PIVOTAL MOMENTS, LIFE-ALTERING EVENTS, SUDDEN INSIGHTS — these are my topics for the week. Good attendance, environmentalism, love of life — these are my co-topics for the week.

The first batch will be the black spades and clubs, the second batch the red diamonds and hearts. I’ll shuffle them together for a public game of solitaire. This isn’t about playing cards, and it might not pertain to anybody but me, but it is about playing life with a full deck, plus the joker.

Parents, guardians, teachers work hard to instill good values in our young. Sometimes we’re successful. Other times we teach and preach until we’re blue in the face with no result.

I was sitting here dusting my keys, contemplating how to teach, when I began to wonder, “What were the three best lessons I learned from my childhood that helped me shape my adult self?” Currently I am an environmentalist with good attendance and a love of life even on bad days. How did I get here, because I don’t remember being directly taught these traits from authority figures?

Here’s one interesting aspect. I learned each one of these life-long lessons in an instant — well, three instances, if I parse it out — and I learned them all from my friends. Here are those three short stories.

Back in the ’50s and ’60s the people I knew felt little need or responsibility for protecting the environment. Our natural world was pristine and pollution wasn’t an issue. In ignorance, we did stupid stuff. In a ravine outside of Ridgway, thick planks were laid across, and people would drive out there to change the oil, letting the dank, dark worn-out fluids spill into a creek bed.

When camping, our notion of cleaning up was to dig a hole and bury our tin cans. Whenever we ate or drank in our cars, it was customary to roll down the window and toss out the Coke bottles and empty Twinkies wrappers along the roadside, thus keeping the car clean.

One great night, I was blasted out of that numb ignorance by one sentence. My buddies and I were out cruising country roads around town, listening to “Tea for the Tillerman.” I was in the backseat passenger side eating a bag of Wise potato chips. Two locals were in front, and the guy to my left, Mick Viglione, was born in town but moved to New York City for 12 years and then returned to live in town with his mother as a cool, groovy, teenage hippie with long, flowing red hair, dressed in the latest hippie fashion that we couldn’t buy in town — bellbottom corduroy pants, poofy shirt, leather headband, even a leather wristband, wow, cool. We all looked up to Mickey, eager to emulate his big-city style. He knew all the bands. He sang along to the entire Cat Stevens album as we drove dark country roads.

I finished my potato chips, pouring the crumbs into my mouth. I rolled down the window and tossed the bag, as usual. Mick stopped singing. He turned to me in the dim light and stared at me with grim intensity for a bit too long. Then he yelled, “Don’t litter!” I felt a shiver. That statement burned itself into my brain, and I’ve never littered again to this day. Once I’d latched onto litter, I became more aware of water, air, land, and food pollution. Mick’s statement, delivered at precisely the right time in my life, germinated my respect for clean living.

Another time I was working away at my assembly line job at Howe’s Leather Company fresh out of high school. We made shoes. Some cut, I sanded, and others sized the huge straps of leather that never stopped coming.

Next to me worked Frank Addeo, who I knew from town but wasn’t close friends with because he was two years older. We didn’t become high school friends. I was friends with Francis, his cousin, who was my classmate.

Frank was as funny as Francis, and we became great friends on the job. Because he was two years older, and an Addeo, a large family of professionals with connections, I looked up to him as the elder statesman in our friendship.

One random Wednesday shortly after lunch when we were both back on the line and time was moving slowly, monotony was setting in. I turned to Frank and said, “Boy, I wish it were Friday.”

He looked up at me and stopped what he was doing. He raised a finger. “Steve, never wish your life away.” He nodded, lips pursed, then turned back and sized another tap — the side-piece of a shoe. I was left standing there.

Though it was a common statement, he delivered it at a particularly receptive moment and it sank deep into my brain. I had longed for Friday on a Wednesday. That would put me two days closer to my own death. What’s the matter with me? I turned back to my sander and grinded down the rough underside of the next piece of leather and the next.

From then until now, I have been unable to stop the impulses to wish for vacations or weekends to hurry and come, but when I feel that urge, Frank’s words echo in my head and I’m able to deflect those longings quickly and enjoy the present, even if it’s root canal.

My final story about learning good attendance will have to wait until next week. It’s a long one. See you later.

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.