Who Packs Your Parachute?

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam.
After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air-missile.
Plumb exited and parachuted into enemy hands.
He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison.

He survived the ordeal
and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience.

One day when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at
another table came up and said, “You're Plumb!  You flew jet fighters in
Vietnam from the aircraft carrier, Kitty Hawk. You were shot down.”

                     “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb
                     “I packed your parachute,” the man replied.
                     Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude.
                     The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”
                     Plumb assured him, “It sure did.  If  your chute hadn't worked,
                     I wouldn't be here today.”

                     Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man.
                     Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he looked like in a
                     Navy uniform... white hat, a bib in the back and bell-
                      bottom trousers.             

                     “I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even
                   said, Good Morning, how are you?  or anything...because you see,
                               I was a fighter pilot...and he was just a sailor.”

Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at the long wooden table
in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute...holding in his hands each time ~ the fate of someone he didn't know.

Now Plumb asks his audience, “Who's Packing Your Parachute?
Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through
the day.” He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory.  He needed his physical parachute, 
his mental parachute, his emotional parachute and his spiritual parachute!

                     He called upon all these supports before reaching safety.

“Sometimes, in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really
important.  We may fail to say Hello, Please or Thank You; we  may fail to
Congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them;
we may fail to Compliment or Just Do Something Nice for no reason.
As you go through this week, this month, this year...recognize people who
Pack Your Parachutes”

“Sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding jokes to us without
writing a word.  Maybe this would explain it:  When you're very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what  you do.  You forward jokes.  And to let you know that...you are still remembered, you are still important, you are still loved, and you are still cared for!  And guess what  you get...a forwarded joke.”

“So, my friends (and relatives), next time when you receive a joke,
don't think you've been sent another forwarded joke,
but that you've been thought of today
and your friend on the other end of your computer...
wanted to send you a Smile...
just helping you...pack your parachute!”

(Pary, please accept my appreciation for sending the foregoing)

................................................

“Pearl of Wisdom”
You may be only one person in the world;
but you may also be the world to one person!

Merle Baird-Kerr . . . written January 25,  2012
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