Author: Andy Smallman

I’m in the midst of facilitating my most popular online kindness class, the Practice of Kindness. It’s week 4 of the 10 week class and the theme this week is to do something kind for an acquaintance. Each Tuesday I sent out a link intending to provide the class participants a little inspiration around the current week’s theme. Today I sent out a little essay I wrote. I’m proud of it and encourage you to take a look.

The essay is called “Links in a Chain” and in it I refer to each of us as a link. The chain is humanity. I suggest that we have great impact on the chain, more so to those closest to us.

What good thing can you do as soon as you get up from reading this post?

Dan Gillmore, this post is for you.

Back in 1975, I was a high bidder on an original 1955 Topps hockey card of Lorne “Gump” Worsley, one a lot like what I’ve used as today’s photo. I was 12 years-old and I bid on the card through a magazine of sports auctions called “The Trader Speaks.” I was first going to bid $1.00 but my brothers, who were helping me, said that’s what other interested bidders would think and suggested I bid $1.01. But then they said that $1.01 was what other bidders would think so they said I should bid $1.02. This went on and on until I finally settled on my bid, $1.12.

I won the auction, my first as a hockey card collector.

On eBay over the weekend I saw that a reprint of that card was up for auction. I got it today for 99 cents. So while my original from 1955 was long ago sold and used to help finance Melinda’s and my first house, I’ll soon have a reprint. Maybe I’ll use it as a bookmark. Certainly it’s part of a great story.

I decided to pretend I was perfectly well this morning and went for a 30 minute jog, my first run in two weeks. 9 hours later, I’m coughing more than I was yesterday, although I admit getting the fresh air did a world of good for my disposition.

To ease my coughing consternation, I located a link that is allowing me to watch tonight’s Vancouver Canucks hockey game. Nothing like a hockey game to cure what ails you, right? Too bad the Canucks fell behind by two goals in the first five minutes…

Still, I’m reminded of one of my favorite nights from the sabbatical, one I dubbed Hockey Night in France. That recollection is also good for what ails me.

Melinda & I are both still recovering from the flu and are going a bit stir-crazy (maybe that’s a sign of recovery?). Part of my stir-craziness was some Internet-surfing involving hockey cards, a big part of my childhood. I got to thinking of this man I used to trade with who also was a gifted artist, a man named Carlton McDiarmid, who illustrated some pretty impressive postcards for the Hockey Hall of Fame.

So I Googled Carlton’s name and found an obituary for him. Of course, I was sad to learn that he had died, but I was also excited to learn that he had been a goal judge at the Montreal Forum! He had never told me that.

Carlton’s and my biggest trade came when I was a senior in high school in 1981 and home for a couple of weeks with bronchitis. I traded him a slew of hockey postcards for a set of 1951 junior hockey cards that were pretty darn cool. Of course, my cards are long gone, sold in 1992. The most sought after card in that set, a perfect one of Jacques Plante, photo here, sold in auction last summer for something like $4000.

Taking one last day to recover, I dropped Ella at school and made a quick stop at Safeway on my way back home. Wanting something easy to fix for lunch, I glanced through the frozen food section. My eyes found this particular item, reminding me of when we were in Italy and I cited as many food items as I could that had “ella” in their names.

I promise, I saw nothing like this product in Italy, which I did NOT buy (in case you were wondering).

That’s Ella in today’s photo, a picture from maybe 12-13 years ago. We were inside what she called “the ice cream store,” awaiting the making of her ice cream cone.

I chose the photo for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t want to take a new photo tonight. And two, Ella’s thumbs-up is to indicate that I’m feeling better.

That’s right! My fever has broken and I’m starting to feel like my old self again. I’ll take one more day of recovery tomorrow, have the weekend, and plan to be good as new on Monday.

It’s a multi-part prescription: Rest, Plenty of fluids, Chicken soup, and an episode or two of The Rockford Files.

That’s what’s carrying me over tonight, Rockford. At 8pm I have a fever of 101 degrees and enough body aches to allow me to imagine I might have been in the ring with Ali. I’m tired yet about all I’ve done the last 4 days is lay in bed, mostly sleeping, sometimes drowsing.

Thank goodness I’ve got Jimbo for company.

On a side note, are you seeing ads on this blog? I paid to have them removed but they are showing up when I post. Seems I might have to re-up that ad-free payment…

I’ve not been this sick in a long time, acknowledging that one’s present illness often feels like the “worst” one. But this is tough stuff. This illness, combined with our Internet connection at home being out for over 24 hours and my streak of posting to the blog every day for 936 days has been broken. And, frankly, last night, when I knew it was happening, I didn’t even care. Melinda offered to figure a way to post on my behalf and I declined. One idea involved us parking near a Starbucks and logging on to their free Wifi from the backseat. I wasn’t up to that kind of an adventure but I credit Melinda for trying.

What does Melinda get for her thoughtful efforts? Now she is not feeling well, either.

Fever. Painful cough. Sneezing. Runny nose. Aches. So describes the last day plus for me. And we still don’t have our regular Internet connection back, although I give credit to a tech person who managed to figure out how to get my laptop online.

That doesn’t fully make sense to me, that my laptop can get online but not any other devices. It, apparently, has something to do with Domain Name Servers.

I had such high hopes for this three day weekend and it’s been nothing like I planned.

Melinda thinks we are being communicated to by some force in the universe today. She says she isn’t sure of the message, but it may have something to do with learning how dependent we’ve become on technology. You see, at 9:30 this morning, while she was away at a workout class and I was home online, the Internet went out. And after 2 hours of troubleshooting with our ISP, it’s still out and may not be back for a while. Given I had just posted some new ads on CraigsList and intended to get caught up on school email over the holiday weekend, I’m frustrated right now.

Perhaps that’s the lesson. To practice patience or to focus on setting better priorities.

Add in that the illness I hinted at in last night’s posting has now hit me harder and my crankiness is increasing.

Maybe I’m supposed to go to bed. Although if that’s the lesson, then what am I doing at Zoka’s, a coffeehouse not far from home with “free” Wifi?