"Strange Days Have Found Us"
...The Doors
I like days that are unusual and strange. I like days that are out of the ordinary. I like it when some coincidence drops into my life, when the stars align, and when I see things in new ways. I am making no statements about the origin or meaning of such days. I only say that we should receive them and that it's a good thing to keep your eyes open.
Tuesday was one of those days for me.
I met a friend at Starbucks at 8:45 am. While we were sitting there, a woman in the line of cars at the drive-through window fell asleep while waiting for her coffee. People inside started laughing and pointing as the cars in front of her pulled ahead while she sat snoozing in her place. Finally, someone behind her got out of his car and tapped on her window, startling her awake.
“Get that woman some coffee!” said a man sipping from his cup and watching everything through the window.
For some reason I tore a small piece of paper out of my notebook and wrote “A woman fell asleep at Starbucks” on it.
A few hours later I got a call from the nurse at our middle school. Shelby was having some trouble with one of her last baby teeth. It was loose but not letting go, and had shifted so that she couldn't chew or even close her mouth easily. I had to make an emergency appointment with our dentist, whose office is within a few hundred yards of our church.
It was a gorgeous and sunny day, about 70 degrees with a perfectly blue sky and not a cloud in sight. We stopped by the church on the way to the dentist and were shocked to find a thick layer of hail all over the church property. I got out of my car and thrust my hand into one of the hail drifts. My whole hand disappeared into little balls of ice ranging in size from specks to grape-sized chunks. I have seen plenty of hail in my life, but never so much that it was piled six inches deep.
Apparently, the storm that morning was so localized that people living only a few miles away had no rain or hail at all. By the time we got to the church, the sky was clear and only evidence of this storm was a strange covering of ice balls and tree limbs stripped bare around the church.
Later, I was getting out of my car when I felt or maybe heard a kind of crunchy, cartilage sound in my ribcage. It didn't hurt much at that moment, but as the day progressed, so did the pain until by evening I could hardly move without gasping in pain. Even breathing hurt. “Can I have broken a rib just getting out of my car?” I wondered. The pain subsided over the next couple of days, but on Tuesday I could hardly move.
At 8:30 that evening I went to our local Barnes and Noble to meet Chris and Jenny, the young adults who run our youth program at church. Chris is the father of Anna, in case you are interested. Jenny is his sister. I've known them both for years. We were meeting to talk about our youth program. Chris' wife Ellen is a deacon at our church and was there as well.
I told them about my ribs, demonstrating by turning in my seat and groaning when the pain hit. They responded with exactly the level of sympathy you expect from good friends. I really don't know what the demonstration did for me, but I felt compelled to tell the story of my ribs, and they were polite enough to hear it. Then we moved on to other matters. We took care of our church business quickly and were simply enjoying good company when the conversation turned to handwriting for some reason that I cannot remember.
I told them that I print everything except when I sign my name and that I hadn't written in cursive since I was a boy. Because of this, my handwriting still looks awkward, like a child's.
“Write something,” Ellen said with a smile on her face. You should know Ellen. She definitely would want to see my handwriting after I said something like that.
“What should I write?” I asked while getting a piece of paper.
She paused and looked thoughtful, then said, "I like bacon."
I wrote it and everyone laughed at my childish handwriting, which really does look like something a 6th grade boy would produce.
Then everyone showed their own handwriting style, writing “I like bacon” in turns on the paper.
After we left I realized that we may have left the paper on the table. I wonder what the people who sat there next thought about it. Maybe that scrap of paper will contribute something to their day. Maybe it will become part of a story that they are telling to their friends.
This is what a day can be. This is how things happen in the world.
rlp
