Inquisitive By Nature

I figured the middle of the ¥ear is the right time to turn over a new leaf, so in this vein of thought, I'm moving my blog. The new address is http://laniebarrett.projectokc.com.

There were parts of me that I hated growing up. Not parts of my body, but the combination of the inner workings and the outward expression of them. As an adult, I look back at my younger self and see those inner workings as an intricate system of cogs. Some cogs small, lithe, and spinning fast, some large, cumbersome, and spinning slowly. The small and lithe cogs were the ones that spoke of my desire to absorb information in the form of books and any other reading material I could get my hands on. The large and cumbersome cogs were those that evidenced my inability to exceed in sports or any activity requiring a certain amount of coordination, speed, or agility.

I see now that those large cogs were the ones I loathed as a teen.

Those awkward lumbering things were responsible for the fact that I, to this day, am unable to clap and sing at the same time. I can do one. Or, I can do the other. Not both.

I also pin the fact that I can't seem to take ten steps without turning an ankle or ripping off a toenail on those massive, ill-fitting cogs.

I loathed them as a teen, but now, I see that loathing parts of me brings nothing but frustration. It's a form of jealousy and is a cancer that slowly eats away at any effort to live a full and healthy life. As I raise my own child, I pray the Lord guides my hand and my actions. I never want to model the type of behavior that might show him how to hate parts of himself.

Tomorrow is Easter. The day on which we celebrate the resurrection of our loving Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The fact that He loves every little cog that makes up the me that is me enough to die for me creates a barrier against self-loathing. He loves those huge, lumbering cogs, and I cannot forget that He was thoughtful enough to create them. They are essential to my being. Without them, I would be someone different, and therefore not myself. Were I to continue hating them, I would be unable to fully appreciate what He did on the cross.

Jesus loves my cogs and I love them too.

You will think this has less to do with a pocket and more to do with me falling off a bike, but I promise that this is totally about the discovery of a previously undiscovered extra pocket.

So, as we often do, my husband, Rex, and I were talking about our future. At some point in the conversation, I began talking about the aspects of my job that I really like.

"...and of course, I like the people I work with." I said.

I began ticking their names off, one by one, and, out of nowhere, we heard our son's voice piping from a completely different part of the house, "And you like Sheri!" he yelled. As if I could forget Sheri!

I grinned at Rex, because Beaux has made his affection for my friend well known on many occasions.

"Yes," I hollered back at him, although I'm not sure why I felt the need to holler since it was clear that he was hearing us well enough, "I like Sheri very much! She is--"

"She's funny!" Beaux interrupted.

"Yes, she--" I began.

"And she rented us a movie!" He interrupted again in his effusive praise for Sheri.

At this point I figured I would let him get it all out. It was clear he needed to get something off his chest. Plus, I wanted to know how he REALLY felt, as if he ever keeps me guessing about his true feelings on anything.

"And she's BEAUTIFUL!"

At that moment, I was thinking I must have the greatest kid in the world. Then he said something kind of puzzling, but with a tone unmatched in exuberance by anything he had said up to this point, so I was pretty sure it was a major compliment.

"And she has strong pants!"

At that statement, Rex and I both mouthed, Strong pants?, with similar expressions of utter incomprehension on our faces. It was then that a theory began to work its way into my befuddled mind. I had to test it though, so I called Beaux to me and asked him what he meant by "strong pants".

"You know," he said, "She has strong pants," indicating with his hands at his hips as he said it, so that I got the vague impression of a rounded bottom.

Elementary, my dear Watson, I thought, feeling a little like Sherlock Holmes for having my theory confirmed. You see, Sheri and I have often commiserated with one another on the unfortunate girths of our behinds. She despairs of hers often, I know, but I knew it would mean a great deal to her that at least one man in my acquaintance likes her curves.

Sheri, embrace your luscious booty, girl! There are men in this world who dig chicks with rumps like ours. And if there are some who don't? Well, who needs them!

As Sherlock Holmes said (and I'm pretty sure he could only be talking about girls like us), "It is part of the settled order of nature that such a girl should have followers."

Honey, you WORK those strong pants!

Tonight, after our wonderful time at Kamp's drew to a close, we had quite an adventure. As I was savoring my pizza from Hideaway (thanks Ben), I noticed the sky outside lit up from time to time with flashes of lightening. With perhaps a too-casual attitude, I shrugged off the lightening. Must not interrupt dinner for something as petty as a thunderstorm.

