The next afternoon, just past six o’clock, I wanted to explore the countryside, a few miles due west of Brookville. A brief, hard, rain shower in the area had cooled the baking midsummer air. When I arrived, the skies had mostly cleared, and it turned into a delightful, weather-perfect evening.

I turned the Corvette off of the main highway and onto a gravel-topped county road. The landscape was peaceful—abundant with expressions of nature in all directions. Mile after mile of seemingly endless acres of corn and barley rolled like high seas of deep-green velvet. Wooded hills and river bluffs accented the rural region’s visible agricultural carpet.

I eased off the gas pedal and almost idled along the rain-dampened, unimproved, gravel road. I tried to breathe in as much of the pleasant aroma from the lush flowers and foliage as possible. An easy breeze allowed me to hear the whisper of the full shiny-green cottonwood leaves, which wriggled in the branches, from rows and rows of roadside trees.

I passed by a road sign that read “Path to Nobility.” That section of the road was getting rough; rocks and chuck holes slowed me down to a crawl.

The Vette’s right-front tire suddenly sank out of sight. The wheel had rolled into a deep chuckhole. The car came to an abrupt stop. I got out and inspected the damage. The tire was flat.

“The road of life can be rough in spots and full of pitfalls,” I groaned. “Lord, how can I strive for personal excellence and become the best that I can be?”

God came to my rescue. No, She wasn’t there to help me change the flat tire. Besides, as She fashioned new, clean, farm-hand duds—bib overalls and a white short-sleeve, knit shirt—I didn’t have the nerve to ask Her to get Her hands or Her clothes dirty.

The Lord leaned against the front of the Vette and said, “Wantsalittle, try to adhere to the words of Aristotle, who insightfully said: Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Wantsalittle, what are the things in life that you do best? Where do your interests, talents, and abilities lie? When you aspire to actualize your personal talents and abilities, you must remember that practice makes perfect.”

“I think that I’m doing the best that I can, at least most of the time.“

“People rarely do the best that they can do. Confucius said, ‘When you meet a man of worth, think how you may attain to his excellence. When you meet an unworthy one, then look within and examine yourself.’ And Abraham Lincoln quipped, ‘Whatever you are, be a good one.’ Wantsalittle, here’s the secret: Set challenging, but realistic short and longer-term goals. Your visions are most important. As you move from one task to the next, throughout life, program your mind for success.”

“God, how can I do that?”

“Use positive affirmations in everything that you say or do. Visualize that you’ve already performed or achieved what it is that you want accomplished. If you do, with patience and persistence, you shall receive it. As you think with the goal of striving for personal excellence, you will more likely become the best that you can be. Will you go the extra mile and strive for personal excellence?”

“Yeah! From this time forward, I’ll make a conscious effort to go that extra mile!”

My flat tire didn’t slow me down. I didn’t have a spare tire, but after God took off, I simply engaged the car’s built in “flex-capacitor” and flew off into the wild blue yonder.

I stopped, for about an hour, in Brookville to get the flat tire repaired. At the service station, I thought about how I could become the best that I could be at something, I remembered my teenage years—back when King Arthur’s gallant Knights of the Round Table regularly tested their metal in jousting tournaments. I asked myself, “Why don’t I go back to the good old days in Camelot and joust against the noble Sir Lancelot?”

Upon my arrival in Camelot, I entered the World Jousting Championship. The tournament was about to begin.

Naturally, one of the first people that I recognized at the event was MYSELF! First, I said to my “current” self, “Drat the luck!” Next, I said to my “previous” self, “Sir Self, here is what you’re going to look like a few years from now!”

My previous self said, “Oh brother, I can hardly wait!”

“No—younger self! I don’t think that you quite understand. I’m not your ‘brother’! You see. . . . Just forget it! It’s a long story. I’ll explain it to you one of these days. For the time being, simply sit over there and hide behind that big oak tree, and cheer for your older bro—I mean self. . . . Well, I don’t know, exactly, what I mean! But ‘you’ can witness first hand ‘our’ trying to win the World Jousting Championship!”

My previous self concluded, “All right! I was going to enter the jousting tournament, myself. But it appears, anyhow, that I’ll—you’ll—WHOEVER—will be competing just the same! . . . Whatever’s going on, I’ll cheer for you in the upcoming jousting matches. At least I know that you . . . e-r-r I didn’t get killed. That is—unless you’re my ‘ghost’ who has come back to haunt me.”

