Could it be Marge?

I saw this picture and immediately thought of the character Marge from my story, "Eat at Joe's."  What do you think?  I picture Marge as being older, heavier, and less attractive than the lady in this picture.  And Marge already has all prerequisites to be a country song.  But the gentleman getting out of the truck looks like he's hankering for a piece of pie.
One Relationship...

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Just Enough Redneck

I get excited about things.  I try to be all reserved and conservative and formal, per tradition from my family of origin.  But being Scottish, we also tend to get passionate about things.  We can also have fiery tempers, if ignited.  Many in my family have red hair.  You do the math.

Take my dad.  He knows what to do, when to do it, what to wear, how to act.  He’s a gentleman, just as he was reared to be.  He is comfortable in any social setting.  He can comfortably talk to people deep in the country who have no teeth and barely have running water.  You could also take him to Buckingham Palace to greet the royal family.  But if you know him, he lets you know how he feels, and he’s very open about things ticking him off.  If he needs to be polite, he will simply *leave.*  However, if you are family, close friend, etc, he will just tell you he’s mad.  You will likely be able to figure it out before he tells you, too.  He’s very healthy about expressing his anger.  It’s almost always at some degree of boiling.

Not me.  I’m one of those silent simmerers.  It builds inside me while I smile, or just simply keep to myself.  Then, without warning, I will explode.  Those in my path are petrified off-guard, like the stony victims of the Pompeii volcano.  “What?”  “I didn’t know she was mad.”  “I didn’t see that coming.”  “Better give her a wide berth from now on.”  I’m not proud of it.  It’s just how I am.

The good side is the passion and enthusiasm that I have for good things.  I believe in Jesus.  I believe in the Made in the USA movement.  I believe in protecting people who cannot protect themselves, in feeding the needy, in supporting certain other Christian causes, and in the right to bear arms.  I love my state and my hometown.  Ask me.  I can excitedly tell you why any of these causes is important or dear to my heart, and I can make a case for why you should feel the same way.  With enough coffee, I’ll even pace, jump around and gesticulate while I’m talking.

But when I get angry . . . oh, my.  I have just enough redneck girl in me to make me scary.  It doesn’t come out often.  It’s mostly kept in check by daily prayer and Bible reading, by my education, by my status as a former debutante, and by my more noble pursuits such as Junior League involvement.  But the redneck girl makes an appearance when she sees grave injustice, wilfull stupidity, rising evil, and the like, and said injustice or stupidity or evil doesn’t listen to reason.  Enter the redneck girl.  Oh, she also detests inconsideration.  But rudeness doesn’t offend her unless directed at her son or her mama.

She’s disguised behind correct grammar, good hair (no dark roots), and a Talbot’s wardrobe.  She’s trained to win verbal and written arguments (by a law school known for its trial advocacy program), and she’s always loaded for bear.  I really don’t like to let her out of the tool shed, for fear she will run over me with a tractor or hit me with a tire iron.

Few have seen her.  Even fewer have been on the receiving end of her wrath.  But now you know.  Better safe than sorry . . . don’t summon her.  I’ve never seen her lose a fight.

Truth: Christmas Village Casualties

I know they’re tacky.  But come on, admit it.  You love them, too.  Christmas Villages are so much fun.

For the first time since my son was a tiny baby, I set up the Christmas Village this year.  I began collecting the pieces just after law school, and my husband brought a fire station to the table when we got married.  We haven’t brought the village out for several years now, for fear that my son would play with it and demolish it.  This year, we decided he was old enough to restrain himself.

For the most part, we were right.  But every now and then, the five-year-old hurricane would sweep through the village when we weren’t looking.  He knew better than to pick up the heavy porcelain houses.  The freestanding, battery-operated fishing trawler wasn’t so lucky, though.  It lost a flag on the first day.  Not long after, the anchor was broken in two.  A lamppost lost its festive red bow, and a member of the string quartet in the town square mysteriously vanished, leaving only his feet behind.  The violinist now plays imaginary strings in the air, with an imaginary bow.

When I would notice my son playing with the village, or standing wide-eyed in front of it, I would often look the other way.  If you’re five, what fun is it to have a Christmas Village in your house if you can’t touch it?  While I drew the line sometimes (“No, you can’t sit on the table!”), I mostly just told him to be careful and let him move the people around.

One afternoon, I noticed my son was crouching underneath the table and looking really hard for something.  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said quickly as he stood up straight.  Yeah, right.

The next day, I noticed the clapping lady who watches her husband and daughter ice skating was no longer clapping . . . but was now missing her hands.  That would be something fairly easy to glue back on, assuming we had the hands.

"Oh no!” I exclaimed.  “The clapping lady lost her hands!”  I started looking around the table, in the gazebo, behind trees, under the brick sidewalk.  “I wonder where the hands went?”

My son pointed under the table.  “Well, they’re definitely not under there,” he said with certainty.

