whatareyouthinking

Tripp was in a hospital room recovering from bunion surgery.  The man in the bed next to Tripp—who occupied the second bed—was suffering from a serious illness. 

A doctor was appointed to deliver some bad news to the man in the second bed, but he was very tired and confused from working many hours.   Therefore, the doctor accidentally spilled the beans to Tripp, saying, “Sir, I am sorry that I have to tell you this…but you have only two months left to live.” 

Tripp was stricken with grief about this news and went home from the hospital very sad.  Two months, two weeks, and two days later, Tripp was nearly dead when the phone rang in his home.  His wife answered solemnly but—after talking to the doctor—immediately leaped for joy. 

The priest who was by Tripp’s side asked his wife what the call was about.  She explained how the doctor had given the bad news to the wrong patient.  It wasn’t Tripp who was supposed to get the bad news—it was for the man next to him!  Tripp was going to be okay after all!

The doctor’s next call was to the man who had been in the bed next to Tripp—the patient suffering from the serious illness.  The doctor told him the news that he had initially given Tripp by accident. 

And about two months later, he died. 
 

Tripp and his wife were sitting on a bench at a local park.  His wife asked him to hold her purse while she went to use the rest room

“Can’t you just take it with you?”  Tripp questioned.  “If someone sees me sitting here with a purse, they might think it belongs to me!”

“No, I never take my purse to the Ladies Room,” his wife responded.  “But here, I will cover it for you so no one will see it.”  Then she took off her bright pink flowered sweatshirt and placed it over the purse. 

Tripp’s son drove his vehicle directly into a neighbor’s house.  Since the SUV was damaged beyond repair, Tripp contacted the insurance company seeking a settlement.

The claims adjuster informed Tripp that there was nothing he could do as the accident was clearly his son’s fault.

Tripp defended his son saying, “No ma’am, you don’t understand.  It was actually the house that hit my son’s car.”

When Tripp was younger, his grandmother gave him a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, saying, “This makes really good cookies!”

Tripp looked it over and decided it was a good recipe for making good cookies.  Now Tripp was young and couldn’t find or understand all of the ingredients to make the cookies himself.  But since his grandmother told him the recipe—and she made good cookies—Tripp concluded the recipe was also good.

One day, Tripp’s wife wanted to make some cookies for their guests.  Tripp said, “I have a great cookie recipe.”  So he shared his grandmother’s recipe with his wife.  Tripp’s wife thought that it sounded like a good recipe, but she ran out of time and had to go to the store instead in order to have cookies for that evening. 

Their guests liked the store-bought cookies and complemented Tripp’s wife on her choice.  But Tripp’s wife said, “I know a recipe for even better cookies!”  Then she shared Tripp’s grandmother’s cookie recipe with all of the guests.

A few days later, one of the guests saw her daughter about to make cookies and said, “This is the recipe you want to use to make cookies.  I understand this makes the best cookies.”  Since her daughter had already started her own batch of cookies, she set the recipe aside.  But she figured it must have been a good recipe—otherwise her mother would not have said so.

Although Tripp’s wife’s guest’s daughter did not have an opportunity to make the recipe herself, she entered it into a recipe contest.  The judges of the contest did not have time to actually prepare all of the recipes that were submitted, so they had to judge many of them on spelling and grammar alone.  As a result, Tripp’s wife’s guest’s daughter won first prize and her recipe was published in a major food magazine.  Many of the magazine’s subscribers liked the looks of the recipe and passed it on to their friends (though they themselves did not yet get a chance to try the recipe).

Some of the readers of the magazine wanted to make some cookies and actually followed through with the recipe. They prepared the ingredients as indicated by the recipe.  The cookies turned out terrible and many were embarrassed before their guests!  Some of them wrote to the editors of the magazine and to the judges expressing their disgust. 

To this the editor and the judges defended, “It was a good recipe—you must not have followed it correctly!”             

Tripp was physically fit throughout his early years.  His favorite workout was the bench press.  Before he got too busy with the demands of work and family life, he was able to bench an impressive 235 pounds—not too bad for a young athlete.

Shortly after he married, he told his wife about how he needed to get back to the gym.  He said, “I used to bench close to 250 pounds you know!”  But children shortly followed and Tripp was unable to resume working out at that time. 

