My Hero: Great Grandpa Thompson

One of my many heroes is my great grandpa David Thompson. Grandpa passed away this passed Thanksgiving at the age of 92. While his death was hard to accept, I know that he is in a much better place now. He's happy. He has full mobility again. He's with his wonderful wife. He has a perfect garden with berry bushes and flowers.

My grandpa led a full life.

One of the things that I remember most and admire most about my grandpa is that he was a hard worker. And I mean it! He always had a large garden and would share everything with his neighbors and friends. I remember going with my grandpa one time to the middle of nowhere to a corn field, where we picked corn ALL day. I was only like 11 years old, but I still remember the experience. Afterwards my grandpa asked if I wanted to go to dinner, even though it was clearly lunch time. I remember that I fought him about what the name of this midday meal was called. As an 11 year old girl I didn't understand why anyone would call lunch "dinner".

Another time I remember going to Grandpa's with my cousin Tanner. At the time I think I was about 9 and he was 8. We were picking berries, which was kind of miserable because it was the middle of a hot summer day and we had to reach in the scratchy bushes to get the best berries (and grandpa wouldn't settle for anything less). Tanner must have stepped on a hornets nest or something because all of a sudden he was surrounding in raging hornets. We ran as fast as we could to the car, screaming the whole way. When we got back to Nanny's house (my grandma) the adults helped Tanner feel better and then we counted the number of stings we could see. Tanner had been stung at least 15 times. Neither of us ever went back to help pick berries. I'm secretly still afraid of those bushes to this day :)

About 10 years ago my great grandpa fell and broke his hip while delivering berries to a friend. Ever since then his health had been declining, but he just kept fighting it. We thought for sure we would lose him about 5 years ago, because of the insufficient care my great grandma was providing. They both refused to be put into nursing homes, so instead my mom and dad decided that we were going to take care of grandpa. We cleaned out our piano room and made it his new room. At first, I was not excited to have him living with us. Don't get me wrong I love him and I wanted to help him... but I have old person phobia. BAD! I'm not sure why, but old people REALLY scare me. 

Having grandpa living with us, especially during my high school years was a challenge. But, it was even more of a blessing. At first I avoided him. I didn’t want to talk to him or help him, because I was scared. However, as I watched my grandpa be helpless in his chair, with nothing to do because of his poor eye sight, my heart was softened. I started talking to my grandpa when I came home from swim practice. And then I would offer him mints. Slowly I grew to love the old man that lived in my house.

Grandpa didn’t stay with us for too long, because caring for him became to taxing on our family. He did however, have the chance to be with us for Christmas. One of my favorite moments was when he opened his stocking. Inside was a one pound bar of Hersey’s chocolate. His face lit up as he realized what it was. Sure enough, the whole thing was gone within a few hours. It was a different Christmas having him in our home with us, but it was a memorable one.

I love my grandpa so much. I could probably write 10 or more pages just about him; telling stories and life lessons he taught me. My great grandpa was an amazing man. He was full of love and life. I am so thankful that he was a part of my life. I wish I would’ve taken the time to get to know him even better, but I know that I will have that chance in the next life. My grandpa is a man unlike most, but loved by many. He is my hero. 

It's the END!!!! :)

Writing 150 has been an interesting class. Or maybe this whole semester has been interesting… Yep! I think the former statement is most true of the two. I enjoyed Writing 150 for the most part. It was definitely not my favorite class, and I would never choose to take it again, but it wasn’t as miserable as I thought it would be. Over the course of the class I have learned lots about writing, but even more about life. I’ve learned to revise, revise, and then revise again. I’ve learned that reading my paper out loud is REALLY helpful. There were so many times when I would think I had a decent paper and then read it aloud to someone. I almost always found a few errors per page. It was amazing to me! Like I said before, not only did I learn lots about writing, but I learned a great deal about life. This has been the most challenging class I have taken yet in my college career… probably because it was a writing class J So, this class made me realize that my grades in school are not going to stop me from accomplishing my goals or from entering the celestial kingdom! Yes, grades are important. But, just because I get one or two bad grades does not make me any less worthy for Heavenly Father’s love. I also learned the lesson about procrastination. Procrastination is seriously of the devil. I’m not going to lie; I procrastinated on all of my assignments. It wasn’t bad for the first two papers, but the research paper was miserable. I waited until the last week to finally get started on it, and then family issues arose and school got even crazier, and it was just miserable. That was seriously one of the hardest weeks of my life. And, I’m not ever going to let it happen again! I will start on my assignments the day or day after they are assigned. It is so much easier to stay on top of things, rather than wait until the weekend to try to catch up on everything. It just doesn’t work that way. I was really thankful for Sister Elliott as a teacher. She was very kind and understanding and I am so appreciative of that. She is a very kind and wonderful person. I don’t really know what else to say about the class. I will certainly be glad that it is over, but I will miss the people! I think that’s about all J

Diane Rehm Show

I actually really enjoyed listening to The Diane Rehm Talk Show thing… it was interesting to hear what people had to say about the topic I listened to. I listened to “Shyness and Social Anxiety”. At first I started jotting down notes just so I could write this review, but near the middle of the recording I was jotting down notes because I was genuinely interested and hooked to the topic. I found myself laughing at how into the show I was… J So, in this recording they talked a lot about the broad spectrum of shyness. One of the guests said that about 15% of people would qualify for a social phobia. That was kind of a crazy statistic to me!

One really weird thing they talked about was if shyness was a part of survival. One of the guests told about research that he did on animal survival. It was really strange. They talked about observing shy versus bold animal characteristics… Interesting….

Overall there were so many good things they talked about! It was neat to think about how this topic applied to me. They talked about how of all highly sensitive people who are very aware of their environment and surroundings, only 20% become bold and more outgoing. And that’s ME! I think a lot of times that I am so shy and quiet, when really I’m quite the opposite. Now, granted it depends on the setting and who I am with, but most times I’m the loud, obnoxious, crazy one the everyone secretly wishes would shut up… well hopefully I’m not really that bad. But, I can get pretty crazy and bubbly.

In the podcast it also discussed how having therapy for shyness and social phobias is not a bad thing. A few years ago I started going to see a counselor, just to talk about things and get my head on a little bit straighter. It was amazing what talking to someone about my specific problems did. In the podcast, one of the guests said, “Everyone needs psychological fitness checkups!” They compared this counseling to an athlete with a personal trainer. A personal trainer just works with the person to help them improve their physical abilities. A psychiatrist or any other counselor helps their patient improve their social abilities.

SO… I think I could keep going for a long time. Instead, I’ll just tell you that you should go listen to it, cause it was really good! Here’s the link if you are interested: 

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-08-09/shyness-and-social-anxiety

ENJOY!