OCR Text |
Show t Page 6 AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Thursday, February 5, 2009 SPEAK UP LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ONLINE American fork Cifiirii heraldextra.com r "App'es to Res -.ienai "Wage rate jfor three-person household is 12.06 per day. Wrestling Joseph Walker What if? My teenage son Jon and his city league basketball team have fallen into a distressing pattern as of late. They start each game slowly, often getting get-ting behind by 10 points or more, then they come rallying back in the second half, VALUE usually win- SPEAK ning at the end. The players on the team seem to be content with the situation. The games are always exciting, with new stars saving our collective bacon every week. As long as we eventually win, that's all that matters to them. The only person who is distressed about it is me, because I'm the coach, and I'm not sure how many close calls this old heart of mine can handle. A few weeks ago we were making our requisite second-half second-half comeback against a team that had completely dominated us in the first half. Thanks to some intense play on our part and a little over-confidence on the other team's part, we had narrowed a 20-point lead to one point 1985 - IOC 2009 - $1 MOST EVERYTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT DID IN 1985. EXCEPTYOUR ELECTRICITY. It simply costs more to produce most products and services than it did two decades ago. Electricity is no different. Building new power plants, transmission lines and renewable energy resources is very expensive. And yet, our overall average electricity rates' here in Utah are the same as they were in 1985 (the average Utahn pays only 70 cents a day to power their lives)". At the same time, Rocky Mountain Power has and will continue to invest billions in new infrastructure to ensure sufficient electricity is available to satisfy today's demands and to power the future. rates oily. with the with fewer than 20 seconds to play. In an attempt to get the ball back we fouled one of the other team's players, and it just happened to be a young man who had missed everything every-thing the rim, the net, the backboard, everything on only his previous attempt. I liked our chances. I called a time out and the team huddled around me. "He's going to miss, so we've got to get the rebound," I said confidently. Then I mapped out our strategy for bringing the ball down the court and scoring the winning basket. It was a great plan except for one thing: the kid on the other team made both of his free throws. Suddenly we were down three instead of one, and that great plan I had just formulated for-mulated didn't make sense anymore. Since we were out of time outs, I shouted some instructions, but we ended up turning the ball over, fouling the other team again and losing los-ing by four. Jon was devastated. "Oh man," he said after the game. "Can we get a hamburger?" ham-burger?" Devastation only lasts so long when you're 17 and 1 .00 question there's fast food on the way home. So, OK. Jon was evidently coping with the devastating loss. I, on the other hand, had a hard time getting to sleep that night. I wasn't angry or upset my team had played well against talented competition, competi-tion, and I was proud of their resilient comeback. I didn't yell or throw things I generally gen-erally reserve those histrionics histrion-ics for when my professional team plays poorly, which they seem to do more often than not these days. I just couldn't sleep. I paced the floor wondering won-dering "what ifs." What if that kid had missed his free throws? What if I hadn't wasted my last timeout before be-fore he shot his free throws, but had waited until I knew what the situation was? What if we hadn't -turned the ball over and had been able to find our best shooter for a three-point three-point shot? What if? What if? What if? You can make yourself crazy wondering "what if." Believe me. I've wrestled with the question enough through the years to know what kind of toothpaste it uses. What if Mom and Dad had decided to stop after seven children? IS-. :l- Over the last 24 years, Utah has been one of the fastest-growing fastest-growing states in the nation. Serving this growth comes at a cost - and that cost continues to climb. While the price of electricity will increase, we want you to know we are committed to delivering electricity as safely and efficiently as possible, along with providing you the answers that will help you save energy and money - right now in 2009. To learn more, visit rockymountainpower.net. ROCKY MOUNTAIN POWER Let's turn the answers on. 'What if?' What if "No Pants Vance" (uh, sorry long story) hadn't treated Anita so poorly just before I came along in her life? What if I hadn't on a whim taken that first journalism journal-ism class in college? "What if?" is a great question ques-tion if you're looking forward. for-ward. It opens your eyes to possibilities you might not otherwise consider. It can even be useful looking back in a "lessons learned" context. But there is little enlightenment enlighten-ment or satisfaction in looking look-ing back and agonizing over the sundry "what ifs" in our lives. "Living the past is a dull and lonely business," said novelist Edna Ferber. "Looking "Look-ing back strains the neck muscles and causes you to bump into people not going your way." Especially when you're up late, pacing the floor and wondering "what if." Joseph Walker writes his nationally syndicated "ValueSpeak" column from his home in American Fork. He can be reached via e-mail at VaueSpeakSmsn. com. r - L6CAE1 If jr. JLvJll7i, Collecting postcards in Michigan Editor, Hello may name is Joey and I am an eighth-grade student at Orchard View Middle School in Muskegon, Michigan. The reason I am writing this letter to you is because my teacher, Mrs. Dirske, thought it would be fun if we all wrote a letter to a newspaper hoping the people of that town would send a bunch of post cards. I'm hoping to hear all about where you live and how it is different from where I live and how it is the same as where I live. Some kids also received sweaters and other neat gifts. One year a kid got 217 responses. I like to snowboard and play video games. I just got a new snowboard and a new Xbox 360. 1 haven't gone snowboarding yet because my snowboarding partner j has been injured for a couple i of weeks. But I have been playing my Xbox 360 a lot. My favorite game is Gears of War 2. My little brother and I just beat it two days ago. I am trying to save up for some more games for the Xbox 360. 1 am trying to save for this one game especially espe-cially because I heard it was really good. It's Call of Duty 5. 1 also like to play indoor soccer. I scored eight goals in the last three games. Michigan is a great place to live. We have all kinds of stores, restaurants and amusement parks to go to. My favorite amusement park is Michigan's Adventure. Adven-ture. They have all kinds of rides like ones for the kids and some for the older kids adults. We also have a great outdoor soccer field. One of the coolest things about Michigan is the Summer Celebration. Cel-ebration. It's a bunch of music mu-sic acts and fun activities. Orchard View is a pretty basic middlelower class school. We have water fountains around the school, some mean teachers and some nice ones. We have an average amount of homework. home-work. The eighth grade is kind of fun. One cool thing about our school is every marking period if you get on the honor roll you get to go on a field trip. I have only gone once but it was a lot of fun. A bad thing about our school is we don't cancel very much even when the weather is bad. Like last year every school around us canceled but we didn't. We did cancel yesterday and it wasn't too bad, just icy. I Joey P. Orchard View School 35 South Sheridan Muskegon, MI 49442 VISIT US ONLINE AT fheraldextra.coml LMWWH1 Mo.iii Im ftk. t, Until 11, loot Madagascar 2: be. Tale of Despercavi -;:), .GMMIMKj Quantum el Solace Mn-Mfct-tlSpi Behind this ear lies an engineering masterpiece Open Ear Technology is the most revolutionary development in hearing care since the introduction of digital hearing aids. Come in for a FREE hearing evaluation and give them a try with our NO OBLIGATION ROAD TEST "T?TTf : i, , , (. "l.f tnm- tm - -f riif-m ', hi |