My children are excellent musicians. OK, so I’m a little biased because I love music, I’m kind of fond of them, too, and I have worked with them on their developing skills.

What they’re even better at than playing music, however, is finding ways not to play it. Well, I mean, ways not to play their instruments. They’re perfectly content to play all kinds of music including, to my surprise, country music. Many of my daughter’s adolescent friends are also fond of this genre which, on the Eastern Seaboard, seems about as typical as a 65-degree, mid-December day. Is global warming moving country music north?

Anyway, my children have developed ways to put off practicing. There’s the hunger excuse: “No, no, seriously, Dad, if you could feel inside my stomach, you’d know I’m starving.”

When the food arrives, they are far too busy laughing out loud to notice.

“I am hungry, it’s just that I had to send this text message now. It’s urgent.”

When I take the phones away, they insist someone will be stranded in the metaphorical frozen bus station in Alaska, with polar bears closing in and their friend’s only defense is a text message that will send a tone that terrifies bears.

Back to music, or not. So, now that we’re five years into their music education, their procrastination playbook includes headaches, cold sores and tired eyes that can’t possibly read such small notes. Crying “wolf” too many times, when I’ve seen them bouncing around the house after their headaches rendered them unable to practice, has made me less inclined to believe them.

But, then, last week, my son picked up his instrument and, within seconds, had developed a serious case of the hiccups. One of the many genetic gifts from my father are these hiccups that cause fish to change directions in nearby tanks, birds to fly from their trees and heads to swivel in the direction of that sudden violent, two-toned sound. Even when they were in my wife’s uterus, our children caused her stomach to jump, as if they were miniature maracas.

Before he could play a note, my son increased the tempo of his hiccups, generating a violent and explosive noise. While I was annoyed that he wasn’t playing when he promised to practice, I admit that I was impressed that I was outmaneuvered by an adolescent, hiccuping diaphragm.

A friend has this technique where she drinks from the opposite side of a glass while holding her nose. I’ve seen it work before, but I’m not sure I’d want to try it with my son without an EMT present. I had him try my method, which involves holding his breath for as long as he can, taking a small breath and then repeating the process. I figure it’s a way of starving the diaphragm of air until it goes back to its usual job. He gamely tried, but it didn’t work. I even scared him by telling him about all the standardized tests coming in the next several years. That was similarly ineffective.

When I gave up, I saw a small Mona Lisa-type grin on the corners of his mouth which formed as he pulled his unused instrument apart and put it back in its case. I wondered how, if he had so much control over his diaphragm, he might use that power constructively? Then I remembered the American military blasts unpalatable music to force drug dealers and foreign leaders out of their homes. Maybe instead of pop music making these dictators wilt, the military could blast the sound of violent hiccups. “OK, guys nothing’s working, let’s bring in the diaphragm.”

Is there divine  in all of us, or only in the people who share our religion? If your God, my God, anyone’s God, created the Earth and all the people, animals and planets on it, then does She want those who are true believers to annihilate and destroy the other people She created because they don’t believe in Her?

What? You don’t think God could be female? That’s a topic for another column. Recently, I read about a charitable act. At the end of the article, I saw that people were commenting about how that charity could only come from someone of their religion — I’m not going to indicate what religion it was.

The commentors were convinced that it couldn’t have come from someone who followed a different religious discipline. Why? If there are elements to ourselves that are a combination of destroyers and builders, lovers and haters, sinners and saints, why should something extraordinary or even inspirational be limited to one religion?

Couldn’t everyone’s God speak through or act through one person, regardless of his background or religion, to inspire others to greater heights, to do something incredibly beneficial to his or her fellow human beings without selecting only those people who go to the right building, speak the right language and follow the right religious practices? Maybe we need to close our eyes to see the divine  in everyone.

Religion has this way of bringing out the best in us and, at times, the worst. We sometimes feel that we’ve received some message from a divine being who tells us that we must right the wrongs of people who are outside our religous group. Centuries after the Crusades, humans still resort to weapons to make our point with those who have other religious beliefs.

I understand the fear, especially in an era when every politician with national aspirations describes a boogeyman (or woman). I also understand the reality that there are people bent on destroying us and that we can’t go naively into that good night, imagining we live in a utopian world where we can ignore threats. It’s real and it dominates the headlines every day.

This isn’t about the extreme cases, where we have to be vigilant against killers who, for whatever reason, feel they are doing something important in their lives by killing others before dying. That doesn’t seem like much of a way to honor anyone’s God.

This is about the way we relate to each other and the way we think of religious groups outside our own. Why should something spectacular or incredible have to originate from the mind or heart of someone from our religion?

Turning this around, do you like everyone in your church, temple or mosque? Do you routinely sit during services and feel a universal kindred spirit with everyone in that room that you don’t feel with the people in your child’s classroom at school, at your daughter’s ballet recital or at a concert where the music seems to echo around the room long after our kids have stopped strumming?

Would you randomly pick a name out of the hat at your house of worship and be equally thrilled to host any of those people in your home for a week, a night or even a long dinner?

Religion can offer us a chance to see and imagine that the best is yet to come in anyone around us. We don’t have to give up our own religion and it doesn’t lessen our religion to believe that something spectacular lies just beneath the surface of another person passing by us, even if that person doesn’t share our religion.

If we are all God’s children, wouldn’t She (or He) want us to put more effort into getting along with our siblings?

