Category: Life

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The Princess

Our receptionist was born and raised a true princess. She moved through life at only one speed: regally slow. This proved true even when bullets hissed by our office window.

It was my brother-in-law’s first week on our project in Africa. We were on a conference call with the New York team. Outside our second story office on the university campus, students were protesting. The army was sent in to disperse them. We peered out the window from time to time, but nothing seemed to be happening.  Then in an instant, the protest turned into a riot.

The two sides clashed in the parking lot below our office window. The students screamed and charged. The army began to fire their automatic weapons into the air to disperse the crowd. We dove for cover under the conference table as bullets whined by us from the parking lot below.

Except for our princess receptionist. As minor royalty from a tribe in western Uganda she was utterly unflappable. Amidst the volleys of rifle fire, screaming students, and cowering colleagues, she calmly sashayed across the office in her regally slow way to fix a cup of tea. As you do.

My brother-in-law stared at me wide-eyed under the table as the percussion of the guns continued. I assured him there was nothing to worry about and joked that this only happened every other week. In truth I was petrified. We had forgotten all about the people from New York on the conference line. Then their voices came on:

“What the hell is that noise, Chuck?” they asked.

“Weapons fire” I replied, trying to sound ho-hum. “I suppose we’re going to have reschedule the call”.

At which point, the New York team began to scroll through their Blackberry’s (remember those?) and mumbled stuff like “I suppose I could do next Tuesday, does that work for you?”

“Ah, guys” I said, no longer hiding behind a façade of calm, “we’re actually in the middle of a riot here. We’ll reschedule later”. I hung up. Our receptionist added more sugar to her tea. Then sipped it for taste.

Finally during a break in the chaos we saw a safe opening for us all to leave the office. But before doing so, the princess glided over to the hallway mirror to adjust her hair. And then washed up her tea cup.

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

[Apologies for a lack of blog post last week! Sometimes Mondays are too much even for us at Words for the Weary!]

Image Credit: Best African Proverbs

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The Story

He approached me along an empty Sunday morning street.  Unsteady on his feet and reeking of liquor, he politely asked for spare change. I gave him a coin and a smile, assuming he would move on. Instead, what followed was 10 minutes of pure grace.

Surprised by the coin, he steadied himself. He searched my face through filthy spectacles. Satisfied, he said, “You know that coin you gave me is going right down my throat, don’t you? I’m on the drink. I can’t help it. I just thought you should know. I don’t want to take advantage of your generosity”. I nodded without judgement, amazed by his honesty.

He then asked my name. It turns out we are namesakes. As proof, he pulled out a crumpled birth certificate which, for reasons unknown, he carries in his back pocket. Charles is 62, short, stout, weathered from a hard life. He is a native of the small English town where we met that morning. He spent a few happy years in Canada, another bond between us. He now lives in a shelter run by the local church that he describes as “Nice folk, but with their head up their ass.”

Standing together on the empty village street, his story flowed out. There was no boasting and no desire for pity in its telling. It was not the afflicted drunken ramble of someone in a bar. His only purpose was connection. For my part I mostly just listened, humbled by the unselfconscious honesty of this man, gently sharing his brokenness without wallowing in it.

Charles’ wife died of cancer in her 40s and left him with four kids. He stole cars to make ends meet, did some time in prison. He wept as he recalled his two girls killed in a car crash. He opened his shirt to show me their names tattooed over his heart. I asked about the angry scar on his collar bone. Knifed by some arse-hole in a pub in Wales. He often drinks in Wales since most local pubs have banned him.

The names of his boys, Bradley and Kevin, are inked on each arm. Bradley has two kids: “Them grandkids love me. Think I’m the greatest bloke alive. They’re the reason I never give up. Even at rock bottom on the drink, I will never give up. Never.” As he said this, I knew it to be true.

