In this Minute With Marlin, Marlin is joined by his friends, Jerry and Lynn Wright, all the way from “the bad half of Washington.” They met at a homesteading event a few years ago and hit it off quickly once they realized they had something in common—they both had loved ones with Down syndrome.
The golden nugget of wisdom in this episode comes from Jerry as he shares what his father told him when he was a young teenager, “Dad said he was going to be getting dumber over the next few years, and then in my twenties he’d be getting smarter again.”
Looking back at the words his father spoke into his life during those “dumb” years, Jerry found this to be true. His dad never became dumber or smarter, but his perspective of the wisdom he shared changed over the years and impacted him differently.
Do you have people in your life you’ve found to get smarter as you grow older?
Learn more about Plain Values at https://plainvalues.com
Transcript
So Jerry and Lynn, you guys are here from the West Coast. Yes. Or the eastern, the eastern half of Washington? No, we’re in the bad half, Western Washington. You’re in the bad half. Yeah. So we met in Coeur d’Alene. You guys came in for the conference. Tell us why we connected. We were at the last speaker, uh, on the last day of the conference, and you had introduced the speaker and said, “Hey, stop by my table on the way out and I’ll give you a free Plain Values magazine.” So we stopped by, and you were all out of magazines. And we had learned that you had Down syndrome kids that, you know, that afternoon, and you said, “That’s okay.” You said, “That’s okay, I’m gonna… I’ll mail you some magazines,” and you sent several copies and a book for our recently, um, our newest granddaughter, Greta, who has Down syndrome. And she’s now how old? And she’s four and a half. And what a blessing, my goodness. Yeah, a definite blessing. The blessing we didn’t know we needed, as my daughter says. When you look at the impacts that Greta has made in your family, what, what do you see? She just loves people, interacts with people, waves at people at the grocery store. Hugs. Hugs. Lots of hugs. Yeah. I love her. She gives the best hugs. That’s so good. Big hugs and little hugs, that’s what she does with- … Baba, as she she calls Grandpa Baba. That’s so cool. Yeah. Give us a, a one-minute, uh, snapshot of, of, of you and your life and your marriage and your kids and- Yeah … like, what kind of work did you do, Jerry? Uh, golf course maintenance, most of it. Mm-hmm. Uh, nursery, nursery retail, and, uh- No kidding … little bit of that early on. So you are green thumbs. Well, yeah. That’s cool. farmer at heart, I think. Yeah. So I grew things. Very nice. Um, married for how long? Uh, 40, going on 49 years. Almost 49 years. And we met at the nursery that we both worked at. Really? Yeah. Upstairs, you said something that I loved, that we talked about. Your dad told you when you were a teenager, right? Yeah, probably 14, 15. Dad said, uh, uh, he was gonna be getting dumber in the next few years, and, uh- … and that would go along for a little while, and then in my 20s he’d be getting smarter and smarter as, as time went on again. And I have to ask, did it go that way? Yeah, yeah. Was there a moment, Jerry, that you saw, “He’s getting smarter, just like he told me”? I don’t know. I think it was looking back on, looking back on it later, remembering some of those things. Yeah, and then thinking- Yeah … about what he said- Yeah … and how life went. I, That is so great. Guys, thank you for coming. Thanks for being here, for, stopping in on your road trip. Uh, It’s, it’s just so good to catch up. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I love it.
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