Expressing Oneself Oddly

Language has its odd expressions. I heard a mother complain that her growing boy was "eating her out of house and home." Now, does that mean she has both a house and a home? Is it easier to eat someone out of a house than a home? If her house is her home, then he is only eating her out of one house/home. Eating someone out of either a house or a home is a strange picture upon which to reflect. It might mean consuming a La-Z-Boy lounger and other unappetizing materials.

Then there is the expression "It stinks to high heaven." Years ago one of my relatives explained that when he smoked a cigar he did not stub it out like he would if it were a cigarette. He gave this stinky expression as the reason. I recall laughing a lot as I had not heard anyone say this before. Is heaven really high? Jesus said heaven was either within us or between us, depending on the translation, so it may not be up in the sky at all. It may be at eye level. Even if it does turn out to be way up there, we do not know how high up it is. Astronauts have gone to amazing elevations relative to the earth and they did not find it. Perhaps we should say, "It stinks to low, medium, and high heaven," to allow for heaven to exist at any level. Or better yet, we should say, "It stinks to (fill in opposite of heaven here)" as that is surely a much stinkier place with its sulfur and brimstone and all.

Drying Off, Drying Out, Drying Up

It's a full "drouth" here in Smalltown these days. I can't hardly remember the last time it rained. When it did, it just kind of spit and moved on. I strolled outside in the backyard this morning with the dog and fell into one of the cracks out there. It didn't completely swallow me up at least and I climbed out. We're all praying for rain and I suspect the farmers are praying hardest of all. Gloria Pearce, one of our elderly members, asked me to pray for her because she gets quite a bit of her income from farming and is worried about losing all of her crops this year. She asked me to pray that she would not be sitting beside the road begging for money with a tin cup in her hand so she could pay her taxes. I promised her I would, and I did. I owe Gloria big time because she taught me one principle for saving water that she learned in the Great Depression in the 1930s. Its context is obvious. "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." So far I have not applied this principle and I hope I will not have to. On the other hand, never say never.

These are tough times for everyone but I keep on praying; for rain, for economic relief, for peace of mind not just for me but for everyone here. I hope they know I'm on their side and so is God.

Lots in a Name

It's interesting to follow fads and fashions in naming. For instance, if a woman is called Betty or Ruby she is probably elderly. If her name is Lisa, she was probably born in the 1960s. If her name is Caitlin or one of its numerous spelling variations, she is probably in her teens or twenties. Male names vary less. Thomas and Robert and John have been around forever. The name Ethan was popular a century or so ago, and now it is back in style.

People get creative sometimes, and naming their children brings out the muse in many of them. Sometimes they name their offspring based on something going on around them at the time. I wonder what it does to the child who then gets named Cyclone. Years ago in England, we worked with a travel agent called Miss Bottomley. I wonder what it was like to give that as a last name in school. Too bad her parents gave her the first name of Floral. Floral Bottomley. Now that's an image. Rock musician Frank Zappa was enterprising enough to name his son Dweezil and his daughter Moon Unit. I bet he was on some fancy drugs when he came up with those. Or maybe not.

While in college I worked in the tutoring center with a young woman called Spring Scales. Another woman had the first name of Chestina. Nicknames for that one boggle the imagination. Frankly, when it comes to naming someone I would go for conservatism. It is easier to sign checks with Susan or Brad Williams than with LaSquisha Perone or Theophilus Giles Goody-Ballard.

Yes It Really Happened

Made-up stories don't compare to what people are really up to. I talked to Cheyenne recently. She has a friend, Trevor, near Central City. He is on the police force. He was on duty at three o'clock in the morning, hiding around a corner by the side of the road in a small town. Suddenly a pickup truck roared by in the darkness going 80 miles an hour. Trevor put on his lights and siren. He went after the driver and pulled him over. He made the man get out of the truck. Then Trevor looked inside. The vehicle was a mess. It was piled high with fast food wrappers, boxes, cups, and straws. There were Skoal cans scattered around. Trevor waded through it all and under the dashboard he pulled out a giant marijuana plant.

He looked at the man in disbelief. "What were you thinking?" he demanded. "You speed through town going eighty miles an hour at three o'clock in the morning, AND you've got drugs in the vehicle?" The guy replied weakly, "I didn't know y'all worked at night."

