I’m grateful for a lot of things today.

It starts with the wife, son and daughter. I begged them to head across our easternmost state line for a day or two with the kinfolk since all of them had time off from work or school, but they strongly decided Dad wasn’t going to be left alone. Oh, I’d have kept the idiot blue heeler and dachshund so I wouldn’t have the house to myself, but I’m grateful that the rest of them put up with someone whose work puts a damper on their family and social life almost regularly.

I’m also grateful for that job and today, I’ll say a prayer for the many among us who have been cheated out of a job by a vicious and often seemingly unfair economy, the likes we haven’t seen in most of our lifetimes.

Another thing I’m grateful for are Bedouin Shriners and the work of people like Leonard Branan, Jim Bushnell, Lucky Tarkington, Jim Eskew and countless others who have over the course of 30 years wiped tears from faces of many people faced with the chilling prospect of losing family members to vicious burns and other physical ailments. Since 1979, the Bedouin Shrine Classic basketball event they’ve helped along has raised funds and provided services for burned and crippled children, as Shriners have done nationwide throughout their existence.

This year, as the Shriners prepare for their 30th tournament Jan. 4-9 at the Civic Center, Muskogee High School and on the final day, Hilldale High School as a third stage, they’ve put forward three such gripping tales in the lives of Brady Etchison of Muskogee, Kaleb Dorr of Wagoner and Nathan Fisher of Beggs, providing us with three poster kids as lessons in what this week of basketball is all about.

Etchison, you’ve read plenty about in the pages of this newspaper. Back in April according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, the Oktaha ninth-grader ran the Ford Expedition he was driving into an electric pole south of Muskogee. He came into contact with an electrical wire which was touching the car and when a witness arrived, he was sitting in the road with extensive burns. After a short time at HIllcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, he was sent to the Shriners Hospital in Cincinnati with a 50-50 chance of survival.

Both legs have been amputated below his shin area and he’s in physical therapy, awaiting one more surgery to make his legs the same length. After that, he’ll be fitted for prostheses. He may be able to go back to school after the first of the year, when he recovers from his upcoming surgery, his mother told the Phoenix recently. This from a mom who wasn’t sure if he’d even make it to one surgery and, as she said at last week’s Shrine tipoff dinner for members and coaches, all she ever once knew about the Shrine was the clowns.

Not any more.

We also heard from the moms of Door and Fisher, both of whom we’ll share more of as the holiday period proceeds. Suffice to say Fisher was in the battle of his life with burns and Dorr faces battles to correct birth defects that included club feet, hand deficiencies and arms that weren’t at normal length.

These families couldn’t have come close to absorbing the bill for what they faced and what they are still facing. Shriners here and across America make sure they and others like them don’t pay a dime. One of those such beneficiaries will play for a charter school in Oklahoma City, Aztec, in the upcoming tourney. He’ll shoot baskets and grab passes and rebounds with a hand once severely burned that still requires further corrective surgery.

The Bedouin Shrine Classic has been a profound success story all 29 years as the proceeds from it near an estimated $1 million. But that one chapter struck me more than any of them. Here’s a burn victim who’s playing the game, a game meant to be enjoyed and yet a game that’s also called competition, even though neither he nor any other player or coach will walk away with a gold ball on the basis of what’s done the week of Jan. 4-9.

I hear about the tales of teams pulling out over the years, coaches complaining about a bad call or a bad deal, like perhaps not getting the seeding they thought they deserved or not getting in the bracket they wanted. I’ve heard of board members of participating schools complaining that they had to pay admission to see the games.

Maybe, in some cases, schools had a legitimate gripe and it was the tournament committee that found it difficult to be flexible. But just remember, these are the people who don’t change the rules when a distressed mother or father calls about their child.

The occasional bending of tradition struck last season when tournament officials allowed the coaches to seed their own teams. This year, one team left because they couldn’t get in the right bracket and maybe one day, small and large can be relative terms and the seedings can be set up 1 to 16 with the lower eight in a bracket named after something other than a size description.

But all you have to do to remember what this is about is spend some time with one of these families.

And just once a year, it seems to me that the best of this area, with the best draw of fans, can gather in force, and without preconditions, to do something for their neighbor.

One day, that neighbor could be someone within the walls of their own home.