He caught my eye as I glanced down at his massive, bruised hands.  He remarked that he had knocked someone out with a single blow at the pub the previous evening. When I asked why, he said “You just can’t talk filth in front of ladies like that Charles. I mean, I had a daughter and a wife. Nobody should talk to a lady like that bloke was doing last night. Next time, he’ll think about it”.

As my bus approached he reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny copper penny. It had a hairpin bent around it. He gave it to me. “I do this when I find a new penny lying about”, he said. “Give this to someone you love Charles”. We shook hands in parting, his iron grip like that of a stonemason. It’s the only time in my life that I wished for my bus to be late.

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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The Parade

I flattened the little kid. I walked into her full stride and knocked her to the pavement. As she lay there stunned, I bent down to help her up. All the while trapped inside my Pig-From-The-House-Of-Straw costume.

Some friends and I had signed up to be in the local town parade. We were assigned the “Three-little-pigs” and the “Big-bad-wolf” costumes. We got into the fluffy costumes, affixed the oversized heads, and took our assigned place in the parade line-up. Always a crowd-pleaser, we would chase each other around and make exaggerated huffing and puffing antics all along the parade route.

Wearing a giant pig costume is not as easy as it looks. For starters, the costume smelled AWFUL. You perspire like crazy in those things, as did the people who wore them before you. With the affixed head, there is very little air circulation. So basically you are walking a parade route in the sun in a fuzzy, sealed plastic bag full of sweat. Not pleasant.

Secondly, the parade route itself is not so straightforward. There was a marching band in front of us and a motorized float behind us (ironically, given that we were dressed as pigs, the float was promoting the local vegetarian club. True). We had to beware of all the stopping and starting lest we crash into the band or get run over ourselves by the float. And with many horses and carriages involved, lets just say there were a lot of “leavings” along the parade route. A lot.

Finally, the visibility out of the costume is near zero. We could only see through a screen in the pigs nostrils. We were constantly straining to see one another, keeping an eye out for leavings, the band, and the float. That’s where the kid comes in.

She probably loved the Three Little Pigs. Who can blame her? So she broke ranks from the roadside crowd and ran to give me a hug. With no peripheral vision, I never saw her coming. WHAMMO. Down she went with a pork knuckle to her chest.

Of course I was horrified. I bent over to help her up. She freaked out. Again, who could blame her? The giant pig that just flattened her was now towering above her, unable to communicate through a stupid costume that smelled of sweat and horse urine. From one nostril I could see the horrified mother. From the other, the father encouraging me to just move along. Which I did, in haste.

When I got home my father had taped the parade on our VCR. As fate would have it the incident occurred in front of the TV tower where they filmed the parade. The commentary went something like this:  “Well Ben, here come those rascally little pigs and the big bad wolf. Always a crowd fave… Good heavens…. Did that pig just….I believe it was the House of Straw…Oh dear… I hope she’s OK…

I hope so too.

 

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Middle America Pt II

I just returned from a full month in the surprising and wonderful town of La Crosse, Wisconsin (see last week’s post). A few more unforgettable local moments took place in my final week there, including:

Decency:  A class of learning disabled adults came into the YMCA to try out the gym equipment. They far outnumbered the available staff. Most of them struggled with how to calibrate the bicycles, rowers, stair climbers, ellipticals, and other fitness machines. Within a minute, most of the gym regulars paused their own workouts to come alongside each disabled adult. They patiently helped to get them sorted. They then stayed by their side, chatting and laughing and helping each person try the different machines.

Priorities: I attended a fund raiser for the local hospice. This gave me a chance to personally thank the hospice staff who had cared for my father in his final days. I also picked up a promotional pamphlet that beggars belief for its sheer mid-western awesomeness, on every level. This is the direct text of the flier:

Hospice Care: Making Wishes Come True

Virginia was admitted to outpatient Hospice after it became apparent her lung cancer was not responding to chemotherapy. Her hospice nurse asked Virginia what she valued most in light of the diseases progression.