“Mm, thanks for your help,” I responded.

I put the village away yesterday.  The hands were never found.  Oh, well.  That’s okay.  Will I put the village up again next year and let him play with it again?  Of course.
 

The Rainbow: A Sign of God's Promises

 

Following the horrible tragedy in Connecticut on Friday, many parents reticently took their children to school this morning.  The event opened up new thoughts, fears, and nightmares that most folks never had before.  Haltingly, cautiously, prayerfully, perhaps with a few more hugs than usual, parents got their children ready and put them on the bus or drove them to school.

But as I ate my breakfast and scrolled through my Facebook news feed, I noticed tons of friends in the Charleston area posting pictures of a beautiful rainbow that they spotted on the morning drive.  Two pictures even showed the end of the rainbow feeding into the rooftops of two different elementary schools.  In one other photo, the rainbow was clearly double.  All such photos that I saw were taken either by parents who were en route to drop off their children, or had just dropped them off.

This reminds me of the very first rainbow in Genesis 9.  God established the rainbow as a sign of His covenant with the earth and all living things in it. “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:13, NIV)   He promised that “never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood,” (Genesis 9:11b, NIV) and I believe we can translate it to our current trepidation.  Along with the pictures posted this morning, Facebookers wrote such statements as “timely sign of good and hope” and “Thank you, God . . . Your promises are forever!”  One posted by the local newspaper said, “A timeless reminder of hope.”

These statements are true.  They are right.  Even some who do not believe in God consider a rainbow to be a sign of hope.  They see it more culturally than spiritually.  Personally, I recoginize its origin, and in doing so, I find true peace and comfort.  There is One who cannot be knocked down or destroyed, will not break His promises, and can always be trusted.

Shalom

A Room-breaking Reprobate in Old Age

For any of you who might have noticed that I have not blogged in about a month, I will tell you why.  I turned 40 last week.
It's been a difficult birthday for me, and I can't even tell you the reason.  I have a lovely life, and I have no reason to be despondent or regretful about anything. So I'm not.  But this number really got to me for some reason.  My time on this planet is limited, and I have officially left youth behind.

Honestly, now that the birthday is behind me, I'm fine.  But I am exhausted from the last 6-12 months of swinging emotions.  There is much I could say about those emotions, but I don't feel like saying any of it.  I'm going to tell you a story instead.  This was my "welcome to 40."

My best friend and I went out of town on an overnight shopping trip.  We do this about once or twice per year, but this one was 6 days before my 40th.  We love our “girls’ weekend,” as we call it, and it does much for maintaining our sanity.  The hotel had us on the fifth floor, in room 521.  After breakfast, we got on the elevator to go back to the room.  We were deep in discussion about someone we saw at breakfast.  I was speculating, as writers are wont to do, about his life.  And then, as my friend and I are wont to do, we went off on a tangent and made up a wild, funny story that had absolutely nothing to do with the man at breakfast.

We got off the elevator, semi-whispering and laughing, and walked to the door.  I tried my key, but it didn’t work.  “I’ve got mine,” my friend said.

“No, that’s okay,” I answered.  “Mine worked yesterday.”  I tried again and again, to no avail.  I wiped the card on my shirttail to make sure it was clean.  “Maybe it’s demagnetized,” I guessed.  Again and again, I swiped it.  Again and again, it gave me the red light instead of the green one.

Finally, my best friend said, “Oh, that’s why!”  I looked up.  She was pointing at the placard on the wall.  I was trying to break into Room 221, not 521.  Oh. How. Embarrassing.  No explanation for this but our AGE.  Nevermind that we are both blondes.

My friend said, "We can't tell anybody we did this."

And I replied, "Except my blog."  So, I started laughing at the middle-aged flightiness of accidentally trying to get into the wrong room.  And thus my attitude turned, unexpectedly and inexplicably.  I had a delightful birthday.

 

19 years ago today, it was a dark and spooky afternoon . . .

Photo of Buttrick Hall, Agnes Scott College from:  http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.com/nge/article/h-1451

 

For the most part, I think Halloween is just a big retail marketing scam.  “Hey!  Let’s all go out and buy a bunch of cheap, tacky, plastic junk that will give children nightmares and decorate our houses with it!”  Sheer Made-in-China madness.

But because it’s October 31, I will share a little “ghost story” that actually happened to me.  I was a student at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA from 1990-1994.  There are legends of several ghosts all over campus.  Too numerous to count, the sightings and experiences of students through the ages have been verbally passed down. 

The Dana Fine Arts Building is allegedly a paranormal hot-spot.  When Drama students are having practice in the theater sometimes at night, there is a person who appears in the balcony and watches the practice, then vanishes.  But the other “Dana Ghost” inhabits the ground floor, specifically the Ceramics Studio.  The story goes that a woman with very long hair was running the big clay mixer one night in the 1970’s.  Her hair got caught in the clay mixer, and you know the rest.

