I broke the seal.

Somehow, the embarrassment I felt wasn’t nearly commensurate with the absurdity of what was happening.  On the other hand, too many beers, topped off with a shot or two, does help numb your inhibitions.

 

It was 1996 and my husband and I had recently started dating.  I was a senior in college and he had just graduated the spring before.  He immediately found himself at ease with my friends, which was really a big plus, because it made it that much easier to make time for dating when he could just join right in with my other friends.  He seemed to take it in stride when we held quiet cocktail parties, instead of raging beerfests (although he did not get the reaction he had hoped for when he crashed the Christmas party dressed as Santa Claus).  He laughed along, instead of asking to be let out of the car, when we got carried away with snorting contests on the way to the bars.  And he even thought it was funny when one of my friends suggested one night, as we were heading out to a pub, that it would be funny if, on the way back, we stopped at a nearby home where there was a boat parked in their driveway, and took a photo of everyone by the boat.

 

It was not a particularly unusual night at the pub.  There were a couple shots exchanged, and plenty of beer consumed, since only one of us had to drive home.  We had actually squeezed all six of us into a 5-seater car, just to ensure that no one would drink and drive.

 

One of my friends frequently repeated a mantra on nights like that, “Don’t break the seal,” she would say, “Once you break the seal, you’re going to have to use the bathroom every five minutes for the rest of the night.”  How right she was.  Before we left the pub to head home, I thought I would arm myself against the constant hilarity of my friends and the coldness of the night by taking a quick trip to the restroom.  I felt much better as we piled into the sedan, and my boyfriend offered me his lap.

 

“Hey, guys, are we going to get the boat picture?”

 

“Of course!” we all chimed and the driver headed over to the house in question.  We all were joking and laughing pretty hard the whole way, giving me an all-to-familiar sensation that, in the back of my mind, rebuked me for my foolish decision to empty my bladder before the drive.

 

When we got to the boat, we were certainly not the most smooth criminals to ever cross onto someone’s property, as it took quite a feat to get all of us out of the car and posed by the boat.  In the mean time, I found myself succumbing to the kryptonite tri-fecta: laughing uncontrollably, breaking the seal, and insane Iowa cold.  Despite the warmth of beer, coursing through our veins, all of us felt the sharp sting of the bitter cold, and I, in particular, quickly realized that while my face, hands, and feet were freezing, my thighs were, by contrast, suddenly quite warm.

 

I couldn’t even hide what was happening, and there was another roar of laughter as I squeeked, “Oh, no!  I’m peeing my pants!”

 

To which my friends replied between chortles, “Oh, no!  You’re riding home on your boyfriend’s lap!”

 

And, yes, my boyfriend let me sit on his lap for the, thankfully brief, ride back to our apartment.  And somehow it didn’t even feel like a fight to maintain my dignity, sitting on my love interest, wearing urine-soaked pants.

 

I see in retrospect there were many rules for right living I broke that night: “don’t trespass,” “wear your seatbelt,” and “don’t break the seal!”

 

Stupidity is reckless, senseless, and foolish. Proverbs 9:13

Babies are dumb.

We brought our first daughter home from the hospital, pulled her out of the car seat, laid her in the middle of the living room, and told her, “OK, now do something funny.”  We didn’t have to wait long; sure enough the laughs began.  Why?  Why do we find our offspring so entertaining?  Because babies are dumb.

My future Mensa candidate

Babies can’t help that they’re dumb.  They don’t realize that when they hide their face behind the window curtains, laughing with delight at their amazing disappearing ability, the entire rest of their body is still in plain sight.  They don’t realize that the fuzzy new toy they can’t seem to quite pull into view is the hair that is still attached to their own head.  One of my favorites: they honestly believe that they can fit on the miniature dollhouse toilet and will try futilely to sit on it.

My baby girl topped her sisters this week, on proving my mantra that “babies are dumb.”  She got a hold of a bottle of Japanese Cherry Blossom hand sanitizer and dumped it down her face and body.  Because I had no idea how much she’d actually consumed (FYI- hand sanitizer is extremely high in alcohol and only a small amount can give a child alcohol poisoning), and I could smell the fragrance on her breath, we got to make an evening visit to the ER.  She showed no signs of inebriation (although that probably would have been funny in only the sickest sense), but we still had to let them do a blood draw to make sure she was OK.  It was excruciating, holding her down for it, knowing that she had no way of comprehending why she was being put through this torture.  Then we had a long wait in the room, while they ran the labs, twice, because they got an error the first time.  On top of that, I had to endure the inquiries and suspicious glances of all the hospital personnel, who are legally obligated to report me, if they suspect this happened as a result of abuse or neglect.  The labs came back clean; she hadn’t actually swallowed anything at all, for which I am grateful, and certainly not anxious to repeat the exercise.

