The first vocation invitation or call that I received was from my father. It was my junior year in college and I had yet to declare a major.

In the movie Home Alone, 8-year-old Kevin McCallister acted surprisingly brave—except when it came to going down into his basement. He was frozen with fear when he had to descend into his spooky basement with its strange sounds, eerie shadows, and monstrous furnace with air ducts flailing out like the arms of a giant squid.

Most of us can probably count among our friends or acquaintances the professional job-hopper. That’s the person who moves from one good job to another, always open to the next offer that promises more.

Years ago my wife and I went to a concert and at intermission a whiny teenage vendor kept calling out, “Orange juice, take it to your seats!” For some reason those words and his nasally inflection stayed with us, and now when my wife offers orange juice, I’ll often chime in with, “Take it to your seats.”

In Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger, a night watchman walks through an apparently deserted street calling out, “Hear, people, what I say, the clock has struck 10; guard your fire and also your light so that no one comes to harm! Praise God the Lord!”

Being one of the older grandchildren in my family, I attended the Baptisms of nearly 20 of my younger cousins and siblings, and I have so many memories of all of them.

One of my favorite television programs when I was growing up was a quiz show called To Tell the Truth. On this show three contestants, all claiming to be the same person, were quizzed by panelists about their identity. The two phonies could lie to the panelists, but the real person had to tell the truth.

After her election, the attorney general of the Midwestern state informed her office staff that she would answer phones for an hour or two every couple of weeks so that she could understand what citizens were asking for and getting.

I am blessed with eight great-nieces and great-nephews. They are a joy to be around. I watch their parents, my nieces and nephew, remembering when they were the age of their children, and I marvel at how quickly time has gone by.

It was a small Baptism in early January a quarter a century ago. Present were only the 10-week-old baby, his parents who recently both turned 21, and the godparents, mutual friends of the couple.