Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast:  https://youtu.be/NQ9TX3MTXRo

or read the story below…

.

Life, actually…

.

COMFORT AND JOY AND A LIFELONG SCAR

.

Dr. Ruby Tyler is leaning over me while I lie flat on my back in her examination room.

.

This is way back in time in Tuscaloosa when I am a kid who just fell out of a tree, a kid who at this moment is Dr. Tyler’s sole emergency patient.

.

I have never been an emergency patient before, so fear and trembling infuse my soul. I am hysterical and refrain from gazing at the gape in my right arm. I am certain that all the blood  in my body will exit onto the sheets. I am sure to die an embarrassing death after my playmates-witnessed fall from grace.

.

Dr. Tyler doesn’t blink. She calmly glances at the wound. She places her hand on my shoulder and calms me down. I can stop screaming now. All will be well. Comfort and peace sooth me and the rest of the morning goes pretty well.

.

Dr. Tyler stitches me up, no anesthetic employed back then, and I dissolve into the role of helpless victim and happily healing patient.

.

There are perks to being wounded in public. The little girl across the street brings me flowers, fellow playground buddies delight in recounting events leading up to my accident, neighbors check my wound and count the stitches.

.

I can milk this incident for a few days by dramatically displaying an arm resting in its red bandanna sling.

.

Like everything else in life, other anecdotes reveal themselves. Bob Crutchfield reminds me that I landed upon him, not on the red clay dirt. Lenny Fulmer notes that I also scraped my back against the barbed wire fence next to Bob Crutchfield. Brother Ronny notes that the wooden planks forming a crude ladder on the tree trunk actually broke, causing my rapid descent. It’s a group participation thing, this episode of mine.

.

Anyhow, to this day I sport a scar that is no longer visible among the surrounding wrinkles and sags and discolorations that have become my ancient body.

.

But I do get something useful out of this split second in time. I learn it only takes a calming gesture to settle down a frightened creature. I learn that every victim is part of a posse of people who have their own individual mini-traumas. I learn that life is not all about me myself and I.

.

I am a participant in your pain just as you are involved with mine. I can choose to ignore this fact or I can become part of the healing and nurturing team. I get that.

.

On my better days I actually rise above whines and complaints. I actually try to become part of a solution. I transform into the role of splint or bandage or clumsy comforter. Or just a friend close by who is comrade to a crisis

.

© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/sPxoeN3MEt4

or read his story below…

.

Life, actually…

.

TO DRIVE A NAIL

.

Jimmy Three is a good dawdler.

.

After all, at age five, lacking the vaguely envisioned future burdens of adulthood, Jimmy Three has a great deal of dawdling time.

.

This morning’s first dawdle is all about nails and hammers and claws and ouchies.

.

At the end of the front yard sidewalk, where concrete gutter meets grainy asphalt, Jimmy Three bends to pick up a sheeny metal object. A bent-thus-discarded nail that glints in the sunlight. He rotates the nail between thumb and forefinger, holds it close to the eye, examines it at arm’s length, wonders how it got where it wound up.

.

What to do with a bent nail on a dewy morning. It’s not like Jimmy Three to throw anything away. Mimicking his mother’s habits, he pockets the nail that will later join other possibly useful discarded objects into an old Hav-A-Tampa cigar box gifted by his grandfather.

.

Oh the treasures within that box. But that will be the subject of a future story.

.

Right now, Jimmy Three races into his home, digs under the bunk bed, retrieves a small green metal toolbox, squeaks it open, finds a couple of unbent nails and a tiny hammer. He is inspired to do something useful with hammer and nails, something no-one else will find significant.

.

He occupies himself attempting to drive a nail into a scrapped two-by-four. Grasping the wooden handle up near the weighty iron top, he timidly taps the flanged head and gets little result. Swinging the hammer higher so that gravity and sinew can bring it down harder, he manages to bend the nail. It flies off and hides beneath the bunk.

.

Jimmy is not frustrated, because he has other nails. But he is also aware that calmly assessing the situation will go a long way toward saving future nails. His father once showed him the proper way to get the most out of a hammer. He finally recalls this: Grasp the handle much lower, away from the claw, thus increasing the power of the downward swing.

.

He holds the nail so that it is vertical while the pointed tip is touching the wood. With the confidence of youth and the help of gravity and the assistance of young muscle, Jimmy Three joyfully brings full force to the nail head.

.

No reason to explain that Jimmy’s thumb ouchy takes a few minutes out of his project. But he knows that to complain is to risk having unwanted drama and perhaps hammer-banning.

.

The next time is magic. Using all his hastily garnered wisdom, the nail is pounded neatly into the two-by-four. For a second he considers creating an exhibit of wood and nail to show off his prowess to playmates. The pounding in his sore thumb reminds him to calm down.

