Jairus' Daughter

"You're silly." - Katie, the preschooler

There you have it, folks.  I have been pronounced "silly" by a three-year-old.

I wasn't even trying to be silly at the time.  I was trying to take a language sample: 100 utterances from a child aged 3-5.  It is a daunting task, requiring complete mental focus.  After all, children, like dogs, can smell fear.  Or in my case, silliness.

Be careful where you sleep.

My audiology professor told an anecdote last semester about a more unusual ear exam.  The client evidently had an insect lodged in his ear, because when my professor looked through the otoscope, there were two eyes staring back at him.  Apparently he wasn't the only one to whom this has happened.

They're not laughing at you--they're laughing near you.

Today, two childhood memories came to mind.  They were linked by one common factor:  grownups laughing at me.  I realize now, of course, that they were laughing because I was so disarmingly cute.  But unlike some kids who know this about themselves and milk it, I was completely oblivious.  On the contrary, I had an amplified sense of my own dignity.

The first instance occurred at some sort of garden party hosted by my stuffier relatives.  Anticipating the impending stuffiness, my mother had coached me in etiquette prior to the party.  "Call everybody Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so."  No problem.  As it turned out, not everyone at the party was as stuffy as expected.  During the introductions, one elderly lady even told me to call her Liz.  I replied, "Ok, Liz," only to be met by giggles from the old ladies.  I was afraid I had done something wrong.

Another time, I was at a neighborhood picnic when one of my new neighbors wanted to play "Can you say..."  Being a mite too old for such games, I decided to indulge him out of politeness.  Apparently, he was an Auburn fan, because all I remember is repeating "War Eagle" back at him and the whole picnic breaking up.  That's when my over-developed indignation kicked in.  I told my mother I had to go to the bathroom, and once inside, gave her a stern lecture about how I didn't appreciate grownups making fun of me and how I wasn't going back out there.  She, in her infinite wisdom, managed to smooth things over, but I was never quite as trusting after that.

I suppose I'm not as quick-witted as I always thought, seeing as it took me 18 years to figure out what was so funny.

I bet you didn't know...

When I worked at camp, we had two rickshaws.  They were named Rick and Shaw.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Hey, it's one-two-three-(oh)-four.  That's kinda cool.

(Slow blog day, sorry.)

Cuteness abounds.

I was actually the recipient of quite an adorable pick-up line today.  Three guys were standing menacingly close to the entrance of the mall where I was headed, so I steeled myself and made for my target.  Just when I thought I was home free, I heard from behind:

"You dropped your smile."

If I hadn't been so focused on giving off my single-woman-in-a-parking-garage-I-know-self-defense vibe, I would have turned and said, "Oh, are you gonna help me find it?"  ;)

Jack

This semester I have a class on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).  I'm reading about devices and methods used in schools to accommodate children with cerebral palsy, and it is absolutely breaking my heart.  I think this is mainly because in middle school, I had a classmate with cerebral palsy. 

His name was Jack, and we avoided him like the plague.  We were scared of him, or rather, we were scared of not knowing what to do, of being in an awkward situation.  I regret so much that I never tried to talk to him, or get to know who he was on the inside.  There was so much to him that we couldn't see.  He was smart!  He made straight A's.  Of course, in middle school we told ourselves that his aide was really taking his tests for him.  But I never believed that.  He was more aware than we gave him credit for, as I found out one day in World History, and will never forget.

They were testing the fire alarm that day, and they warned us over the PA system.  When the alarm sounded, Jack flinched noticeably in his wheelchair.  It was such a sudden movement that it drew the gaze of the entire class for a moment.  Afterwards, my friend who was sitting near Jack heard him ask his aide, "Did they laugh?"

Forays into Form and Light

An agglomeration of various household images.  Click to view.

In His Honor

"I decided early to give my life to something eternal and absolute.  Not to these little gods that are here today and gone tomorrow, but to God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence."

"If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive."

The Tale of the Kleptomanic Priest

Lesson learned:  If you're going to steal money from the church offering, don't let three old ladies see you do it.

Does this count?

I have to stutter.

I-I-I-I have to stutter.

In p-p-public.

For a p-p-project.

I b-b-better p-practice.

The Undoing

With the force of one breath the bits of spent eraser flew off the paper and onto the floor.  Once solid and geometrical, they were now sundered and disorganized.  Unrecognizable, they had taken on the grayish stain of disfavor.  They were to be forgotten.

But within their shriveled kernels was contained nothing but the deepest, darkest secrets of mankind:  that which was never meant to be read.  The early drafts.  The miscalculations.  The Freudian slips.  The mistakes.  To possess these things equaled power, enough power to draw one rubber splinter to another.  And then another.  And then another, until the whole of the eraser was reunited, larger than before, as it was now pregnant with all the erasures it had enacted.  And then the eraser did what no one knew to fear.  It wrote back.

It etched obscenities on every surface it touched.

27 + 45 = 73

It wrote with the angry scrawl of something tossed out as garbage, abandoned to oblivion.

The problem is that the strategy does not support the needs of the client is the problem.

Propelled by fury, the eraser spread humiliation faster than anyone could hide the embarrassing missives.

