First we opened our gifts. Then we wrote our thank-you notes.
We did that at Christmas. We did that on our birthdays. When we received gifts, we wrote thank-you notes. That was Mom's rule. This is my thank-you note for some very special gifts.
These aren't the gifts that showed up under the tree over the years. I don't know about you, but I hardly remember any of those. I remember the plastic "Knight's Sword" because I've seen a picture of me wielding it in front of the Christmas tree. It's the same for the fireman's hat and ride-on fire engine.
I remember the chemistry set for reasons that have nothing to do with Christmas. I remember it because I was a teenager and knew everything and I didn't see any point in following the directions that came with the set when I could make up whole new experiments on my own. One of them blew the set up and burned my arms pretty badly.
The important gifts were intangible, but life shaping. The toys came and went. The clothes were put on, wore out and were discarded. Pens were lost. They were nice, but they were just "things." They weren't really important.
The important gifts were the ones that shaped my life and made me the man that I am. I want to say thank-you for them. So here are a few thank-you notes for really important gifts.
I'll start with gifts I got from my parents. They gave me life, of course, and food and shelter and love and encouragement. Those were important gifts, but there are others I want to thank them for because I've discovered in my life that many families that had all of the food and shelter things didn't have these other, wonderful gifts.
Thank you, Mom and Dad, for laughter. No matter what situation we were in, no matter what we had or didn't have, we always found ways to laugh.
Thank you for words. You were both such avid readers that I couldn't help becoming one. You both told stories and those stories shaped my life and made me a storyteller, too.
My parents also gave me the gift of values. They expected me to act ethically, fairly, helpfully and compassionately to others. My mother's way of reminding me of that was to say, usually as I was going out the door, "Remember who you are."
She meant that I should remember my identity, remember my family, remember what' s important. It still works. When I'm considering whether or not to do something I'll ask myself, "What would Mom think? What would Dad think?"
My parents weren't the only people that shaped my life. There were other events and people and institutions that gave me great gifts.
I loved to play basketball. And the basketball I loved was on the playgrounds of New York. Thanks to the guys I played with and all the gifts they gave me.
There are two great challenges in playground basketball. The first one is to get to play. The second one is to keep playing.
Getting to play was not a problem if you were a star like Pablo Robertson or Jackie Jackson. If you were a star you could walk onto the playground and pretty much had your pick of who to play with and when. It was very different if you were Mrs. Bock's little boy.
Playground basketball is a great meritocracy. The good are rewarded. I learned that you didn't have to have great skills to be among the good and to be rewarded.
I learned that if I was willing to pass instead of shoot and if I was willing to make sure that the star of my team got the ball a lot and if I played defense then I'd get picked to play with players who were usually better. Contribution mattered more than talent. If I contributed, I got to play.
But I could only keep playing if my team won. New York playground basketball was "winners out." That means that if you scored you got the ball back. And it means that if you didn't stop the other team and get the ball, you never got an opportunity to score yourself.
It's a lesson that I've seen reinforced in business and in writing and just about everywhere I've been. Success feeds itself. If you do well this time it's easier to do well next time. It's a gift of the playgrounds that I'm thankful for.
In 1959 I entered the Bronx High School of Science. Science was the place I learned that it was not only OK to be smart, it was also a lot of fun. That was the golden age of the New York City Public School system and the place was filled with great teachers. They all deserve thanks.
Two of them stand out in my memory. They get special thanks.
There was Dr. Baden who reminded us over and over that every recitation in his biology class should be "Precise, concise and eloquent." It's a heck of a standard to try to live up to. At nearly fifty-seven, after hundreds of speeches and thousands of articles, I'm still trying, Dr. Baden.
Then there was Mr. Hoffman. He taught the famous book-a-week freshman English course. We actually didn't read a book every week, though. We got two weeks for David Copperfield and two weeks for Moby Dick. No literature course before or since has prepared me as well for a lifetime of reading and the joy that comes from savoring literature. Thank you, Mr. Hoffman.
I graduated from Science in 1963. There were 963 in my graduating class. 960 went to college. Two had received a research grant in marine biology and were going on to pursue that. I went into the Marines.
I was real sure that I wasn't ready for college and I'd always been interested in the military. I thought time in the service would be good for me and so I set out to research my options.
It seemed that everybody wanted me. The Army and Navy and Air Force all offered me great packages. Then I visited the Marine recruiter on Tremont Avenue.
I stood in his little booth and told that grizzled Gunnery Sergeant with the razor sharp creases in his shirt what all the other services had offered me. "What will the Marine Corps give me?" I asked.
The Gunny looked at me and growled, "Four years of hell, a haircut every week, and a rifle." I signed up.
The US Marine Corps is an amazing institution. It takes skinny seventeen-year-olds and turns them into Defenders of Freedom. You might join the Army or Navy or Air Force, but you become a Marine. It starts with boot camp.
Marine boot camp is tough, but pretty much everyone makes it through. Every day you're offered tough challenges that you meet. Every day you face more demands for excellent performance. And you perform until excellence becomes your own standard.
The Marines gave me the gift of confidence. They taught me that I could do things I'd never imagined were possible. And they taught me that ordinary people were capable of extraordinary things.
The Marines expected excellence without excuses. Those expectations were just as powerful for me as my mother's admonition to "Remember who you are." Semper Fi!
For most of my adult life I have trained police officers and they have given me great gifts as well. The first gift they gave was the gift of realism.
Spend some time on the street with police officers and you learn some things about what the world is really like. You learn, for example, that people lie all the time. In fact, it's a pretty sure bet that when someone says, "I'm going to tell you the truth this time, Officer" they're getting ready to pitch another lie your way. If there is an original sin, it must be lying.
You also learn that there is real evil in the world. It is palpable. It has a stench. When you know that, you understand how important it is to uproot the evil and either cast it into the fire or contain it.
That may sound like the only gifts I got from those men and women were the awareness of bad things. But there was something else, too. There was heroism. It was inspiring to spend much of my life with men and women who would risk their lives for others. Fifteen of my trainees have their names engraved on the Peace Officer's Memorial in Washington. Thanks to all of you.
Not all gifts are so dramatic. Kaye and I shared many years and the raising of three children. She gets thanks for that and credit for a good deal of how they turned out, along with a wish for richness in the rest of her life. Thank you, Kaye.
My three children continue to give me gifts. They challenge and stretch me. They bring me experiences to share that enrich my life and they do things that make me swell with pride. My grandchildren, Teddy and Diego offer me the gift of the future along with bone-crushing hugs and radiant smiles that light up the planet. Thank you, all of you.
And there is Linda, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World. She gives the gifts of passion and of peace, but even more, she makes all the other gifts richer and easier to acknowledge.
I am still opening my gifts, but I could go no longer without saying, "Thank you."
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 23 December 2002