The very next morning, however, my darling girl discovered a fresh pile of dog poo, ripe for the curious eater.  Imagine my surprise when I turn around after only a moment’s distraction to see her hand up to her mouth and a bright green turd between her lips.  I have no idea what dog poop tastes like, so I can’t be sure if it was my dismayed directive or her sensitive palate, but it took only a moment for her to spit it out and there were no teeth marks or other signs that it had actually made it into her mouth.  I wasted no time in throwing her in the bathtub and thoroughly brushing her teeth.  Not that a bath was going to do any good at removing dog poop from her insides, had it made it there, but it definitely made me feel better.

My word of advice while I was bathing her, “Sweetheart, if you’re going to gargle sanitizer, do it after you eat the dog poop next time.”  See, babies are dumb.

Here are some proverbs of Solomon: Children with good sense make their parents happy, but foolish children make them sad. Proverbs 10:1

My kid outclassed me (and I didn’t scrub the floors).

OK so, first of all, I didn’t go all Molly Maids on the old house after we moved out.  I figured the new owners were going to give it an overhaul to put their own smell on the place anyway, and, frankly, we had other priorities moving week.  The actual moving, three kids, Thanksgiving, out of town family, and a cancer diagnosis in my husband’s immediate family – to name the most obvious contenders for our attention.  But all excuses aside, we did leave the house without completing our regular housekeeping, so it was not the spotless showplace it had been a few weeks earlier.  Let me know if I’m wrong on this, but I’ve never known anyone who moved into a house or apartment and raved about the previous owner’s housekeeping; cleaning the new place is part of moving.  Or so I thought.

I expected the new people would find something to complain to the neighbors about, but what I didn’t expect was that my ten year old would be approached at school by the child of our former neighbor, in front of other kids, with a nasty accusation about our family’s filthy living – as reported to her parents by the buyers of our house.  As if they hadn’t gone through the house just a few weeks earlier and seen how clean it was when we weren’t in the middle of moving.  I was horrified when my daughter told me what the girl had said.  I couldn’t believe she wasn’t crying and wondered if she was being brave for us.  A well of defensive unpleasantness bubbled up in me, as I took a mental inventory of all the very judgmental and personal jabs I could take at them.  It was a challenging sale, and we had sometimes struggled to remain gracious.  All of those moments when we had to remind one another to be kind, to let things go, and to be generous rather than stingy, were suddenly overwhelmed by a vicious instinct to lash out and harm the people who had turned an adult financial transaction into neighborhood gossip and schoolyard bullying.

As I was about to surrender to my anger and injured pride, and arm my daughter with a slew of nasty responses she could use if it came up again, my husband saved the moment by asking her how she had responded.  She said matter-of-factly that she had told the girl, “Oh, so you must think moving is easy.”  And then she told the other kids who were listening to the exchange, “What?  Did they live in a hotel before?  They can’t clean their own bathroom?”

I could have cried.  I felt so much admiration for her.  She did everything the school counselor says to do with bullies.  She stood up for herself; she disarmed them with humor.  She didn’t take it, but she didn’t escalate the situation either.  I could not have provided her with a better response than she came up with all on her own.  She was the tough but gracious person I wish I was – and she’s only ten years old.

I am embarrassed by the ugliness I felt about the situation and by the defensiveness I’m still battling.  I am tempted even now to give you all the reasons why I think we are nicer people than them.  I am just not as good or confident a person as my daughter is.  She is a class act.  And I have a lot to learn from her.

We work hard with our own hands to feed ourselves. When people insult us, we ask God to bless them. When people treat us badly, we accept it.  When people say bad things about us, we try to say something that will help them. But people still treat us like the world’s garbage—everyone’s trash. 1 Corinthians 4:12-13

I believe in fighting back.

She was pointing her finger at me and laughing at my socks.  Somehow she had noticed that I was wearing the same pair two days in a row and decided that everyone in the room should be alerted to my lack of hygiene.  My face flushed and I struggled to answer her claim.  You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just claim clearly and confidently that I had two pairs of the same socks; after all, most people do, and often they wear them on subsequent days, right?  But I completely lacked the confidence to speak up on my own behalf.  Plus she was right, and I was tongue tied by that knowledge.  I pray my own kids find lying as difficult as I did back then.

This occasion is memorable to me because a girl named Caryn swooped in to my rescue.  She had noticed that my accuser was wearing the same pair of BLUE JEANS she had worn the day before.  It was obvious, because she had acted so cool when she’d written her name on the leg in pen, in front of us all, the day before.  Needless to say, as soon as Caryn mentioned the jeans, she dropped her suit against me for my socks.

I was so grateful to Caryn.  I wondered why people were scouring my wardrobe for mistakes, but she never seemed to draw any fire.  Of course, there’s the obvious – the coolness I so notably lack and she so effortlessly emanated.  Possibly, she never wore similar looking socks on subsequent days?  No.  It was more than her fashion choices.  There have been long articles and mini-specials offered on how to avoid or deal with bullies, but the answer I eventually noticed and practiced is so obvious it’s ridiculous.  Bullies backed off and left me alone, just about for good, when I started doing what Caryn did.  I started standing up, not just for myself, but for others.

