Being Brave

I was hungry I told my mom,
“Can I have some spaghetti?”
My brother said that he was going to warm it. My mom said, “Are you sure?” He said, “Yes.” He warmed it five minutes.
I was going to put it on the dinner table. It was so hot. The plate fell in my lap.
I was crying because it hurt.
My brother was laughing. He thought it was funny. “Ha Ha.”
I was scared my dad was going to whip me.
My Auntie came to my house. She said she was very sorry. She said, “sorry”.
My dad buyed me a medicine. He rubbed it in my legs.
I went to school. It was not hurting me. But then, it was hurting me. I went to the nurse. They gave me ice.


This is the book that was written by one of my first graders. She calls it I Got Burned.
I loved it so much because it showed from such a small writer, the pain and helplessness she felt at the time. It also shows her outlook on things. Amazing.
Here is the real story.

My young friend was home one Saturday night and was hungry. Her second grade brother offered to make her chicken noodle soup and warm it up in the microwave. It was in that huge warming up machine more than 5 minutes although there is speculation that it was maybe 10. Either way, it was WAY too long in there.
My first grade friend tried to take it to the table and spilled it on herself.
The chicken soup, you see, had created third degree burns on her little body. But no one bothered to help her. No one bothered to look. So she cried.
Can you imagine? She must have cried for hours.
And then it happened. No one in her family took her to the doctor. No one even made an appointment. It was a holiday on Monday, so she didn't come to school, but she didn't go to the doctor either. She just cried.
She wasn't at school on Tuesday either, although no one is quite sure why.
Wednesday, she came to school with a limp. Her tears had dried but her pain remained. She was so brave.
That was when we noticed. That was when we saw the burns. That was when the horror of it all was relived to us with every word that she told us.
No one had taken her to the doctor until we came along.

I love this child for sharing this story with me. I love this child for going through such an emotional time in her life and being so brave. I love her for writing about it. I love her for always remembering but being too young to hate about it. I love her because she was one we got to help. There are so many we can't.

I think B is the strongest, bravest person I know. He is not afraid of anything or anyone. He would fight lions for me if I asked him, but that day she told us the story, I was convinced that I had met someone braver than him.
I hope that everyone, at least once in their life, will get to meet someone brave and strong. Big or small, young or old, we can all learn from someone brave like that first grader, I know I did.

This is taken from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz
LUCY:
Linus, do you know what I intend. I intend to be a queen. (Musical fanfare.) When I grow up I'm going to be the biggest queen there ever was. And I'll live in a big palace with a big front lawn and have lots of beautiful dresses to wear. And, when I go out in my coach all the people...

LINUS: (interrupting her)
Lucy!

LUCY:
All the people will wave, and I will SHOUT at them. And...

LINUS:
Lucy, I believe queen is an inherited title. Yes, I am quite sure a person can only be queen by being born into a royal family of the correct lineage so that she can assume the throne after the death of the reining monarch. I can't think of any possible way that you could ever become a queen. I'm sorry Lucy, but it's true.

LUCY:
And in the summer time, I will go to my summer palace and I will wear my crown in swimming and everything. And all the people will cheer and I will SHOUT at them. (She pauses) WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T BE A QUEEN!!!!!!
There must be a loop hole... this kind of thing always has a loop hole. Nobody should be kept from being a queen if she wants to be one. It's undemocratic.

LINUS:
Good grief!


LUCY:
I know what I'll do. If I can't be a queen, then I'll be very rich. I'll work and work until I'm very rich and then I will buy myself a queendom.

LINUS:
GOOD GRIEF!

LUCY:
Yes, I will buy myself a queendom and I'll kick out the old queen and take over the whole operation myself. I will be head queen. NOW switch channels.


JOB WANTED: QUEEN

I have been in a job search recently. This is part of my delay in posting a blog entry for such a long time. Funny how when you have a job, you feel comfortable enough to look for something just a little bit better. So I have been on interviews and having lots of talks with people I know about jobs and “openings” and such, and it has been a real drain on me, both emotionally and physically. My friends are just about sick of hearing about this job situation and would rather I shutupalready and make a decision. And as sweet and understanding as B is, I know he will be happy when this is all over.
So, anyway, the other day, during one of the interviews, I got the age-old question… “What do you see yourself doing in five years?”
Ugh. They might as well have said, “What do you want to BE when you grow up, little girl?”
We ask little kids all the time, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and all of them have an answer. “I want to be a doctor, fireman, teacher, superhero”. When they don’t have an answer, it is strange. But yet, when we are grown up, most of don’t have an answer to that question.
There are so many professions in the world we could have, so many things we could do. How do we decide what we want to BE for the rest of our lives? Are we always supposed to drift through our life not really knowing what we want to spend our days doing?
Shouldn’t we all fit in a niche and stay there? Who knows.

The other day, for hat day, I put on my trashy, super shiny, Dollar Store tiara. It was fabulous. For one day, I was at work and I finally figured out what I want to BE when I grow up.