“One goal I still have is to tour the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota”, Virginia said.

It became clear over the next week that Virginia was too weak to travel to the museum. Committed to fulfill Virginia’s wish but unsure how to do so, her Hospice nurse called the Spam Museum. The manager she spoke with was so inspired by Virginia’s story that she agreed to drive the highlights from the Spam exhibits to La Crosse to bring Virginia’s dream to life…

Everything about this is awesome: (a) that there IS a Spam Museum, (b) that it was someone’s unfulfilled dying wish to visit it, (c) that the Hospice nurse saw fit to phone, (d) that they drove Spam stuff to La Crosse, (e) that someone wrote this into a promotional pamphlet, and (f) that I found the flier at an event to support the very same Hospice unit that took care of my father for terminal  lung cancer. You can’t make this up!

Cheeky: As I cleaned out dad’s house I discovered his extensive stash of irreverent religious items. Highlights include (a) a product called “The Nun Chuck”, which is a small catapult that flings foam nuns across the room, (b) a lawn sprinkler in the shape of Pope John Paul II called “Let us Spray” where water shoots out of the Pope’s upstretched hands, and (c) several Pope Francis paper face masks. I am not kidding, for some reason he had several of them. A man of faith, dad still managed to keep things in a proper mid-western perspective until the end.

 

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

Image Credit: Dave Crosby, via Flickr

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The Injury

April Fool’s Day is no laughing matter. April 1st is seared into my memory as the Day of the Great Injury.

I was perhaps 7 or 8 years old. Spring had come early that year. April 1st was the very first day I could wear shorts outside and ride my bike. I had happily ridden that afternoon to my piano lesson. The warm breeze tickled my pale legs.

When the lesson was over I mounted my bike. I began to roll down the long, sloping driveway. I turned to wave goodbye to my piano teacher. I picked up speed as he disappeared back inside his house. Then I turned to look where I was going.

Too late. My bicycle slammed into the front of my piano teacher’s car parked at the end of his driveway. I distinctly remember that his car was a Dodge. I also remember thinking to myself, “too late”.

I catapulted over the handlebars, doing a somersault in the air. I then slid, butt-first, up the hood of the car. My momentum was abruptly stopped by my private bits as they encountered the base of the windshield wiper. There was a searing pain.

I lay on the hood of the car gasping for breath. I managed to pry myself off the windscreen and roll off the car. I lay in the grass clutching my unmentionables, fearing the accident might leave a deep scar to more than my psyche.

Adding to the humiliation, my best friend’s mother had witnessed the entire thing. She rushed out of her house across the street, picked me up, and drove me home. What’s more, she is an upstanding church lady of the highest order, so there was no discussion of The Injury. She asked instead about my piano lesson. I just whimpered.

Dad met us at the front door. He just stood there blinking. Unable or unwilling to describe what she had witnessed, my friend’s mother merely said: “Charlie has injured himself”.

She then felt the need to add, “In a foundational area”.

My dad blinked again, trying to process it all. Then he just said “Better come inside and put some ice on that”.

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

Image Source: Reddit

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The Accident

“Sir”, he said, bursting into the room where I was conducting a job interview, “May I use the power saw?” Not the question one expects during a job interview.

With a confused look I nodded yes. Our driver dashed to the office tool locker, grabbed the power saw, and disappeared. I apologized to the interviewee, and we resumed our discussion.

This being Uganda, the windows were wide open. We soon heard the power saw in action from somewhere down the road. The interviewee and I were both distracted, listening intently to the grind of the saw on something very unforgiving.

Moments later the project driver re-appeared, sweaty and breathless. “Sir”, he said. “May I borrow 10,000 Shillings?” (about $3.00). He looked at me pleadingly.

I turned to the interviewee to apologize once more, then I asked our driver what was going on.