It’s one thing to put together some good one-liners, to change your route or routine to avoid problems, or to carry extra lunch money.  Those are all actions that will help with self-preservation.  But nothing seems to intimidate an intimidator more than speaking up on behalf of others.  All it takes is doing so once or twice to discover that you have all the confidence and courage you need to make a difference for yourself and others.

There are so many broken people in this broken world who exploit the vulnerable to fill their own needs, from sixth grade bullies, to bosses on a power trip, to harassers and abusers.  If you don’t want yourself or your loved ones to be a victim, then don’t let someone else be a victim.  When you know something is wrong, say so.  You aren’t just rescuing that victim, you are protecting yourself.

And if that fails, a solid punch to the stomach should buy you enough time to get away.  Jesus may have suffered in silence, but God’s going to have to call my kids with that message directly, because I’m not going to teach them to let themselves be victims.  As Michael Landon’s angel on Highway to Heaven said after taking a second punch, “Now don’t say I didn’t turn the other cheek.”  Then he kicked tail.

Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Isaiah 1:17

I hate my hair!

My hair has been falling out by the handfuls for months.  It did the same thing after the births of my older daughters too, resulting in giant bare spots on each temple.  When my oldest was about 6 months old, I had to part my painfully thin hair in the middle and pull it around to a low ponytail, just to sparsely cover my skull.  I’ve been fortunate, this time around that, while my hair is still falling out at the same high rate, the regrowth started much sooner.  Instead of completely bald spots, the lean places have a carpet of wacky fringe that goes whichever way my cowlicks dictate.  I’m torn each morning between spending hours at the mirror attempting to stylishly mask my hairlessness, or just surrendering, putting in a headband and ponytail, and wearing my shirt inside out to distract people from looking at my hair.

I wish this battle were something new, but it’s really not.  I have hated my hair for as long as I’ve been aware of fashion.  I spent my fourth grade year figuring out the pattern of a girl named Beth’s French braids; I hoped I could duplicate her look, but it took four years of attending school with bizarre, tangled messes on my head before I finally got it down.  When big hair came into fashion, I couldn’t afford the volume of hairspray it required to make bangs as thin and fine as mine stand up and be teased.  I had to skip the late eighties and go straight to grunge.

So here I am, all grown up, and still hating everything about my hair.  It’s a blah color.  It has no real body or texture.  Frankly, I resent every moment of my life that I’ve spent in the chair at a salon, or at the mirror with a curling iron and hairdryer.  I was born to “wash and go,” and that fantasy remains out of reach for me.  But now you know why I dress the way I do…probably explains a lot.

Don't depend on things like fancy hairdos or gold jewelry or expensive clothes to make you look beautiful. 1 Peter 3:3

I got a cavity

Back when my pearly whites
 were pearly white.

It has been about twenty two years since my last cavity.  I remember my brother, who came through his appointment with a clean slate, laughing at the irony.  By his own admission, I brushed my teeth ten times as much as he did, but I still was the one to get the cavity.  Now, here I am, with my luck run out again.

Maybe it was the pregnancy cravings – too much sweet tea and cheddar chex-mix?  Maybe it was the bleary-eyed days when I couldn’t remember if I’d brushed or not?  Maybe it was hormones that weakened my enamel?  Or maybe I was just due.  Whatever it was, I’m scheduled to go back for a drill-n-fill in a couple weeks and I’m not thrilled about it.

The long decades without a cavity had me thinking I might make it into old age with my teeth intact.  I’ve heard that a healthy smile can make you look as much as ten years younger, and that dentures make it hard to enjoy kiwi.  Both are good motivators toward attentive brushing.  But maybe it’s the vanity that’s my problem.  Did I focus too much on keeping my front teeth polished and neglected my molars?

Now I have these paranoid images in my mind of premature tooth loss.  If one tooth could fall prey, maybe there are others that might go down like dominoes.  What do dental implants cost, because I can just see myself, seducing my husband with a coy smile, only to slip my teeth into a jar by the bed before climbing in.  Even if I stay on my current rate of tooth decay, I’m ruining one tooth every other decade…when you multiply that by the inevitable depreciation of basic use, my lifelong nighttime grinding, and the occasional loose filling or accidental chip, I could be completely toothless by the time I’m 80!  What then?  I don’t want to be scaring the grandkids away with my rotten, toothless smile!

Maybe I should start flossing.  Maybe I should brush more.  Maybe I should give up sugar.  Why can’t we be like sharks and have another tooth standing at the ready?

Your teeth are whiter than sheep freshly washed; they match perfectly, not one is missing. Song of Solomon 6:6