Friday, March 26, 2010

Making Memories, Instead of Filling the Landfill


History, as I was growing up, was a bad word. It meant that I was going to have to learn a lot of dates, names, places and a bunch of other stuff that did not pertain to anything now.

WOW, was I wrong!

History is our connection with the past. You’ve heard it said that we are to learn from our mistakes... Well, how do we learn from them if we only look at the present and forget the past? There is a lot in our pasts that is good and should not be forgotten.
We all tend to take time to reflect on our pasts. It may be over a cup of coffee with your Dad, at a baseball game with your college roommate, shucking peas with your grandmother, or at the dinner table surrounded by your family. Where ever or when ever, we all do it.

Many of the events of our lives that we tend to remember are times of conflict. Such as vacations when the family car got a flat on the way to Disney, the Thanksgiving turkey that burned and forced you to eat at Wendy’s, or the time that your canoe flipped over and you lost you week’s supply of granola bars… Whatever it is, it is a memory of the past.
So, go make a memory instead of filling the landfills. Instead of getting Christmas gifts, try something our family has been doing for quite a few years now…hold a Cousin’s Christmas. Cousin’s Christmas is a time where we bring the cousins all out for a night they will remember for the years to come. We have been to the Boston Tea Party, Old Sturbridge Village, and several other great places. This past year, we froze while skating on the Boston Frog Pond, ate dinner at a quaint Irish pub, and ended our night remembering past years over some DELICIOUS pastry from Mike’s…

Another thing my family’s been trying to do is have a seasonal gathering for all of my employees/co-workers at our home. We share an evening of memories of the past. We have learned quite a bit about each other’s memories over the past several years and in doing so have created some of our own.

We have also learned much about the people we serve in our business. We love meeting with them and working through things that need to be repaired or dealt with. We have learned that:
• Water is the number one thing that we have to contend with.
• All clients have basically the same needs; the biggest is that they want to know that they are heard and valued.

• Snow plows are never on time.
• Plumbers get paid good money.
• Young people have no fear of computers and can do more for the look of a newsletter than I ever thought possible.
• Older people bring stability to all of our lives.
• There is no such thing as a bad pet, only bad pet owners.
• There is always one in the crowd who believes the rules do not pertain to them.
Memories are what last, not the stuff. Go ahead, try and do something out of the box. Who knows, you may learn something you never knew about even those closest to you. I know I have!