Sis's Advice

"First, Mary drops me because I'm not paying enough attention to her," I said. "What did she want me to do? Stop playing basketball, stop practicing my guitar, ignore studying?"

Mom and Dad were in the kitchen, so Sis and I had the basement family room to ourselves.

"With all of that," my Sister asked, "did you have any time left for her at all?"

"Sure," I said. "We saw each other every weekend."

"Great," she replied. "So 2 to 3 hours out of the week. Let's see, that leaves about 165 hours for her to fill up. My guess is that someone came along to help her with that."

"OK, so lesson learned," I said. "When I started seeing Kathy, things were different. At least one call every day, texted her when interesting things came up, stopped by a couple of times per week, planned things for us to do Friday's and Saturday's. I wasn't going to make the same mistake."

"Let me guess," Sis said. "Didn't work huh?"

"I was stifling her by always being around," I snapped. "Unbelievable!"

"I'm sorry," Sis said, fighting to control herself. A chuckle still got out.

"You think you know everything," I said, heading for the door.

"Wait," she said. "Wait. I'll try to help."

"Yeah," I shrugged, flopping down onto the couch. "Whatever."

"Listen," Sis said. "The Buddha asked a musician about tuning his instrument. The musician said 'If the strings are too tight they break; if too loose, no sound will come out. So not too tight and not too loose works best' To which the Buddha replied 'This is how you should hold your mind in meditation'."

"Oh great; now we're into Eastern mysticism," I said. "How about something useful."

"Call Marilyn," Sis said. "She's hot for you."