’m belittling people who feel targeted now. But during my childhood, being bullied meant you were beaten to a pulp by one and/or many assailants. It seemed less prominent with him; maybe because he could walk both sides of the line with the sports side of the social circle and outside of it.

It wasn’t until the late 80’s that I realized he had a lot in common as well. We were sitting in his living room, eating chips and watching a martial arts movie (he was eating chips. I was sitting there snack-less). I had been dabbling in the martial arts for a couple of years at this point and had tried a couple of different schools. Nothing suited my health and purpose. That’s when Guy told me he studied karate. As was my custom, I started asking some key questions such as why he did it, what was required and why I had never seen him use it. He explained that martial arts didn’t require strength or speed, going in. It simply required commitment, dedication and the willingness to concentrate. He went on to explain that I had never seen him use his karate, not even in a bullying situation, because if he harmed someone else using the skills he was taught, he would be no better than they were.

To be honest, I thought he was full of shit and didn’t know karate. I figured he was just talking big and had actually never studied the martial arts. I mean, we were just about ten years old, full of pomp, piss and vinegar. Kids often say the damnedest things, and most often to impress their peers. I thought nothing more on it, until a later time when I called him on it and he challenged me to a “friendly” sparring match… Then he kicked the living shit out of me. Keeping in mind that my martial skills were far from their peak, I still had some rudimentary martial arts skills and should have been able to hold my own. That is, against an untrained opponent who had never actually done karate. This was obviously not the case with Guy.

A few weeks later when I was contemplating the next step in my martial arts journey, I considered the fact that Guy seemed not only skilled and competent, but there seemed to be almost a flow to his movement when we sparred. It seemed effortless. I decided that it might be worth looking into, so I called him. You know, since we’re talking about a time when texting wasn’t a thing and you actually had to dial someone on a shared, home phone and hope that your parents weren’t listening in. I called him up and explained that I was interested in trying out at his karate school. I asked him the usual questions, tuition cost, days and time, etc…

Curiously, he’d say “hold on a second” and talk to someone off the line after every question before providing a response. It didn’t dawn on me at the time that he was asking all these questions to someone who was there in his house. I would come to find out the following week that his instructor was none other than his father, my Sensei. In some ways, a lot of ways, if I had never befriended Guy, I never would have found Uechi Ryu Karate. As Jean de la Fontaine once said, “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

From that point on, Guy and I became brothers. We grew up together and progressed together through the many challenges that young life threw at us, including karate. And of course, we enjoyed many more intense sparring matches that became more and more evenly matched as the years and my skills progressed. I was reminded of this last week, when Guy wished me a Happy New Year and sent me this photo:

The photo is dark and old, and I believe it’s from 2000 or 2001, but I’m actually wearing a shirt, tie and vest as we were going to a formal dance. I had my back to him he had my current girlfriend at the time hold a camera at the ready and asked me to turn around. When I did, he delivered a roundhouse kick to my face! Ah, brotherly love! I like to think that the fact I got my hands up in the blink of an eye before the kick was delivered speaks to the level of intensity I had back then, but he rang my bell pretty good.

We’ve grown somewhat apart in the past decade. We both got married and built families of our own. And of course, the fact I live on the opposite end of the country now kind of prevents even the occasional visit. But as is evidenced by the obvious smile on both our faces in that photo (mine might be pain, I honestly can’t remember), the brotherhood and connection will never be lost. And such is the way of it with family. The years come and the years go, but the memories remain. ☯