There had been an accident. A bread truck had crashed through the gates of our project house and smashed into a concrete pillar. The driver of the truck was pinned behind the steering wheel with cracked ribs. Our power saw had been used to cut through the steering column of the truck to free him. But the 10,0000 Shillings?

They had called an ambulance from the accident scene. Alas, the ambulance reported that they could not come because they were “out of fuel”. This was a thinly veiled request for a bribe. Hence the 10,000 Shillings. The irony is that we actually worked on the same compound as the hospital. So our project driver just drove the injured person there himself.

It turns out the injured person was the 16-year-old nephew of the actual bread truck driver. The latter had been drinking and was fast asleep in the passenger seat. The nephew was driving with no license, no shoes, no experience, and apparently no functional brakes.

We got things sorted and I concluded the interview. In my distracted state I offered the candidate the job. Worst hire of my career.  By contrast, that project driver – with his pro-active, get-it-done, common sense – now manages a national fleet of hundreds of vehicles and drivers.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Chaos

While in the States I attended a fundraiser for the local elementary school at a neighborhood restaurant.  The event made me ponder the upside of celibacy.

Picture pressurized busloads of children suddenly and simultaneously being released into a contained yet public space. Several dozens of children, some of them birthed right there in the restaurant I swear, soon overwhelmed the capacity of the kitchen to produce food and the capacity of the wait staff to deliver it. It was like being in a battle scene from Braveheart.

There were children under tables, on top of tables, crawling between tables, wearing menus on their head as a hat, and having meltdowns with the consistency of Old Faithful. The din was constant as the children outshouted one another. Madness I tell you.

The ratio of food being worn vs. food being consumed was about 1:1. I actually saw a kid with a meatball in his ear. How is that even possible?

Oblivious to the unwashed masses were the parents. They spent most of their time not knowing where their children were, nor if they had eaten, nor in fact acting as if they had children at all. Instead each table of adults was deep in conversation, alcohol consumption, and frequent breastfeeding. The fashion scene was ripe with the it-looks-suspiciously-like-a-veteran-homeschooler-length skirt and handmade knitwear.

Rising above it all was the Principal. Parting the sea of children like Moses, she floated between the tables cracking jokes and glad-handing with grace and bemusement. This was her night off: not my kids, not my problem.

Supporting the school was of course worth it. And I confess I felt very much alive from being part of the experience. But next year I am just going to mail in the donation from the comfort of my own kitchen table.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!

To all of our readers at Words for the Weary, we wish you the best of the festive season, from an enjoyable Christmas with family and friends to joyous celebrations of a New Year and New Beginnings in 2019. As ever, you’ll be accompanied throughout the year by anecdotes from your favourite blog….

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The Water Park

My friend worked at a Greek restaurant in Wildwood, New Jersey. She arrived one day to find the chef stirring a vat of Tzatziki sauce – with his bare arm.

Elbow-deep in grossness pretty much describes Wildwood. It is the ocean playground of those with abundant tats, hairy chests, gold bling and Speedos. Hotels are the two-story walk-up type with coke machines in the stairwell (officially called “Doo-Wop”  architecture – fun fact).

We go to Wildwood for the amazing seaside waterpark. One year we took the neighbor’s kids with us. They included two small boys that I stayed with while the bigger kids went to the slides and dive pools. Neither boy could swim well, and one of them was wearing a buoyant suit shaped like a strawberry. It was a hand-me-down from his older sister. I guess there’s just no pride when you’re four.

We went to the kiddie splash pool where there was a pirate ship. I suggested a game of hide and seek. I counted to ten with my eyes closed. Then I looked up and they were gone. Like Elvis has left the building gone, they had left the splash pool. They were somewhere out among the tattooed masses of the waterpark.

I panicked. I looked around everywhere. I mercifully spotted one of the brothers holding the hand of a confused and concerned looking stranger. One down. But where was the other? I ran to the information counter and explained that there was a missing kid. I described what he was wearing. The staff person was Russian. Imagine female Vladimir Putin using a loudspeaker to say, “Vee look for za strawberry. Da”. Not effective.

