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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, in the month of September I got to meet John Noble, Greg Grunberg, Michael Giacchino, AND Michael Emerson, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson I learned from one of my childhood pets.
Today’s Fun Fact: Today I’ll be taking a bit about sandstone, so let’s get ready by learning a bit more about this rock.
- Sandstone is a type of sedimentary rock.
- Sandstone has been used to make housewares since prehistoric time.
- Sandstone is a versatile building structure and has been used to construct buildings, statues, and fountains.
- Because sandstone is porous it can serve as a filter in nature by filtering out pollutants from running water.
- Brownstone, a type of sandstone, was used to build homes in certain areas after the Civil War.
What I Learned Yesterday
Our house is a pet free house. Outside of the few weeks where we had a fish living in a bowl on our kitchen bar, we’ve never had pets and we have no desire to ever have any pets. In fact, last year we dog sat my in-laws toy poodle for a few days and those days could not end fast enough. That dog crapped in nearly every room in our house and barked at me every time it saw me. It’s not like it hasn’t seen me for years when I visit my in-laws. I think it could tell that I didn’t want it in my house. Dogs are smart that way.
Please don’t misunderstand. I don’t dislike animals and I think animal abusers should be prosecuted to the full extent the law allows. It’s just that my wife and I have no desire for animals in our home (or backyard). The kids have occasionally asked for a pet, but they go to my in-laws house enough to get their dog fix over there.
Admittedly, I don’t really know why I feel this way about pets. From as long as I can remember until the day I left for college, we always had pets in our house growing up. In fact, we normally had lots of animals. We always had at least one cat (but normally 2 or 3 of them), one outside dog that was a spaniel or labrador variety, an inside dog that was a dachshund, and even other animals like rabbits. I never really had a bad experience with any of them, so I truly can’t point to a reason why I don’t want any of them…except that I don’t want to clean up after them when they do their business and I don’t want dog poop in my yard.
So I guess that means that my kids won’t be able to one day share a story with the world about what they learned from a pet. Oh well. Perhaps they will learn something from their pet-in-law. (is that thing?)
Between the age of 10 and 14, we lived in a house that sat on 5 acres located about 2 miles outside of the small town we lived in. For the most part, it was great. There was lots of room to run, explore, climb, throw, ride, and be a boy. It was good for our animals too.
Most dogs are fun animals. They are always happy to greet you, affectionate, smart, and like to play games. Of course, dogs also like to chase things. I mean, they like to chase frisbees, balls, chew toys, other animals, and even cars. Our dogs were no different. We would often out out to our front yard, which was about 3/4 the size of a football field, and hit a softball or baseball from one end to the other. Our dog would then go chase it down and bring it back. It was a fun game of fetch.
Sometimes when I was feeling a bit ornery, I would go down to the dirt road that ran in front of our house and instead of hitting baseballs or softballs, I would find some sandstone rocks to hit. Both the dog and I enjoyed this, but I must admit that I might have enjoyed it more than the dog did. Why? Well when you hit a sandstone rock with a baseball bat, the bat destroys the rock. The dog, Charlie, would take off running expecting to bring back a rock or ball. Instead, the rock was pulverized and there was nothing to retrieve. It sounds kind of mean, but the dog didn’t seem to mind. We played that game time and time again, and even though the dog never found anything to bring back, he always came back ready for me to hit it again.
This game was also more dangerous than hitting balls in the front yard because of the cars that would drive by. Now it was a dirt road and there were’t a lot of people that lived nearby, so there wasn’t a lot of danger from cars. So when a car started heading our way, I would hold Charlie to my side by his collar to prevent him from chasing or getting hit by any cars. However, one day Charlie got loose from my grip and tried to chase a car. He failed. He mistimed his attack and had no way of understanding the danger of the wheels. He took off too soon and ran right into the side of the car. The car was traveling slow, but it was still enough force to pull Charlie under the tire.
Charlie laid in the middle of the road yelping loudly and I did my best to comfort him and try to determine how badly he was injured. Then, with no warning, he stood up and ran as fast as he could toward the house. However, he didn’t stop at the house. He kept running across the 3 acre field that flanked the west side of our house, and into the woods that bordered the field. I ran after him as fast as I could and looked for him for a long time. There was no sign of him.
Later that night when my dad got home I told him what happened. Dad told me that animals can often sense when they are going to die and will sometimes run off to die alone. Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but it made sense at the time. Over the next few days we continued to look for Charlie and hope that he would return home, but that never happened. I finally came to the conclusion that Charlie did indeed run off to die.
Well, fortunately, that’s not the end of the story. That doesn’t mean this story has a happy ending. A couple of weeks later Charlie returned home and appeared to be in perfect health. Perhaps he just went off to heal.
After that day I don’t think I took Charlie down to the road to chase pulverized sandstones again. However, that doesn’t mean that Charlie learned to stay away from cars. Several months later Charlie disappeared. We searched for him, but again, we couldn’t find him. One day about a week later, one of our friends called to tell us that he was pretty sure he’d found Charlie. Sure enough, as it turned out, Charlie had been chasing cars again and had apparently been struck again. This time he crawled into a nearby culvert pipe and did, in fact, die from his wounds.
Here’s what I learned:
Sorry to end this story on a sad note, but it’s the truth of what happened. What’s also true is that we all do dumb stuff. We’re not that much different than Charlie. It’s easy to point fingers at other people and point out their flaws, but it’s often much harder to see our own shortcomings.
There are several hundred of you that listen to this podcast every single day. I’ve only ever met a few dozen of you. However, I can say with confidence that you suffer from the same type of blindness that I do. That is, I can’t see myself the way others do. Don’t get me wrong here. I am NOT saying that we need to focus more on what others think about us. In fact, I think we need to do less of that.
What I’m saying is that it’s hard for us to see the sandstones and cars in our own lives. Yet I am certain that you,just like me, are guilty of chasing after things that bring you no positive return on your effort and may even lead down a path of pain, destruction, or worse. It’s easy to point to things like drugs, alcohol, and porn addiction when considering this point, but those are not the only things we should look at.
Think with me for a moment. What are some other things that can lead to pain, destruction, and emptiness? Or think about it this way. What parts of your life are the most valuable? Are you giving those things positive attention or negative attention. Are you doing things to help those areas grow, or are you doing things that bring them harm?
Now, for me, I begin to see other things that fit into this picture. Do I really need to work 15 hours a day? Is that really helping my closest relationships? At what point is enough enough?
So maybe you’re unsure if you’re chasing sandstones or cars. How can you know? Most of us have probably already agreed that it’s hard to look objectively at our own lives. Well there is a tried and true method of discovery, and that is a concept called accountability. Talk to your spouse, close friend, parent, teacher, boss, or other trusted person in your life. Ask them to be honest and open. Be ready and willing to hear things that you don’t want to hear. But please understand that things shared with a heart of love and well-being only sting for a season, and most certainly carry much less pain sandstones or cars.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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