This morning I followed to precise degree a recipe – i.e. a recipe for disaster!

At the gym, anticipating tomorrow’s festivities I hopefully not too smugly exclaimed to one of the Latina workers:

“Feliz Cinco de Mayo.”

I quickly came to learn – fortunately in friendly fashion – that my friend was from El Salvador.

I suppose she could have played/said something along the lines of:

“Si, Señor.”

Instead, she politely pointed out my mistake … and graciously allowed me to recover.

As it turns out she does have something even more personal to celebrate

You see, her first born son – Melvin – is 12 today!

I congratulated her on her 12 years of motherhood and wished for Melvin to have a Happy Birthday.

Then, it dawned on me that according to the Chinese Zodiac, Melvin and I are both “Roosters” and I am 3 Zodiac turns (or put differently 4 times) Melvin’s age.

Gosh, what an opportunity it would be to take all that I now know and return to that age and have all that time ahead of me.

Unfortunately, that is not how time works.

We all take our knocks – some hard and some soft – and simply by continuing to wake up and doing whatever their is in the day’s task list each precious day of life we are given.

Notably, there is somewhat of a workaround which allows us to again draw from the fountain of youth … mentorship.

Mentors often draw a lot of energy and excitement from their mentees. Correlatively, mentees learn a heck of a lot from their mentors so they may sidestep some of the unfortunate lessons that may befall them with out guidance and foresight.

Overall, the relationship may even afford the greatest hope that wisdom is successfully passed across not only generations, but families and perhaps even cultures.

So, here is the charge I would like to provide to you for May 5, 2017.

Instead of just running out to the Mexican Restaurant tomorrow night to open one heck of a can of TGIF style whoop-ass, consider politely crossing a boundary and ask your Mexican/Mexican-American waiter from what part of Mexico does he, she or even the whole family hail.

Write that fact down, look it up on Wikipedia, and maybe conduct a Google Earth’s search of it.

Fact is the human race is one big family and we are all now neighbors to one another.

It’s time to live out and on purpose the mandate to:

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

If we don’t, the totality of our “family” will have “hell to pay!”