When I was growing up, I spent my days taking orders for imaginary food, lining up my stuffed animals so I could read them stories, dancing on Broadway, practicing my Emmy/Oscar speech, and making tickets for people to pick up their dry cleaning. I am not quite sure why I decided to become a dry cleaner for a while, a little bizarre if you think about it, but oh well. I knew, if someone asked me, that I would always answer “teacher” if I were going to be truthful. But a little part of me wanted to be a queen!
I have never considered myself a “girly” girl. I don’t love flowery anything. I hate ruffles and am just now easing myself into wearing pink without throwing up.
I don’t wear a ton of make up and don’t really understand lipstick. So, it really surprises me that I LOVE tiaras and “intend to be a queen” someday. Now, I am sure this job would be as draining as my current job. Too many people to please. Too many decisions to make. Too many stresses. But somehow, the idea of getting to wear a tiara the entire time would outweigh all of the negatives of the job.

Unfortunately, there are no openings for queen right now. My current job does not make enough money to “buy myself a queendom” so I will keep teaching. I will keep going to interviews, and maybe during one of them, I will quietly slip on my cheap tiara and dream of being interviewed for the position of queen. I am sure I could ace that interview!

Spring Fever
When it hits you, it hits you, whether you like it or not. I like to call it Spring Fever, but you can call it whatever you want.

I don’t know if it was because it was the last few days of my oh-too-quick spring break, or if it was just because the sun had finally come out after too many drab and dreary days, but I got the fever… bad. It was as if walking outside, catching a whiff of fresh air and seeing the sun, made me become a different person. And I got that feeling of needing to do something, even though I wasn’t really sure what you should do. I just knew that whatever I did, it needed to be something big! Suddenly, I had the craving to drive. No time, no place to go but Kroger, but I was ready… ready to drive.
I hopped in my white SUV, popped on my magnetic sunglasses, rolled down my window, turned up the tunes, and drove like there was no tomorrow. OK, so it was less than 5 miles, but I was driving!
All of a sudden, I became the blonde chick in the yellow car in American Graffiti.
I am sure, to a passerby, I looked just like some thirty-something soccer mom, but in my mind, I was back in my twenties… (maybe 25… old enough to drink, young enough to not creak when I get up from a chair) and driving a red, maybe yellow, convertible. I had long blond hair that would flow in the wind and I was cool. So cool. Pat Green and I were jamming as I drove, in my imagination, through the hill country, through the bluebonnets, over the back roads, into spring.
“Seems like you need a little hill country, a little back roads driving, a little bit of that old top down.”
I was singing like an American Idol contestant… well at least one from the top 5.
It was grand. And then I pulled into the Kroger parking lot. And for a second, I faced reality and the dream had faded slightly. I was back to being a suburbanite in my SUV with music too loud, and people staring at me like I was crazy. But in my mind, it was still Spring and I was still fabulous, maybe just a little less now that I know people were watching me. I practically skipped into the grocery store, gave money to a man in uniform, (ok, so he was just a boy scout selling candy bars but work with me here… I am dreaming) and smiled down every row, thinking about what was awaiting me when I finished my chores. Another ride down the hilly countryside… Just me, my long flowing, curly hair, and spring, driving, smiling, and looking fabulous!

The Pursuit of Cool

To steal words of Chuck Sigars from The World According to Chuck, “I love, love, love my memory key”. I love that I can I carry super secret information on my key chain. I love that no matter where I am, I can whip out my handy dandy thumb drive, put it into any USB port in a computer anywhere, and show off photo’s from B’s birthday. I think the best thing is the look on people’s faces when I pull it off of my key chain. Makes them think that for one fleeting moment, I am the coolest person they have ever met.

It’s not that I crave cool or anything. Isn’t that what makes someone cool… the fact that they don’t care if they are or not?
As a matter of fact, I considered myself to have a semi-coolness about me. I am hip on the Nick and Jessica’s spoiled antics. I love the Fab Five and their slobby straight man makeovers. I can argue the pros and cons of Lucas and Payton finally getting together. I had heard rumblings of a breakup before Tom and Penelope actually announced to the world. I was clued in. I like to call that “pre-cool”. I listen to the White Stripes and Fountains of Wayne. I’ve got it going on you might say, or so I thought.
And then one day, you flip the channel after watching a When Harry Met Sally for the 100th time, and you find that thing called TRL and you realize you have no chance in the race to be cool. Might as well just stop trying.
Tattoos are cool. Did you know that?
And putting rings in part of your body besides you ears is “the bomb”. Thongs, both for the feet and the butt are the coolest, even in the winter. Showing the thongs is the key to all happiness, once again, even in the winter. There is an actual show where people spend all kinds of money “pimping” someone’s ride instead of just buying a brand new car. Amazing!!