As I stood up, gathered my things, and neared the door, I noticed a group of people lingering. The door swung open on a breeze and I felt the electricity on the wind. It was only then, that I realized they were lingering because we were on the cusp of a storm. Someone somewhere tuned in to the local news station to get an update on the weather and a disembodied voice via the speakers that had recently carried our praise and worship music began giving an account of some tornado activity.

I couldn't contain my excitement.

I LOVE this season! I can't explain why, but I do, and as that wind whipped through the door and left its damp, tingling kisses on my cheeks I felt like I was greeting an old friend again.

While we waited for more news, a friend and first-time visitor to our Kamp's Gathering asked if I knew where the bathroom was. Well, having made numerous trips to that particular location, I told her I would take her there. We made a long trip (and it is a long trip) around the deli counter to the end of a hallway, where I stopped and pointed the way to the shiny red door at the opposite end of a long stretch of darkness. It reminded me of those ridiculous, scary movie scenes where the audience would normally yell at the hero/heroine "Don't go in there!"

Upon seeing how far away from civilization she would have to walk to relieve her bladder, my friend turned to me with near desperation and said, "Would you mind staying with me? I don't want to be alone in case the electricity goes out while I'm back here."

"Sure!" I said. When what I really thought was, Surely the electricity won't go out at the precise moment you close yourself into that dinky room at the back of this really big, slightly scary, dark-except-for-the-one-light-bulb-over-the-sink, leaky warehouse. I was so certain as to the tenacity of our hold on electrical power that I allowed my four-year-old son, Beaux, to accompany me.

Beaux and I chattered happily for a moment while my friend went into the bathroom. Less than a moment after she closed the door, a clap of thunder marked the end of our grasp on electricity and ALL YOU-KNOW-WHAT BROKE LOOSE!!! Beaux's terrified scream was matched in strength and passion by another scream from inside the bathroom, and as he tore down the dark hall toward even more shadowy nothingness, I had only seconds to make up my mind. Do I stay here with my poor friend like she asked me to, or do I grab my poor child and attempt to bring him back to some semblance of sanity?!?!

I hesitated for a moment, but then I realized that if he kept running, Beaux would eventually reach that group of people huddled in the main part of the building, although he would be stark raving mad when he got there. My poor friend was probably still fumbling for toilet paper in the darkness, and only upon finding that toilet paper would she be able to forgo the usual washing of hands and feel her way back down a path she had only traveled once, while frightened out of her wits.

I opted to stand there by the bathroom door and call out to Beaux, begging him to return to the place of his frightful experience so that I could console him while we waited. I have never seen my son so wild with fear. I heard his little feet pounding away from me toward the battery-operated emergency light halfway down the hall. He passed under that light with the intent of reaching...I don't know what, but then stopped when he realized he was passing what must have been the only source of light for the entire building. I watched him freaking out in that puddle of light, and all I could do was call him back to me like a little puppy.

My calm, cool, and collected voice must have finally broken through to him around the 68th ear-piercing shriek, because he came running back to me with his hands over his ears and tears already soaking his cheeks. I grabbed him under his little arms and held him close, whispering words of encouragement and, yes, a little reassurance from Psalm.

The whole incident only took a few moments (seriously, who would have stayed back there for any longer than was absolutely necessary?), but it seemed like FOREVER! As I lifted Beaux into my arms, the bathroom door opened and I asked the poor soul who had been caught unawares during such a vulnerable time, "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, "But, I'm trying to buckle my pants." And sure enough, I could hear she was telling the truth.

Of course, since we were both of the opinion that she could walk and buckle, we bolted.

I have to say, if I ever star as the heroine in a poorly-plotted scary movie, I promise to heed the pleading of the audience when they warn, "Don't go in there!" If I am ever that heroine, I'm sure they will all thank me for sparing them from the scary part of the movie.

When I'm cleaning dishes, I'm a little compulsive about what gets cleaned first. This might sound strange to those among my friends who know that I really hate doing the dishes. But, still. I have a method, okay? The plates go first, then saucers, bowls, spoons, forks, knives.

The knives are always last. They kind of scare me. I think about them the entire time I'm sudsing the rest. And yes, "sudsing" is a word. As I'm running the rag over each dish and each piece of flatware leading up to the cleaning of the knives, I glance over at them periodically. I memorize their placement on the counter so that I can formulate in my mind the correct way for my left hand to make its approach when it's their turn.

