On the path of life, milestones are huge. Even little ones. First tooth. First steps. Have you seen the commercial where a guy gets up from the couch where other people are watching a baby do baby things. When the guy is out getting snacks the baby takes her first step. When the guy gets back, he wants to know if everyone can make the baby take that first step, again. Nope. The first is the first and the second is not now and will never be the first. But! Yes, a first look at that “but.” I suppose the second could be referred to as the first second step. It does lose something though, doesn’t it?
I wonder if it is just a girl thing to keep up on milestones of our lives and the milestones of those around us. Some milestones just off the top of my noggin. First haircut in a real salon. Mine at age 5 was so unnerving that I remember it to this day with chilly willies down my spine. First love and then first true love. Quite a difference and probably a few years in between them. First kiss. It too was not all that good. But we do learn how to do better in all things as we move along in life. Wahoo. After that first kiss there is hopefully sometime later our first—well, you know. Wink. Wink. I think we best move along.
Milestones can be in business too. Oh, I remember that first paycheck. With my full name on it! Then your first raise in pay. I remember mine and I felt like I was rolling in dough. Uh, until the first tax season milestone. That taxable income chart cost me more than the raise paid me.
The first customer that gave you a truly heartfelt “Thank you” for the help you offered them while doing your job. Didn’t that make you want to please the next one and the next one? Then the milestone of the first snotty customer that you couldn’t please at all. Yes, we all have had that one. I like to remember a thank you more than the bite I felt from the guy who would not stop yelling at me at the fact that he did not return an oxygen tank, so he was getting billed for tank rent. Oh, such a story. As ugly as it was that day, we eventually made up and he did find I was in the right. Yet another milestone, true forgiveness, check.
It seems unimaginable to not take note of and celebrate milestones in life. Oh, there will be tiny ones for sure that one might just as well leave by the side of the road. Like the first time you find a fly at the bottom of your coffee cup. Hopefully that one will not happen, twice! Probabilities of such things are slim, but not null. I used to drive my other half nearly nuts with probabilities. I take the 50/50 route. I mean come on. If you stop and think about things happening, there really is only one way to think. Either it will happen, or it won’t happen. See 50/50. I say there is a 50/50 chance that you will agree with me here. Or that it is a 50/50 probability that a second time I will find a second fly at the bottom of a coffee cup just as I swill and swirl down that last gulp. Yuck.
Milestones. I hope you stop and consider all the ones you have come up against, crawled or flown over and revel in them all. Congratulations on each one from me to you.
All those milestones are such grand steps in life. Hopefully there will be miles of milestones to make lots more smile stones on my face. Like the one kinda cool milestone in my life I want to share with you now. It just so happens that this “Is This You?” do dah that you are reading today is my 500th column. Yes, I said 500th! Still not sure how that happens but I’m taking it. I’m here to tell you that my smile stone is as wide as a milestone can reach. I give thanks to many people along the way, editors and friends and family and of course my God. It’s definitely not because of me. Nope, it’s most assuredly because of you, the readers. You who read and tell me that we giggle at life as we climb the rocks and stones in our paths.
Hey, from me to you, a truly heartfelt, “Thank you.” You keep reading, I’ll keep writing and together we’ll keep sharing. Deal?
Trina Machacek lives in Eureka. Find her books online wherever you buy books or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to buy a signed copy.
