What is Your Talent

Coach John Wooden once said, “Talent is God-given; be thankful, fame is man-given; be humble, and conceit is self-given, be careful.” We all have some type of talent, whether it is something great or small. Some people like my great-aunt Ruth Rugg could grow anything. She had a knack of transforming just a clipping from one plant and growing another. She could handle honey-bee swarms with her bare hands. My grandmother Rebecca Miner sewed her kids clothing, quilts, and fashioned many of her children’s gifts. My grandmother Anna Kalp Beck was a prayer warrior although she was small in stature; she stood tall in God’s eyes. Many people have a talent to grow wonderful gardens. I’ve helped friends with canning and freezing their harvest. I have a niece whose talent is her imagination. As a child she would sing and dance her way to stardom in her mom’s kitchen bow window as Sherry Osmond.

My brother Ken has a knack for hunting. Hopefully I’ll be able to harvest some venison as well. I have a multitude of minor talents, none exceptional, but they keep me from being bored with myself. I’ve tried to paint and found watercolors are the hardest, unable to cover mistakes with another coat of paint. I like to write poetry, but I‘m too finicky with syllable count and rhyming. Verses are often too stiff. I did find my niche writing stories from my past or sharing my thoughts, to amuse myself. I don’t say that I’m a good writer, but I enjoy being a wordsmith.

My wife used to say that I was “mechanically retarded.” I would tell her I prefer to be called “Mechanically dyslexic.” Electrical issues and plumbing problems are difficult for me. High school geometry was a bane for me. The teacher said, “Geometry is common sense,” but it made no sense to me. I couldn’t figure out which rule to use when and apply it to find an answer. That may be why my father-in-law Bud Morrison said about his son David Morrison and me, “Give them two boards and some nails and they’re dangerous.”

Those words may be close to true. I built an addition onto my mobile home and had one spot that leaked water between the trailer and the add-on. Try as I might I couldn’t stop it with the normal remedies. I put on my thinking cap and used some heavy denim material from a pair of old jeans, I stuffed it into a bucket of gasoline-thinned roof tar. After several hours, I took the tar impregnated material and spread it over the leak, then coated it with another layer of tar. Voila, no more leak.