Eventually, his son became of age and was looking for some workout tips from his father.  Finally he asked, “How much weight did you bench when you were working out, Dad?”

“Somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds,” Tripp replied.  So proud of his father, Tripp’s son helped spread the news around school of how his dad could once bench up to 350 pounds.

After all this inspiration, Tripp knew he must somehow find time to return to the gym.  He purchased himself a membership and devised a workout plan.  He pressed on for two weeks but rapidly grew weary and frustrated at his lack of progress. 

“I’ll never be able to bench 400 pounds again at this rate,” Tripp thought to himself.

Tripp and his four co-workers were laboring long hours at the office and — after much persistence — were getting little accomplished.  Then they learned of a study where employees who took quick 30-minute naps during the day were more productive.  For the next week they all decided to sleep in and not go to work at all.  And the recruiter’s productivity increased by five hundred percent.  

Every now and then, Tripp had an uncanny urge to smash his left thumb with a hammer.  He never wanted to nor did this with enough force to crush the bone.  Each time he engaged in this exercise, he only did it just enough to cause some pain.  Tripp thought this action would give him a rush or an endorphin release—and it did.  But it also made his thumb hurt.  So he often found himself searching for all sorts of solutions to settle his throbbing thumb.  Mostly, he just had to wait for the pain to cease in its own time.

One day (having smashed his thumb the night before), Tripp awoke in extreme pain.  Again he tried his usual list of remedies.  But this time Tripp realized that pain was an inevitable consequence of having hammers hitting thumbs.  So he embraced the pain as long as it lasted — and avoided hammers for quite a while.

After a time of healing, Tripp’s convictions concerning the evils of hammers became so strong that he set out to campaign against them.  He wished to rid the world of not just hammers — but all household tools! 

However, after much exhaustion, he decided that others just needed to hammer these things out for themselves.   

From the time Tripp was a small child, he wanted to become a Railroad Engineer.  After Tripp finished High School, he attended Railroad Engineer School so that he could become a Railroad Engineer.  About half-way through his education, a certain manager was visiting the school and noticed Tripp’s potential for success.  Consequently, he offered Tripp a job as a Railroad Engineer with an attractive salary to start immediately.

Tripp declined the invitation saying, “I’m sorry.  I’d love to take you up on your offer, but I must finish my schooling first so that I can become a Railroad Engineer when I get out.”

Tripp went to a life-changing seminar that totally revolutionized the way he interacted with others.  The seminar encouraged him to think outside the box in every area of life.  The meetings placed a special focus on family life.  Tripp heard advice like:

• “No longer call your wife—‘wife,’ instead, call her your ‘love.’”
• “Don’t call your children by their names, instead, refer to them as your ‘beloved offspring’”
• “No longer call your home—‘home,’ instead, say, ‘special abode.’”

The seminars propogated these and other life-changing strategies that Tripp followed to the letter.  In fact, each night ,Tripp would come home and say, “Hello my love and beloved offspring.  Isn’t it wonderful that we’re all safely here together in our special abode?”

Tripp’s family was so grateful that Tripp was finally thinking outside the box and really thinking for himself.

Tripp noticed a tree in his front yard becoming quite huge.  He said to himself, “That’s not so bad, I can deal with a big tree.”

A few weeks later, Tripp’s wife noticed the size of the tree and lack of soil for its roots, so she suggested that he trim it.  Tripp said, “I’m no good at trimming trees—just leave it!”

Several months later, Tripp’s children tried to warn him of its size and how unstable the tree had become.  Tripp replied, “What do you know about trees?”

A few years passed, then Tripp’s neighbor approached him about the tree.  Tripp agreed something needed to be done, but he did not want to cut it as he was afraid to offend the birds, the squirrels, and others that had grown accustomed to the tree as it was.  Once again, Tripp refused to deal with the tree.
After a series of thunderstorms and heavy winds, the tree fell on Tripp’s house, nearly demolishing his family’s home!  Many of their belongings were also destroyed. 

So Tripp decided to move to a new house and leave everything else behind.  This time he would look for a piece of land with no potential for plant life.