.

The world is relieved when J3 abandons the project and runs away to the butterfly tree to see who has shown up this morning.

.

There is so much to do during dawdling time

.

© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Click here to hear Jim’s 3-minute Red Diary: https://youtu.be/SFvunLJBTEc 

or read his story  below:

.

Life, actually…

.

BEST ADVICE ARCHIVED FOR LATER CONSIDERATION

.

My high school science teacher Mrs. Ingram once gave me some good advice.

.

“Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.”

.

This happened a way long time ago. You know, back before the Earth was round.

.

I have studiously followed Mrs. Ingram’s advice all these years. I am proud to say I’ve not once been taken to the ER with something big stuck in my ear.

.

As to all the other wise and useful advice I have received from scores of well-meaning people, I’m not proud to report that I have blithely ignored and rejected most of it.

.

This not the fault of all those who generously took the time to mind my own business. This is merely a stubborn lifelong resistance I have to all attempts to change my behavior.

.

Don’t get me wrong. Had I followed even an iota of this advice I’d probably be healthier, richer, wiser, kinder…

.

But my contrarian nature generally holds me back from following other people’s guidelines.

.

As I navigate these many years of living my own life my own way, I do notice a mellowing. I actually accept advice more frequently these days.

.

For instance, someone once quipped, “Never drive under ten miles an hour on an interstate highway.” That sounds solid enough. I’ll consider it.

.

I’ll stop trying to be cute at this point.

.

I truly appreciate all the life lessons I have learned and  continue to follow, the tutorials that keep me suspiring and aspiring and perspiring.

.

I appreciate the dozens of good examples set by family and acquaintances, many demonstrations of how to do this without suffering horrifying consequences, when to do the right thing, when not to do the wrong thing.

.

The thing that annoys me is the fact that there are so many ways those who encounter me have helped me…and I have seldom thanked them! How come I am becoming sensitive and kindly so far down the road?

.

I should have thanked these unpaid advisors. I could have hugged them more. I might have listened more. I wish I could look each of them in the eye and really experience them. I wish I could tell them what they continue to mean to me.

.

Since these denizens of life’s better moments are long gone away, all I can do is follow my own advice and hope that you who are paying attention can take something good from these words.

.

The best advice I can take from this day forth is my own advice: Do the good deed now. There will never be another good deed moment exactly like this good deed moment.

.

Eat the chocolate chip cookie right away.

.

Thank and appreciate all sincere advisors in the moment. Regardless of whether the advice is helpful or useless, remember to appreciate the intent.

.

If it is well-meant it is worthy of thanks.

.

And do spread Mrs. Ingram’s words when you can. Each ear saved causes the world to listen a little better

.

© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed

Hear Jim’s 3-minute podcast at https://youtu.be/1l6CNGVp66w

or read his story below…

.

Life, actually…

.

THERE GOES WHO I WAS

.

Roy Rogers is chasing down those Gopher Creek gunmen. Shiny pistol drawn, vertical-lined frown of intensity showing focus and determination, golden steed Trigger pounding the trail. The stalking is about to bear fruit…

.

I turn the page of my Whitman pictorial cover book, ready to read the fate of Roy and the pursued bandits.

.

Oops! The brittle pulpy paper has broken loose. The next two pages are missing. Arrggh! Will I ever learn what comes next? I wonder.

.

I’m sitting on the floor of the bedroom I share with brother Ronny. The tattered book on my lap awaits the next suspenseful moment. What will I do now? Will I angrily discard the rest of the volume?

.

The book cannot speak aloud, nor can it defend itself. Only words on thick pages can forward the plot.

.

I scour the room for the absentee book parts. I retrieve a walking stick and scrape beneath the bottom of the bunk bed. I riffle through old comic books and paperbacks, peek beneath socks and shirts. Nothing.

.

I sigh deeply. My compulsion to read each and every word in every book dominates the moment. My to-do list now includes going to the county library in search of the Gopher Creek caper. I am philosophical. I weigh other options.

.

Wait—what if I write down what I imagine happens next in Roy’s adventure? I could become co-author! This is an original thought. It excites me. It provides a peek into my imagination. In a split second, I become a writer-to-be.

Distractions suddenly take me away from these fleeting thoughts. Playmates call out, refrigerated snacks beckon, tangled shoelaces dominate. I don’t return to these authorship yearnings for some time. But the idea endures.

.

Eons later, while I compose these thoughts, I wonder whether the Gopher Creek Roy Rogers Trigger episode planted some kind of seed. I am now a writer, so this is possible, isn’t it?

.

Or maybe I just needed something to occupy my mind while spending yet another day being a human

.

© 2026 A.D. by Jim Reed