Keep Your Hands Out of Your Pockets!

When I was in college preparing to be a teacher, we were required to visit schools and observe real-life classroom instruction. I remember visiting a shop class in a school just south of Auburn. The instructor was an older gentlemen not far from retirement with a lot of hard-earned wisdom. I never forgot his instruction to his students, “When we go into the shop, I better not see any of you with your hands in your pockets. You never go on a worksite with your hands in your pockets. Be ready to work and be ready to protect yourself. You hear me! Keep your eyes open and keep your hands out of your pockets! I better not catch any of you with your hands in your pockets!”

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Staying Warm (An Analogy)

I was raised in a farmhouse built in the late forties. When I was a teenager, my room was in the very back of the house equipped with a space-heater. I preferred to sleep without the heater. Fortunately, my mother was a quilter, so there was an unlimited supply of quilts. When it was very cold, I slept with a big pile of quilts on me. I felt so warm and cozy under all those quilts. On a rainy winter morning with the rain making music on the metal roof, it was difficult to crawl out and hit the cold floor.

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