I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Really cold weather does that. For instance, who did I root for at the Superbowl? Simple, a lifetime ago my wife and I saw my Uncle JC wearing a uniform, doing sideline security in Kansas City for the Chiefs. So we became instant Chief fans. A trivial incident dictating who we rooted for in the NFL for the next several decades.

Why do we do what we do? How we vote. What indeed makes us tick? I worked for a great philosopher/ pharmacist over in Ada. One day he threw a real-live hissy fit over the work ethic of our East Central student delivery boy who had taken off on medicine deliveries and vanished. Several customers were soon on my manager’s case about why their medications had not yet been delivered to them. It turned out that the answer was simple. Our boy had spotted his girlfriend walking to school and had picked her up. She needed a ride to school. And she was hungry. They ate. After they had stopped and had breakfast and then gone out and parked awhile (this talk was important to him) our man finally took her on to school and eventually remembered his duties and delivered the medications to our ailing and disgruntled customers.

When it was all said and done was when the kid got back with our delivery car that our manager had embarrassed himself with his rage regaling our young lover (aka delivery boy) when he said this to me. I must have given him an astonished look. “It isn’t the big stuff in life that gets me, it’s this little stuff. Big stuff, I can handle. I have to. Such as the fact that my wife is very sick, or that we even had to bury one of our beloved babies some years ago, nor the injustices in our land, the weather, and the many hurts and jibes I suffer each and every day. It’s the little things that get to me. “I worry about if my coffee is just right, if my wife is mad at me. I still don’t like the way you answer the phone. And the work ethic of our delivery boy. These sorts of things.”

My pharmacist manager was right! It’s the little things that keep us sleepless at nights. Meanwhile, back to the Superbowl. And the Chiefs. Uncle JC just wanted to get in free. Looking back on my long life I wonder how many (relatively speaking) trivial happenings have affected my actually important choices and steered me in a totally different direction in my life.

For instance, a short conversation with a former high school chum about how he got his foot badly mangled in Korea. The foot thing did bother me but his vivid stories of his long suffering in fox-holes and freezing trenches over there did. His stories of the VA Hospital impressed me too. The very next day I had to decide what to do about service to my country, Uncle Sam had just told me I was I-A. I didn’t like the idea of sleeping in the mud. Somewhere. Getting wounded? Not an attraction I joined the Navy the next morning over in Ada.

I hate sleeping in the mud and I knew the Navy would see that I had a bed. Little things. Like getting shot. On the down side I could have served my obligation in the Army and taken 18 months. The Navy kept me for 48 months. Oh well, I thought as a sailor led me away.

Years later I decided to be a pharmacist, and I would go to Weatherford, Oklahoma and study. I made an appointment with a nice professor, took a few days off work at my Dallas, Texas job and drove out there to see about it. The professor forgot me and here I was. Stood up. As I drove back to Dallas that day I stopped by at OU. Pat made me. At Norman. I walked into the OU pharmacy building there and a nice old guy stopped me and asked if he could help me. He was the Dean. An hour later I was already a big loyal Sooner, muttering “Boomer Sooner” quietly under my breath.

Before we drove out of Norman we had rented a nice little duplex, Pat had been hired by the Norman Transcript, and I was a happy boy. I knew where God wanted me and it wasn’t getting the red clays of Weatherford on my shoes. Sooner dirt for me.

Was God finished directing me? Nah. After I graduated a man (Dr. Walter Shafee) called me from Enid and wanted me to come up. He thought he might have a job for me. I raced up to Enid but Walter acted strange. Seems like things had changed. Problem? A minor incident. I had shared my intentions to interview for this job with a “dear” friend. The dear friend promptly called Mr. Shafee and implying he was me, changed the appointment to earlier in the day. He got the job. No wonder Walter was confused.

Mr. Shafee called me the next day. He had figured it out, but now I had to tell him I was taking a job in Ada. Yep. Little things can change your life. My job in Ada led to me eventually landing in Allen becoming, perhaps, your pharmacist.

Have a good week and go to church on Sunday. Not a little thing in life. And I enjoy hearing from my readers. It’s a big thing.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com