Facebook Multiplies the Multitudes

I surfed Facebook tonight as I am prone to do. It is fast becoming the social networking tool of choice. It is mentioned in the national news more often than MySpace, its nearest rival. On Facebook people can send fake fish to a Li'l Blue Cove to oppose pollution, donate virtual plants to save acres in the Tropical Rain Forest, play trivia games, pass an online Long Island Iced Tea to someone...it goes on indefinitely. It is like the old story of "Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." As the story goes, a fox makes a grinning human figure out of sticky tar to trap a rabbit. The rabbit gets offended at the smiling, inanimate tar baby and hits it. His paw naturally sticks to the tar. The rabbit gets mad. He hits it again. Another paw sticks. And it keeps getting worse. Facebook is somewhat like that tar baby. It is enjoyable if you just grin at the tar baby and enjoy what's there, but it has so many applications and sub-applications that it's easy to feel like Br'er Rabbit with all four paws stuck in its myriad tentacular, sticky-tar activities.

I have drawn the line. I am absolutely not getting involved in Facebook's "Twenty-Five Things I Don't Want to Know About You."

Comedy Night

I can't believe Myra MacDonald asked me to do standup comedy at the Sweetheart Banquet tonight. And I had the temerity to say yes. Well, who am I kidding? It was fun. Especially telling about that bumper sticker, "Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I drive by again?" And telling the crowd how each religious group dedicates its new cars for its pastors. The Catholics sprinkle the car with holy water; the United Methodists have communion and pour Welch's Grape Juice on the car; the charismatics pray and lay hands on the car so it stays healed; and the Jews cut the tailpipe off.

On the way out, Lola Flushpoole mentioned that her daughter Michele had looked at her young husband, Pierre, this morning at breakfast. She told Lola, "I was thinking that this marriage is still so wonderful. I looked at Pierre and even after being married several years, I was still getting this nice warm feeling in my chest when I saw him. Then I looked down and saw that I had dunked my left boob into my coffee."

A Plethora of Passwords...

...and usernames. Although I'm usually quite organized about how I file and store secure passwords and usernames, occasionally I get caught out. Today it was a work-related site to which I knew the password, but I had been given an exotic username that had somehow gotten away from me. The username was something like "Graceful Dolphin Interspersed with Chanel No. 5 Perfume" that I had forgotten how to recite. So I got this email telling me that I had important new health information on the company website and would need to log in. Furthermore, failure to login with correct username and password and view this new knowledge would adversely impact my life in countless ways. The natural next step in this sequence was three messages saying "LOGIN FAILED." I did the email password request thing and was told that a password reminder had been sent to me. Twice. It never came. It is probably out there orbiting the moon.

The next thing that usually happens is that I get locked out of the site. I have to contact the Grand Plan Administrator who is astounded that I would forget my "Graceful Dolphin" username or whatever the heck it is.

Needless to say, the more important the message, the less likely it seems that I am able to view it. When I get requests to participate in those department store customer satisfaction surveys, the login information works beautifully every time. Murphy's Law, anyone?

Electrifying Events Edify

Electrical issues around the church building are alternately infuriating and amusing. It is an old building. 'Nuff said. Whatever previous electrically-minded people have done there in the past, they got it wrong. I know this from present electrically-minded people who say so. I have heard the word 'jerry-rigged' several times since coming to Smalltown. When Tom Harvey, a gifted church handyman, came by to work on the air conditioner wiring in my office yesterday he used the same word. It had been a rough week for Tom already as he had had two flat tires on his trailer full of cows. He noted that he broke off a screw head while repairing the wiring because of the way the circuitry had been put together 60 years ago. This forced him to replace jerry-rigging circa 1950 with jerry-rigging circa 2010. I have a creative set of wires in the house too, but I have been assured that those are not dangerous. Just funny looking. One or another of the electricians usually says something like, "If only that de-sprocketized nail had been re-springulated and not been criss-crossed with the master fuse, we'd be all right. And by the way, if the male and female parts were parallel and fitted snugly together, we'd have a much better situation."

Flash Mob Takes City by Storm

I read about a whole new trend from my blogger friend. It is called the flash mob. I had never heard of such a formation, and it is not as dangerous as the name might imply. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, defines a flash mob as a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The Austin Flash Mob is a formal organization that exists in Austin, Texas to perform funny, harmless, semi- improvised, public gags that are intended to encourage the participants and spectators to engage in their own forms of creative and preferably strange spontaneity. They say their purpose is to keep Austin weird. You can check out their antics at Whole Foods Market here.