Just then my wife spotted him. The strawberry was at the top of the very highest water slide. Tube in hand, he was patiently waiting in line for his turn. Leaving his sibling with my wife I sprinted up the stairs, rudely elbowing kids out of the way. I arrived, panting and out of breath, and took him aside. He put his foot down: he wanted to go down the slide. In fact, there were two parallel slides side by side so kids could race. I caved. He and I took our positions in the respective slides and waited for the lifeguard to give us the green light.

GO! The strawberry took off like a leaf on a torrent, rocketing down the twists and the turns of the slide. I did not move. The water built up behind my back like the Hoover Dam. Nothing. The water began to spill over my shoulders. Still nothing. The lifeguard began to giggle. She suggested that maybe if I lay on my back it might help. So I did. The water poured over me like an island in a stream, for that is what I am: just too dam big for the water to move.

So I began to butt-shimmy down the waterslide, using my hands on either side like they do at the start of a bobsled race. All the way down: shimmy, shimmy, shimmy. I could hear peals of laughter behind me. I could see my wife at the bottom, gutting herself alongside the strawberry. I finally got to the bottom.

I then offered to get them Greek food for lunch.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Turning 50

My mid-life crisis happened when I was 36. It lasted about 45 minutes.

It happened as my wife and I were at a joint birthday party for a man turning 50 and his daughter turning 20. We realized during the party that (a) we were closer in age to the 50-year-old and (b) we preferred his company to the younger set. I turned to my wife and said, “Honey, WE are now officially the old people!” When we got home I processed this realization by listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water on repeat. That was it.

When I turned 50 this past weekend I experienced perhaps the opposite of a mid-life crisis. It began with the course I was on in Dublin, filled with meaning and blessing and delicious birthday cake. And then when the course ended, I headed for the nearest pub.

This was a genuine Irish neighborhood pub, straight out of a James Joyce novel. No tourists. I ordered a birthday whisky and sat at the bar with the locals watching rugby. The man beside me gazed upon his frothy Guinness with a tender mixture of reverence and lust.

My eye was drawn to a poster on the wall promoting the “Dublin Gospel Choir”. Their benefit concert was scheduled to begin within the hour at the nearby Dublin Rugby Club. Why not? I finished my whisky and headed for the concert.

The Dublin Rugby Club has all the charm of an old bowling alley. Featureless white walls are adorned with faded rugby pennants. Ancient floorboards reek from generations of spilled beer. The all-local crowd was packed in on lawn chairs. I stood in the back nursing a Guinness in gleeful expectation.

Before the choir began they took up a collection for the nearby Saint Francis Hospice. As they passed the donation bucket round, the choir director shared a heartfelt story of the hospice staff quietly sneaking whisky into her father’s room as he lay dying. When he finally died, they lovingly slipped a bottle into his casket to “ease him over the threshold”.  God bless Ireland.

Then the choir began. The Dublin Gospel Choir is, without doubt, the whitest soul group I have ever seen. But man can they sing. They delivered a moving mix of spirituals and modern classics as the audience swayed along. Beer was spilled on the floor. Then the choir launched into a gospel version of…Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Hearing that song moved me to tears of joy. I would like to think it was the effect of whisky and Guinness. But in truth the tears flowed in happy nostalgia for my life long ago and gratitude for the present; for the touching humanity of the hospice staff; in remembrance of a facility across the ocean in which my own infirm mother is so well cared for. Unlocked by the familiar song, I glimpsed a small fraction of the overwhelming grace in my life. In all our lives.

I walked back through dark streets and warm Irish rain. I came upon an empty church. I wandered in. I lit a votive candle and sat in silence, reflecting on the choir’s unexpected birthday gift. Then I said “thank you” over and over and over again.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]