OK, so I am not as cool as I once thought. I plan to keep by butt and my toes fully covered and I don’t even like earrings, so I can’t see punching holes in any other parts of my body. I will keep my “ride” un-pimped thankyouverymuch.

Maybe I shouldn’t try to compare myself to teenagers. I shouldn’t try to keep up. For goodness sakes, if you think about it, half of the stuff they think is cool now, I used to play with or wear as a kid. Care bears are back. Friendship bracelets? Been there…know how to tie those knots. Tube socks with stripes and short shorts with piping up the sides… not cool when I was ten, not cool now.

I think I’ll just live in my pre-cool world where Stevie Ray Vaughn and Cheryl Crow still make me dance around the house and feel cool. My world, where One Tree Hill and Law and Order can live cohesively. Where, every once in a while, when I pull out my super cool technology to show to the world, I am the Queen of Cool. That is good enough for me.

We have hard wood floors in our house. They are real hard wood floors, not the kind you have to sand down twice a year like my grandfather had years and years ago, but the kind you can clean by rubbing a nice clean sock on the spill. I don’t have to think about the upkeep of the floor, really. I just spend a few minutes on them every once in a while, with an actual mop, and I forget about them for the next several days. Considering the level of slactitude in my house, it is amazing that it even gets done once a week. Needless to say, I like them, I am glad I have them, and they are considered very special when visitors see them, but I don’t really think much about them on a daily basis. Who would really? I am sure there is some internet site out there about someone’s obsession with hard wood floors…

My grandfather was in town recently, and we had quite a few conversations about our hard wood floors. I hadn’t really thought much about them till those conversations. Funny how you our thoughts work when you really focus on something.

I have also been thinking about my grandfather lately. Again, funny how you our thoughts work when you really focus on something. He is a hard man, who had a hard, hard life. You can tell by his calloused hands that he was no stranger to working hard. He is hard to talk to, not because he has nothing to say, but because you have to scream at him to have him hear you. As hard as he is, there was something soft about him, a shine in his eyes, like the shine on the hard wood floors, I don’t remember noticing until this visit.

He didn’t want to come on this trip, I know. His bones ache and his arthritis is so bad, that travel is not fun for him. He is set in his ways and likes his own space, so the trip was not his idea of a great time. So the fact that he was actually coming was a big surprise to everyone, I think. But as the trip progressed, as he visited with family and friends and talked about old times and times to come, I could see that spark in his eye. He was actually glad he came, I know. And I am glad he came too.
You see, my grandfather, like those hard wood floors, is tough, and a relationship with him is something I take for granted, something I hadn’t worried too much about maintaining. I realized this weekend, that family is the most important thing to him. It is the thing that makes him shine. I also realized that I needed to not just rub a clean sock across my relationship with my grandfather, I need to get rid of my slactitude and work hard at polishing and maintaining my relationship with him. Maybe one day, I can stand back and look at my relationship with my grandfather and admire it, like I now admire my hard wood floors.

The Monument to Slactitude


Busy is one thing but this is ridiculous! All of us are busy. We all have things in the world that keep us from doing what we are supposed to do. We all have priorities and we all have things that we just don’t want to do. Ours, is the laundry… well, and vacuuming, but that is a totally different story.

You see, every week we have a routine. The dirty clothes start piling up and the stench is unbearable, and we start the laundry process. It is pretty simple really, divide and conquer we say. All the whites, all the colors, all the sweaters, all the “unmentionables” all divided into their separate but equal groups and then we do loads and loads of laundry. For two of us, we wear a TON of clothes… or so it seems.
So then, we quickly and stupidly fling the clean clothes on top of the bed in the extra bedroom to be dealt with later. Out of sight, out of mind, I say. Normally, we spend our Sunday nights watching Law and Order and folding and hanging the clothes. (Admit it… you can always find some sort Law and Order show on cable… if you can’t, you just aren’t looking hard enough… but I digress). So, we usually work together to get that chore done.
Some days, we will sneak in and fold and hang the clothes for each other. This is our little way to show each other we love each other. Then the other one walks in pretending to be mad that it all got done. It is a silly little game, but we like it.

Anyway, this sort of folding activity usually happens every week, and our universe is back to normal. For some reason though, we haven’t folded clothes for a long, long, long time. So now, every morning we go dumpster diving through “the monument to slactitude” as we pray to the laundry gods, hold our breath, and dive in, looking for the matching sock, or that just right underwear. It is no shock now days to lose the cat for two days and realize that she had created a nest inside the monument to slactitude. Tuesday morning, I went in search of pants, and saw a pair of legs sticking out of the monument. Instead of striped socks and ruby red shoes, I saw bare feet and some very hairy legs and the faint voice of B mumbling to himself about our high degree of slactitude. Obviously, we are not proud of the slackers we are, but at times, we find the monument so humorous, we can’t stand to actually demolish it. Today is the day though. Today is the day that the monument falls. And the universe will once again be back to normal.
Or, maybe I will wait a little longer... There is a good Law and Order marathon on A&E!!