I love John Taylor.
Jennifer Marie Taylor
Jennifer Marie Taylor
Jennifer Marie Taylor

Try as they might, the incriminated authors could not unwrite their regurgitated blunders, for what can erase an eraser?  Yet in its bold move to escape extinction, the eraser fatefully rendered itself obsolete.  No one dared employ an eraser ever again, turning instead to the fount that covers a multitude of sins...

White Out.

Plink Plink

I did send this one in.  Here's the link.

Icarus

I was going to submit this to the Mirror Project, but I don't know if they would accept it, since you can't see the camera.

Evening Ritual

She put her teeth in a glass of water on her nightstand, then did the same with her eyes, popping them out one at a time.  She brushed her hair, then put it back on her head before placing it gently in a round box.  She hung up her arms and torso and neatly folded her legs.  Then she walked over to the bedside, slid out of her feet, and climbed into bed.

Don't they know I pay their salary?

Is it just my imagination or does every college employee, with few exceptions, seem determined to stick it to the students?  As an undergrad, I was blessed with online registration, so I never had to brave the bureaucratic hell that is the registrar's office.  Their first line of offense is the incomprehensible form, which, if not filled out correctly, will ensure the student has to make at least two trips to the end of the line.  Then, if by some miracle nothing can be found lacking in the completed form, there is always the old standby, the inexplicable "block:"

Employee:  Sorry, there's a block on your account; I can't register you.
Hapless student:  What?!  What kind of block?
Employee to self:  That's for me to know and you to go on a wild goose chase.

And then there is the I.T. department.  Just today I had to see about fixing my non-functional userid/password because, gee, I might want to get my grades at some point.  I bade farewell to the light of day and descended to the bottom floor of the building.  There I found an unmarked window, and below it a red button with the sign, "Ring bell for assistance."  I pushed the button, which was not a bell, but more of a buzzer.  It sounded a mocking weah-weah-weah on the other side of the window, alerting the employees that another pigeon had landed.

After a few minutes of ignoring my existence, a dour employee approached the window.  At this point, I realized that the floor on the other side was a foot higher than the floor where I was.  Since the window, midway down the wall, was only 6 inches in height, I was forced to stoop to look at the employee as he loomed over me, brimming with sysadmin authority and malicious intent.  He ignored my grievance, just recited back to me the prompt on the login site, with a terminal "If that doesn't work, come back tomorrow."

Have an ordinary day!

As you may have noticed, there has been a drop in prolificity of posts on this site lately.  There just hasn't been much going on.  I heard once that poetry was the expression of excess emotion.  Maybe a parallel can be drawn to blogging.  Entries arise out of an excess of something, whether it be something good to praise or something bad to gripe about.  Usually, it's just something--anything--out of the ordinary.  I can generally depend on at least one thing matching that description to cross my path each day.  But not today.  Or yesterday.  Or the day before.  No blips on the radar screen.  No flies in the punch.  Just odorless, tasteless nothing.  Yuck.

Jazz

I penned this poem a few years ago and I thought it was dumb.  What do you think?  (Only constructive comments, please.)

Read it in your best Louis Armstrong voice.
___
Jazz

There's a real place in my heart for jazz music.
I'm not talking about this smooth jazz crap
where they take all the soul out of it
put it through a blender
and spoon-feed it to you.
I'm talking about real jazz, raw jazz,
the kind with rough edges that
stick out and poke you, make you
sit up and take notice, make you
ask, was it talking to me?
And the answer, my friend, is yes.
Yes, I got to hab' me some o' dat jazz.

WMD:  Weapons of Mental Destruction

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me? - Psalm 13:2

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. - II Corinthians 10:5

How treacherous it is when fantasies and daydreams cross the line and intrude upon reality!  I set out to capture that which has no shape or form, for I am at war with my psyche.  My thoughts, elusive and evanescent, are the weapons of my mind intent on exposing me for the evil person I am.  Daily they emerge anew, betraying my greed, my lust, and most severely my lack of faith.  If I wholly believed what I say I believe, no worry or impatience would originate within me.  Even to maintain consistency in my convictions is a battle constantly fought.  Were it not for the reinforcements of the Holy Spirit, I would have succumbed to defeat long ago.  It is He alone who keeps my faith.

Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. - II Timothy 1:12

'Tis the Season

In the past two weeks, among my friends, there has been one engagement, one bridal shower, one wedding, and one baby born.  Thank goodness it wasn't all the same person.

I hope it's good for a laugh.

Is this really my life?  Sometimes I think it's more of an extensive practical joke.  Smile, you're on candid cosmos!

Won't you be my neighbor?

I went for a run today around my happy little suburban neighborhood.  I wore a long-sleeved shirt and pants, none of it tight-fitting.  Hence my surprise when I sensed a car behind me slow down as it came near and the driver say and/or gesticulate something out the window at me.  At first, I really thought I had imagined it, evidence of an unfounded paranoia around people of a different racial distinction than my own.  I refuse to be that woman who clutches her belongings to her when a black man walks by.  So when I passed by the house where the car had pulled in, I waved and said hi.  I was greeted by a "Hey, baby" in a tone that made me more than a little uncomfortable.  What the heck!!  I know it's a crazy world we live in, still you don't expect to be cat-called in your own neighborhood.  Mr. Rogers would have been appalled.