During the holidays we donate coats to the homeless, buy presents for strangers and send cards to the brave soldiers representing our country far from home. In addition to those charitable efforts during this time of year, how about if we come up with ways to give to our planet?

Huh? In light, if you’ll pardon the pun, of the current United Nations climate-change meeting of world leaders in Paris, perhaps we can add a few small items to our lists. And, no, most of them don’t require spending any money. In fact, they will help save money.

For starters, and this is something my Depression-era grandparents ingrained in me from an early age, turn off the lights in rooms we don’t use. I know that’s tough, especially during this darker time of year, but it cuts our electric bill. That’s an extra few bucks in your pocket at a time when our kids absolutely, positively, have to get the latest, greatest, fastest, most-fashionable present to pass the holiday parent test.

When we drive somewhere and wait for someone, turn off those engines. Seriously, idling is something we should never do. It wastes gas and pollutes the environment. I appreciate all the effort parents make to sit outside schools, piano lessons, practices and games, waiting to pick up their children. But leaving the engine on is not only unnecessary, it fills the air with pollutants just before our children step in the car. Having sat in cars in temperatures below freezing for close to a half-hour, I assure you that the car stays warm if you don’t open your window or door. Seriously, try it. It also gives us those cherished moments of silence.

Then, there’s the thermostat. Yeah, I know we like it warm, but for the month of December, how about turning it down just 2 degrees? If that becomes unbearable, lower it just 1 degree. It might not seem like much individually, but that can and will make a huge difference collectively.

During the night we can turn off our computers and printers. These machines are much faster at booting up than the same electronics were just a decade ago. While we’re waiting for our computers to come back online, we can check our emails, send important messages about what we just realized we need to get from the store, and send instant messages to people around the world.

OK, so, we’ve got that shopping list and we know you’ll forget something because the overstimulating holiday environment of most stores has an ability to soften our brains. The bright and clever displays and constant caroling music on the radio encourage us to buy something that wasn’t on the list, turning us into consumer marionettes.

But if we were more efficient about our holiday shopping, we could buy that extra thing and still cross everything else off the list. What does that buy us? It gives us more time to write that rhyming couplet expressing our enduring love for our spouse and it reduces the amount of time we’re running back and forth to stores.

How about walking? I know it seems hard to imagine carrying everything from store to store but, let’s face it, it’s hard to find parking spots anyway. Instead of using gas to get from one place to another, by walking we could burn off that extra piece of pumpkin pie that called to us from the refrigerator.

Like so many other efforts at this time of year, giving to our planet will bring returns for us, our children and grandchildren down the road.

Is the McDonald’s commercial bothering anyone else? I get it. The Golden Arches is serving breakfast all day long. Something about that radio advertisement is irritating, especially after I’ve heard it for the 20th time in a day.

In honor of that commercial, I thought I’d share a list of the trivial things I’m thankful for. Yes, I know there are many real things to appreciate, but, for now, I choose to focus on the mundane.

I’m thankful I’m not sitting next to someone telling me why he’s so angry at his ex-wife. Divorce is tough and coordinating activities for kids is challenging — even for parents who are happily married — but, dude, I don’t need to hear every twist and turn in your agonizing morning. I know, that sounds terrible and unsympathetic, but we don’t have to share everything with everyone.

I’m thankful that some games get canceled because of rain or snow. I know it’s our fault that we put our kids in all these sports and that some time down the road, I’ll have to get back on the road for a makeup game. But, in the moment, I can’t help enjoying the unexpected freedom to leave the keys and my chauffeur hat where they are.

I’m trivially thankful I’m not much taller. If I were much taller, I might have to duck when I entered a room or struggle to find a place to hide when someone who is about to tell me all the things about his ex-wife that bother him. Who am I kidding, right? It’d be cool to be taller and be able to dunk a basketball or even have a better view of people coming down a crowded hallway.

I’m thankful I’m not waiting behind a car that’s in the left lane and doesn’t have a blinker on. I’m not sitting at a turn when, just as the light turns green, the guy puts on his blinker, forcing me to wait while the cars in the right gleefully pass me without giving an inch to allow me to sneak into the other line. Hooray! Let’s hear it for those last minute blinker people, who give me a chance to appreciate the same traffic light another time through the green-yellow- red cycle. You never know: maybe the light will go from yellow to green this time and I will be the first one to witness it. And, maybe the traffic light will send me a Morse code signal with the winning lottery number.

I’m thankful I’m not in middle school. If you really need me to explain this one, you were probably sickeningly popular during those awful transition years and you need another rite of passage time in your life, just so you can understand the rest of us.

I’m thankful someone isn’t trying to tell me, right now, what should outrage me. I recognize that people get outraged about real and important things, like how politicians focus too much on one thing and not the thing that matters most to them in the moment. But, hey, just because I remain calm while other people are loudly outraged doesn’t mean I deserve that disgustedly frustrated look I get when I shrug in the face of your fury.

I’m thankful some of the dialogue in movies out right now is so bad that it’s added an unintended comic dimension while giving me the chance to appreciate the difference between quality entertainment and words to connect computer animated excitement. The Mockingjay Part 2 film offers several such gems. In one scene, Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutchinson, and Gale Hawthorne, played by Liam Hemsworth, discuss their competing interest for Katniss Everdeen, acted with considerable seriousness by Jennifer Lawrence. They conclude that they’re not sure who Katniss will choose, but it probably doesn’t matter much because all three of them are unlikely to survive anyway. Oh yes, the sweet agony of the love triangle in the middle of a life or death struggle.