This was a new concept to me, but seeing it in action made me want to be part of a flash mob in Smalltown or Sea City. Imagine a flash mob posing in dance positions outside Smalltown City Hall. And the Sea City Aquarium might be the perfect place to get a flash mob together to perform aquatic motions on land. The possibilities are endless. Maybe we can make Sea City weird too. One can hope.

The Audacity to Say It

The church secretary Myra MacDonald lost her driver's license recently. She was in the Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday to get it replaced. She had to bring her birth certificate to prove her identity. While standing in a long line typical of the DMV, she chatted with a woman born in 1962. Myra later told the group of us United Church Women at Cranky's Catfish at our luncheon today that one of her children was born in 1962. Anyway, this lady--aged 46 or 47 depending on her birthday--asked if she might see Myra's birth certificate. Myra did not mind showing it to her. "Thank you!" beamed the woman. "I wanted to see what a birth certificate for someone your age would look like!"

Well. It was handwritten, not typed, but otherwise did not look greatly different from the 1962-issued birth certificate. I told Myra she should have politely refused to show the document to the woman because it was printed in Egyptian hieroglyphics, on parchment so delicate that it might crumble under the force of sheer antiquity. However, Miss 1962 might have missed the sarcasm.

Cultural Excursion

I've heard some good stories during my surgical recovery period. John Barge shared this one over the phone yesterday. He swears it's true.

A tour group from the United States was taking a train through Ireland. The group included a Baptist minister from Alabama. As they clackety-clacked through the emerald grassy fields, a group of Irishmen came bursting in the door from the next carriage. "Ladies and gentlemen!" exclaimed the first Irishman. "Can I have your attention please! Is there a Roman Catholic priest aboard?" All the Americans looked at each other, but nobody spoke. Apparently there was not. So the Irishmen went running to the next car. The Baptist pastor looked particularly disturbed.

A few moments later the Irish guys came running back from the opposite direction. "Is there an Anglican or Episcopal priest here?" they asked. Nobody spoke for a moment, but then the Baptist minister said, "I'm a Baptist preacher. Can I help y'all?"

The first Irishman smiled. "I doubt it, laddie. We're lookin' for a corkscrew."

Surgery Cloud Has Silver Linings

The prayers people tell me they're praying seem to be working. I'm grateful to God and the good Smalltown folks for their support. The foot is healing fast. And one of the more agreeable aspects of having a post-surgical foot is having Lola Flushpoole come over with a gallon of milk to get me through the weekend. She also brought me chocolate and coffee to prevent any withdrawal symptoms, and an Egg McMuffin although I'm not completely addicted to those. Being Lola, she had an adventure while procuring these items.

"I got the coffee at McDonald's over in the next town from the young boy there that I've known for a long time. He gave me two hash browns instead of one with the Egg McMuffin. He did it because he was flirting. He's in love with me. He's gay, but he's in love with me. I know he is. I keep telling him he should go to college because he's bright and he needs higher education. So I tease him. Well, it's more like I harass him. Maybe he sees it as an S & M thing. I don't know."

Distractions During Surgical Recovery

I had a minor foot operation yesterday. In between bouts of pain (ouch) and intervals of drowsy Vicodin (aaah) I remembered two stories about worms to share before going back to bed to elevate that surgical-shoed foot. Why I thought about worms during such a time is unknown to me, unless it has something to do with the responsibilities that foot surgery is forcing me to worm out of.

Story Number One: My sister Lisa was six years old when she received a lesson in basic biology during first grade. Her teacher, Miss Harrison, told the class that worms were not male and female, but that each worm had a male end and a female end. Lisa came home and relayed this fascinating new information to our nanny, Mary. Mary knitted her brows, puzzled. "Both ends of a worm look the same to me. How would I tell which end of the worm was male and which was female?" Lisa looked thoughtful for a moment. Finally she answered, "I don't know. But," she grinned, "The worms know!"

Lola Flushpoole commented poetically by adding this:

Here comes the happy, bounding flea.
You cannot tell the he from she.
Both sexes look alike, you see.
But he can tell... and so can she.
Whee!

Story Number Two: A pastor called Duncan McHoot was giving a sermon on clean healthy living. On his pulpit he had four glass jars with lids on them and holes in the top. One jar contained a cigarette. The second jar had grain alcohol in it. The third jar held semen. The fourth jar had good soil in it. Rev. McHoot, before beginning his sermon, dropped one worm into each of the four jars. He then lit the cigarette and let the smoke fill the jar before removing the cigarette and replacing the lid. With the four worms now in the jars with the lids on, he told the congregation what was in the four jars. He then began to preach on healthy, moral living.