Being young, unbelieving in such nonsense, and unafraid of anything in general, I went to the Ceramics Studio to work on a project at about 10pm one night.  I was definitely the only person occupying the ground floor, and I heard some shuffling and walking from the area beyond and around the clay mixer.  I said hello a few times, and no one answered.  I didn’t stay long.

Another time, I was occupying a carrel in the lonely, quiet fifth floor of the library.  It worked great for take-home tests or really buckling down at exam-time.  The stacks had motion-sensor lights.  It was dark unless someone walked in front of that aisle, then the light would trip on.  One particular night, I was verifiably 100% alone up there.  I heard footsteps and dragging on the institutional tile floor.  The lights in the stacks lit up, one by one, getting closer to me.  I said hello, but no one answered.  The steps and dragging continued, and the lights tripped on consecutively.  I packed up pretty fast and made my way to the elevator.  Along the same path as the noise and the lights, I fled toward the button with the down arrow, and no one – no one – was there.  Strange.  Weird.  I have no explanation.

But on Halloween, 1993, my friend Martha and I had a hilariously haunting experience in her dorm room.  We ordered a pizza and turned on TBS to watch “This House Possessed,” the cheesiest B movie ever (even cheesier than the pizza).  The Amityville knock-off house loved the heroine so much, that it would not allow her to leave.  It killed everyone who came in, until her famous rock star beau came to the rescue at the end.   When the movie was over, I tried to leave Martha’s room.  The doorknob was stuck, and we were trapped.  “I can’t get out,” I told her.  She dismissed me, saying that was funny, but she had to write a research paper in German.  “No . . . I really can’t get out!”  After trying the doorknob for herself, she saw it was no joke.

Public Safety came and tried to get us out, but they had to call someone from Physical Plant who lived an hour away.  At the end of a two-hour ordeal, we were released as he removed the doorknob completely.  To this day, we always remind each other of the hilarious coincidence.  Actually, I don’t believe in coincidences per se, but I do think it was hilarious. 

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)

 

Football in the South: When We All Become One Team

Here in the South, we take our college football very seriously.  Actually, that’s an understatement.  Some compare it to a religion.  We get all fired up about our teams, posting on Facebook and trash-talking at the water cooler.  “Love thy neighbor” and Southern Hospitality suddenly take on a diminished meaning when conversing with a fan of the week’s opponent.

But when a player goes down on the field and doesn’t get back up right away, everyone tends to come together.  All that other stuff is put aside for the time being.

On Saturday, South Carolina Gamecock #21 Marcus Lattimore took a nasty hit from one Tennessee Volunteer.  The video has been played everywhere . . . too many times.  Watching that orange Vol helmet knock Marcus’ leg in a direction which it ought not to go is more than lots of folks can bear.  It’s more than I can bear. 

According to Coach Steve Spurrier, Marcus Lattimore is probably the most popular player the Gamecocks have ever had.  This young man is someone you have to love, unless you are jealous of him.  Here is his bio.  He’s squeaky clean – no drugs, no criminal record, no scuffles, no pregnant girlfriend . . . nothing.  He loves God, and he loves his mama.  Holding the USC records for touchdowns and rushing touchdowns, he was headed for the NFL next year . . . before this past Saturday.  He runs like the wind, and the only way to stop him is to injure him.  Even then, sometimes he keeps going.  But not on Saturday.

When he went down, you could see the look on Marcus’ face.  He was probably thinking what everyone else was thinking.  The end of an NFL career before it even begins? 

Trainers rushed to his side, teammates flooded the field to stand near him.  And . . . many of the Tennessee players did the same.  What a show of class and compassion by those Vols who joined their opponents on the field.  Color of jerseys and helmets was disregarded for that moment in time.  Everyone watching became one team.  One team was hoping, praying for the best for this one young man.  One team was watching the anguish on his face, feeling the same anguish he felt.

For every one of the million tears that flowed in that stadium, there were a million more in front of tv sets.  Shoot, I opened up the newspaper on Sunday morning, and my eyes started leaking again.  But here’s the thing:  people weren’t just weeping.  They were praying.  Tens of thousands of people, for a conservative estimate, were praying.  It wasn’t just South Carolina fans, either.  Tennessee fans, Georgia fans, Florida fans, and – yes! – even Clemson fans.  Now that right there just warms my heart.

So what started out as reports of two broken bones and four torn ligaments had become, by Sunday night, a hyperextended knee and a few injured ligaments.  The news arrived with a very positive-sounding statement from Coach Spurrier that Lattimore would be able to play football again.  Is it any wonder, considering the number of people who were praying?  I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear an even better report later this week.  Maybe it isn’t even as bad as the report on Sunday said it was.  Lattimore told the Ol’ Ball Coach that he would be back.  I know in my heart that he’s right, and it may be sooner than people think.  Miracles happen every day for people who believe God is able.  This exceptional young man has his head and heart in the right place.

#21 will run again.