Ed Said

“Ed, when you walk,” I say as he’s leaving for church, “put one foot in front of the other one – don’t walk side to side.”

“No. No. I can’t do that. I’m different from the rest of you. Did you forget?”

I find that extremely interesting. He didn’t say he was different from me, a unique individual; he said he was different from everyone.

Before each meal, he now says (as our conditioning experiment),
“Stupid.

I love Las Vegas

I love Idaho

I love California

I love Colorado

I love Texas

I love life.”

And I repeat, “You are not stupid because you love, Las Vegas, Idaho, California, Colorado, Texas and life.”

But he cannot bring himself to say it when Amy or anyone else is in the room. He had been waiting about 15 minutes before lunch today when Amy slipped out on the deck. He blurted out: “Stupid. I love Las Vegas, I love California, I love Colorado, I love Texas, I love Idaho. I love life.”

He was reading over my shoulder as I was writing this. “You don’t have to write down everything I say before every meal. Totally rude.”
    I often think he is more astute than anyone I know.

Addendum:
    At lunch, I was finishing my dessert from last night when we went to a seminar on investments for seniors, and Ed said, "I can't believe you are eating dessert in front of me." He didn't suffer through a 3-hour lecture before he could eat, why should I share my cheesecake with him?
   Breakfast was ready and we were going swimming so I call upstairs to DeRay: "Is he showered?"
    Ed calls down, "I'm getting ready. Be patient.". . .right on the day when we are going visiting teaching and our message is on patience.

Patience is often thought of as a quiet, passive trait, but as President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, said, “Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something … even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. Patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!”

President Uchtdorf continued, “Patience means accepting that which cannot be changed and facing it with courage, grace, and faith. It means being ‘willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father’ [Mosiah 3:19]. Ultimately, patience means being ‘firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord’ [1 Nephi 2:10] every hour of every day, even when it is hard to do so.”

   I’ve never heard Ed ask me to “be patient” before.