At the end of his sermon, he held up the four jars and with a flourish showed the congregation the results.

Worm in tobacco smoke: Dead.
Worm in grain alcohol: Dead.
Worm in semen: Dead.
Worm in good soil: Alive, healthy, and squirming.

"You see!" proclaimed Reverend Duncan McHoot triumphantly. "Here are these four worms. What does this tell you?" Fourteen-year-old Tiffany Blake raised her hand. "Yes, Tiffany?" said Rev. McHoot.

"Uh, okay, it looks like if I smoke, drink, and have sex, I won't get worms."

All in a Strange Day's Work

Today I visited Montcrief Rehab Center to visit elderly Marybelle Ashton. Marybelle is a friend of a church member whom I visited on request because of her knee injury. She fell in the bathroom. I had not met Marybelle before. It did not matter. Marybelle liked to talk no matter who the audience was. She had gray hair and wore large circular silver-framed glasses that only slightly magnified her beady black eyes. Those eyes stared at me nonstop while her verbal express train rushed down the tracks.

The minute I walked in the door Marybelle launched in. "I came here because of Dr. Hankenflank who works here. Now Dr. Hankenflank hasn't been to see me, not once, even though he's the resident physician. I don't understand it. I was at Memorial Hospital before I came to the rehab center after I fractured this knee. They were short of beds I guess. They put me in a room that looked like a broom closet. I think it was a broom closet. At least they took the brooms out. Anyway it rained all night the first night I was there and there was water pouring from the roof onto my bed. And there was an electric light up there. Electric light and water in a broom closet. Oh, my land! That water all over me and that light hanging down and I couldn't get a nurse's attention to save my life. Hold on, that TV is too loud. I'll turn it out. I mean I'll turn it down. Because I can't hear myself talking. I need to hear every word. So I can keep track of what I've said so far. Now, they brought me this burger with fries for supper. I'm supposed to be on low sodium. But this burger has sodium in it. So do the fries. I wonder what Dr. Hankenflank would say if he saw this? But he hasn't been here to see me, not once. I can't understand it. I thought he'd want to see me every day. Anyway, when I get my hospital bill from Memorial I'm telling them I won't pay for a private room, not after they put me in a broom closet. That's for janitors, not patients. Come to think of it they may not have taken all the brooms out. I'm sure I saw a straw broom in the corner.

"Oh, don't get up and leave yet. I have a scrapbook here. It has a hundred pages in it. I'll show you the whole thing. It's full of stories and pictures about me. My daughter brought it to me yesterday. It starts with me as a baby and goes all the way up to my ninety-third birthday last month. Now, here on Page One..."

I bowed out at this point leaving her with her scrapbook and sodium-laden burger and fries. Later I talked with a church member who shall remain nameless. This woman is slightly acquainted with Marybelle. She mused, "I'll only say what I once overheard from my family. My son Eric once asked his brother David whether Marybelle was autistic. David told him, "I don't think Marybelle's autistic. I think she's Nucking Futs."

Blessability

Watching the Super Bowl yesterday I saw several ads for a beer's "Drinkability." Logically speaking, all beers are drinkable or nobody could sell them. Coca-Cola is drinkable. Milk is drinkable. Water is drinkable, or needs to be made so if there are thirsty people who need it. But the drinkability idea has stuck. The search is on for the beer or other beverage with that inscrutable, indefinable quality called drinkability. The fact that this quality did not exist six months ago matters not at all.

Drinkability is now a measure of the quality of beer. Whatever that means. I wonder what new measures we can find in the same spirit. My dog might be evaluated for his CuteAbility. Imodium pills have great Stoppaflowability. I am sure all Smalltown church members' children and grandchildren have high PerfectAbility. My heavy-duty hammer, when faced with a nail, has remarkable Rammability. The Smalltown Scoop de Goop Ice Cream Parlor has milk shakes with superior Slurpability.

Our world, particularly our advertising world, is quick to set new trends and people seem all too eager to promote them. But it is just possible that there are other "abilities" that matter more. Yesterday I found the communion bread to have plenty of eatability and the wine, sippability. I hope these elements deepened my Holyability. Perhaps Jesus is interested in our Disciple-ability, meaning both our eagerness to follow him and our longing to find others to do the same.