Questions for Discussion and/or Contemplation:

• What is my #1 Time Waster?
• What are the things that I should be doing but just don’t have time for?
• Would I have time for these things if I managed by time better?
• When am I going to do something about my time-wasting habits? AND…
• Who is going to do it with me? (accountability and encouragement are important!)

Disclaimer: wildly fluctuating hormones may or may not have a part to play in this drama. The question is: whose hormones are wildest these days - the 17-yr-old male's or the perimenopausal female's?

One of the teenagers, a gangly kid named Rob, with black hair down in his eyes, was handing out backpacks. They were brand new backpacks made for carrying books and school supplies, but they would be handy for a homeless guy who needed a way to carry his stuff around. They even came with a little water bottle. According to Tom, Rob found them on clearance someplace, and after he told the store manager what he planned to do with them the manager let him have the whole stock at wholesale. He was doling them out to anybody who asked for one. They went pretty fast once word got around. After the backpacks were all gone a doe-eyed little black kid came up the hill by himself and stood there at the back of Rob's car peeking into the trunk, wringing his hands. This kids was wearing a dirty T-shirt four sizes too big and two left tennis shoes, one black and one white. He mumbled something when Rob walked by, but he was very timid and Rob had to get down on his knees to hear.

Rob shook his head, slung his hair out of his eyes and put his hand on the kid's shoulder. "I'm sorry, man, you got here too late. They're all gone."

The kid just nodded and started to turn away. His head hung and his shoulders drooped. He hadn't even looked at the clothes or the groceries in the other vans.

Toad was standing on Rob's back bumper, holding onto the open trunk lid and bouncing, makding his shocks squeak. Mick didn't think she even heard what was being said until she turned around, jumped down and called out to the kid.

"Wait a minute," Toad said. "We got one more." She ran around to the passenger side of Mick's truck, yanked the door open and leaned in. Mick went and peeked over her shoulder to see what she was up to. His daughter was cleaning out a really nice, nearly new Nike backpack on the front seat, dumping out pencils and pens, a pile of wadded-up papers, a couple of books and folders, an old sandwich, some rocks, and a headless, naked Barbie doll. She snatched a water bottle from the cup holder on the console and stuck it in the little webbed pocket on the side of the backpack, then closed the door and ran - literally ran - back over to Rob's car and shoved the thing into the kid's hands. She didn't say a word, just gave it to him.

Mick shot a close-up of that kid's face. The kid never saw the camera. He hugged that backpack to his chest like it was the finest thing he'd ever owned, and then turned and took off down the hill as fast as he could run. Mick, for whom the joy on the boy's face had seemed as close and clear as his own hands, watched him go and understood something that perhaps no one else even thought about. In his growing up, lost among all the million things that would happen to that kid in his life, he would forget this. It was just a backpack. Ten years later maybe that kid wouldn't even remember it. It was entirely possible that Toad wouldn't remember it, either. But Mick would. And judging from the look on his face, he figured Rob would, too.

The Man With No Hands saw what happened. He watched Mick shoot the picture, saw the look on his face. Mick didn't even know he was standing there until he spoke up.

"Children. They know how to preach," he said.

Mick just nodded. He was astonished, sometimes, at the things he saw in his kids. Toad was just a simple, straightforward girl with a straightforward heart. It struck him that he must have had a heart himself at some point, and he wondered what happened to it. He figured it was one of the many things that got beaten out of a man one way or another before he grew up, but at the moment his daughter had him wondering if there was any way to get it back.