After I solved that minor problem, I still had a few more similar obstacles to overcome. I hoped that none of my friends would notice that I had suddenly “aged” by a few years. I decided to keep my helmet on and my visor pulled down to hide my face. That did the trick. Nobody knew that “I” was really “me.” Well, let me put it this way: They thought that I was Sir Wantsalittle Morefromlife in the “body” of my previous self.

In any case, I entered the World Jousting Championship. A large crowd, aristocrats and commoners alike, was on hand to witness the spectacular event. The pavilions were filled with gorgeous ladies, curious young pages, and jewel-bedecked noblemen.

Almost all of King Arthur’s hundred Knights of the Round Table were present and registered for the tournament. Sir Lancelot, the prohibitive favorite, Sir Gawain, my former mentor and master, and King Arthur, himself, were among the list of notable combatants. As a precaution, flat wooden blocks were fastened to the ends of the knights’ lances to make for safer competition.

Most of the spectators had planned to cheer for either Lancelot, the current world champion, thought of by most people to be unbeatable, or for the popular King Arthur. Queen Guinevere wasn’t sure who to pull for. Her fickle emotions were divided between King Arthur, her loyal husband, and Sir Lancelot, her newly discovered champion and handsome secret lover.

Two other uninvited and unbiased characters were on hand. Louie and Frankie, the Budweiser® lizards, curiously watched the proceedings from their side-by-side seats on a nearby log. The adventurous lizards had heard about me while I was in Hollywood. They had loyally followed me, and they had arrived in Camelot by way of “Louie’s time-travel limo,” which they had parked next to the Corvette, a few hundred feet away from the field of battle.

Several hours into the grueling, hard-fought spectacle, the field narrowed down to Lancelot and me. Sir Lancelot had easily defeated his good friend Sir Gawain in one semi-final duel. And I had just won a close battle with the aging but still-fierce King Arthur in the other semi-final match.

Although a couple of knights sustained minor injuries, nobody was seriously wounded or killed during the preliminary rounds of the tournament. The stage was set for the final jousting event.

Trumpets blew to prepare the contestants for the final event. Sir Lancelot and I dazzled the crowd with our lustrous, shining suits of armor. Our brilliant shields gleamed and reflected the bright rays shed by the late-afternoon sunlight.

Just prior to the competition, my “other self” loaned me Spirit, my trustworthy palomino stallion. My younger self had brought Spirit with him to ride in the tournament. Like everyone else in the crowd, Spirit thought that I was crazy to go up against the great Sir Lancelot.

“Master, are you sure that you want to joust and duel with the notoriously treacherous Sir Lancelot?” Spirit asked.

“Just relax, Spirit, and do your part to help me unseat the world champ. There’s an apple in it for you if I come out the victor!”

“Wow! Okay, master, I wish you the best of luck! By the way, for some odd reason, you look much more mature today.”

In preparation for the “finals,” Lancelot and I mounted our respective horses. We faced off about a hundred yards apart; our shields were up and our lances were ready. Both of us glimpsed over toward Queen Guinevere. She was chewing on her fingernails as the last trumpet note sounded, initiating the action.

As two daring and bold knights, we charged each other at full speed. We met at mid-track. Our heavy metal lances clashed off our round steel shields. The heavy contact sent out a high-pitched, ringing, metallic sound that could have been heard from a mile away.

All of the hype and fanfare went for naught. The match was over in a matter of seconds. My first strike with my long lance glanced off Lancelot’s shield, then deflected squarely into the middle of his chest. He absorbed a punishing, almost fatal blow. The little flat wooden block, which had been attached to the tip of the lance, saved his life.

After Lancelot was knocked off his horse, he lay crumpled on the ground. He waved a white flag, an admission of his unexpected defeat.

I rode up to where Lancelot had fallen. Quickly, I dismounted Spirit. Then I held my lance high as I looked down on the surprised, thought-to-be-unconquerable knight. Immediately, I was awarded the “World Jousting Champion” blue ribbon.

“Sir Lancelot is a hard-fighting, noble knight,” I said. “Today, though, I have soundly defeated him. And I am now the new world jousting champ!”

Louie, one of the Budweiser® lizards, said to his pal, “Frankie, this guy’s more fun to watch than those boring frogs!”

“Come on, Louie,” Frankie replied. “The show’s over.”

(The moral of this episode: To achieve a measure of personal excellence and to become the very best that you can be, image yourself as already successful. And remember that practice makes perfect!)

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