Here's how the approach usually takes place: The knife's lethal edge is faced toward the refrigerator (or toward my left) with the handle nearest to me and the pointed tip casting terror into the backsplash. My left hand is careful to grasp the handle and to carry the knife toward the rag in my right hand with the blade still directed at the refrigerator. That way the knife doesn't suddenly shred the offensive rag that dares to clean it and my poor, innocent right hand.

Well, it's not really that dramatic, but it is true nonetheless. I'm afraid the knives are going to get me. The worst of it, though, is that as I'm wiping one clean, I really want to find out if it's sharp. Is it sharp?

Beneath the harsh, downcast glare of light in a dressing room at the mall (my second-least favorite place to be, with the first being a visit to the "female doctor"), I tried on new clothes for the first time in many months. When I recently contemplated stealing a pair of my husband's pants in order to avoid this painful experience, I figured it was finally time to do something about the sad state of my wardrobe.

I don't understand what it is about the lights in those dinky, depressing stalls. While browsing the racks in the store, I might come across several things which, if flattering, could persuade me to plunk down my money. Yet, as I stand there beneath the buzzing light fixture with every hill and bump displayed in unflattering splendor, purchasing a piece of overpriced cotton is the last thing on my mind.

What went through their minds when they were installing those fixtures? They couldn't possibly believe that, through the course of the day, a person will ONLY be lit from directly above their heads. Can you imagine going through your entire day with your eyebrows casting an unrelieved shadow across your cheekbones? You might look vaguely like a neanderthal.

I finally settled on a pair of khakis and a polo. You can't really go wrong with that right? I'll think about the rest of my wardrobe another day. The ten minutes I spent with the Unflatterer, as I like to refer to that 20-watt, ogre-producing bulb, was more than enough to persuade me against another struggle with buttons, zippers, and built-in bras.

The phone on my desk with its tres chic, squishy shoulder perch (I call it "shoulder perch" for lack of a better term because it helps my phone to perch happily there on my shoulder) rang insistently. I was at work, so that meant I had a fifty-fifty chance of hearing an accent of some sort on the other end of the line. It would most likely be a southern accent and I wasn't sure if my name was going to be Honey today, or if it would be the more inventive Sweetie. Then again, it could have been a Dahlin' day. I never really know what the next call holds.
Today was a Honey day, and it was said with one of those sweet, feminine drawls that fairly drips through the phone.
She sounded like one of those fragile, gently-bred, silver-haired grandmothers. The type who, fifty years or so ago, might never want to get caught in public without her white "go-to-town" gloves, a hat, and a small clutch purse... maybe holding a newly laundered hanky for all those noses that run rampant out there. I know, I know! I'll stop describing what I think she might have looked like, because let's face it, I don't really know.
We talked pleasantly for a bit, and then I sat with my pen poised to jot down her address. The street and house number crawled through the line slowly, but without difficulty, though it helped that she spelled the street name for me. Then, we came to the city. Oooohhh, the city.
"It's Rock-en-ham, Enn Cee," she said.
"And that's spelled R-O-C-K-E-N-H-A-M, correct?" I said, already writing it down.
"No, Honey. It's Rock-EN-ham." She said this, not spelling it, just drawing out the EHHNNN so I couldn't possibly misspell it a second time.
"Ummm, okay. So it's R-O-C-K..." I trailed off at this point hoping that she would just naturally pick up where I left off. You see, I've learned not to just assume that I know how people spell their town names. I mean, she could be from a town where they spell phonetically and southern phonics are just different from the ones I know.
She didn't conveniently pick up my trail.
I tried again, "Would you mind spelling that for me, please? I think there's something wrong with..." my ears, I thought... "our connection."
"Sure Honey," she said. "It's Rock-en-ham. R-o-c-k-i-n-g-h-a-m. Rock-EN-ham." She said the last with a satisfied little flourish. I felt kind of silly as I wrote it down. I should have known that ehhnnn is spelled i-n-g.
I must say, I love that I don't have to call overseas to hear an accent foreign to my ears. All I have to do, is pick up my phone with its squishy perch apparatus, and dial Rock-EN-ham, Enn Cee.

Today, my son Beaux (pronounced Bo) made me very proud to be a mom. I used to hate it when parents always bragged on their kids, and I have to admit, I realize now it was just because I didn't get what it meant to be a parent.