In these uncertain times, it is important to give thanks for everything.  And I mean everything.

Be thankful for the old lady (me) driving slowly in front of you, especially when you finally spot the cop car hidden behind the trees, looking for speeders, which you definitely would have been, if not for me.

Be thankful for the long line at the checkout.  If you choose to stand behind me, you will definitely be in the slowest line.  That way you can pick up a magazine and speed-read all about Harry and Meghan and not have to pay some exorbitant price for the publication. Free reading!

And don’t forget to be thankful for that annoying kid sitting in the row behind you on the airplane, incessantly kicking your seat. I’m not sure why, but I’m sure that being thankful for that will build character.

I was brought up in character-building times, when suffering was de rigueur.  As a young girl, I was forced to wear scratchy crinolines and wool skirts for hours on end. I think wool was a favored fabric and it always made me itch.  I learned to suffer in silence because my whining always fell on deaf ears.  They called me Saint Kathy back then.

I was also expected to be quiet—a lot. No talking in church, for example.  Luckily, I joined the Junior Choir and I and my fellow songbirds spent most of the service “horsing around” as we used to call it.  I believe it was Mark Twain who said that there were once rumors of a well-behaved Junior Choir, but he had never actually seen one. He was correct.

But back to the quiet.  At big family meals, especially holiday meals, we children were expected to be both quiet and polite. If we were seated at a designated kids’ table, all bets were off, but at Grandma Kohler’s holiday dinners, we all sat together.  Luckily, I could amuse myself by sitting opposite the china closet during the meal and watching myself eat in the mirror therein.  Endlessly fascinating, actually.  Hey, it was the fifties. We had to take our thrills where we found them.

After dinner at Grandma Kohler’s house, we children were expected to sit and read a book in the corner or play with our toys, quietly, of course.  Grandma’s house wasn’t really a place to run around in.  We knew the rules and we followed them.

These expectations truly didn’t bother us.  We knew what adults expected of us and we complied.  Mostly.

Let’s face it - we were building character all over the place.  We slept on thin mattresses covered with low thread count sheets.  We had chenille bedspreads.  And wool blankets. That darned wool tormented me everywhere. On hot summer nights, we had a fan in a window to keep us cool.

To add to our character-building lives, we had to wait for a whole week to see a new episode of our favorite show on television.  Nothing was instant except Tang back then.

But we were thankful.  We had so much.  We had our family.  We had friends. We had big family dinners with mirrors to amuse ourselves.  We had it good.

So be thankful. Even for that kid kicking your seat.