Satan's Little Joy Buzzer

Appearances can be deceiving. Adorable dogs can turn into vicious beasts at the drop of a hat; children who look like cherubs can become holy terrors in the blink of an eye; and, technological advancements that were nothing less than pure genius brought to life with nuts and bolts or, keeping more in line with today’s world, bits and bytes, can morph into damnable contraptions that have the ability to drive us mad as quickly as a mouse trap can snap the necks of the vile vermin.

 

One such wretched device is, without a doubt, the alarm clock which many people might agree should more rightly be called ‘Satan’s little joy buzzer’ because it rouses us from our peaceful slumber every morning and reminds us that we are not beholden to man but rather to a wholly man-made concept...Time. A concept we devised because, in truth, the nature of man makes him desperate for order and structure. And what is more structured than ‘time’?

 

Yes, we rely on ‘time’ to do everything in our lives. Time to get up. Time to go to work. Time to change the oil in the car. Time to (insert task here)...

 

What’s more is that we are reminded of the constraints of time everywhere we look: wrist watches, cell phones, desk clocks, wall clocks, table clocks, car radio clocks, church tower clocks, and even oven clocks! For Pete’s sake, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world, Big Ben, is nothing more than a really big clock with four faces which provide a constant reminder to the people below that their lives are tick, tick, ticking away.

 

In a universe where the laws of nature and motion cannot be broken without some seriously powerful intervention it follows that only a being of pure evil could be capable of orchestrating such a dreadful contraption as the alarm clock. Because God surely did not authorize the invention of such a device considering that He’d already come up with a fairly effective way for His creations to know when to wake up and when to go to sleep. After all when was the last time you saw a lion pop its head up at sunrise and say, ‘Damn! Where’s the snooze button on that thing? Seven minutes. Just seven more minutes, that’s all I need.’

 

But apparently aside from being sentient beings that learn from our mistakes, we humans are also a glutton for punishment because we will intentionally go out and spend our hard earned money to purchase alarm clocks. Some people even give them as gifts or maybe they simply want to share their misery. Honestly, the name alone, alarm clock, ought to trigger some warning system deep within us to avoid them at all costs because alarms are usually indicators of something gone awry: fire alarms, burglar alarms, tornado alarms, etc.

 

These are all things rational people try to steer clear of so why on Earth do we deliberately go out and spend money on something that we know is going to cause us a quick jolt of anxiety each and every morning? Maybe it’s because in actuality we are all crazy.

 

What’s even crazier is that if you are married, dating, living with someone, or so on an so forth, some of us have not just one but two alarm clocks that sit on either side of our beds just waiting to go off and scare the bajezzus out of us. For the most part they are the first thing we look at when our eyes open and typically they are the last thing we actually see before we shut off our bedside lamps. And sometimes for no reason at all we’ll wake in the night and look at our alarm clocks and become frantic to fall back to sleep once we realize we only have a couple more hours left before it screams at us to ‘GET OUT OF BED!’

 

Of course when you bought the dreadful thing it didn’t look like a piece of technology that was crafted in the lowest pits of Hell as it sat there so benignly on the shelf at the store. In fact, it looked quite innocent and useful. And you thought it was such an ingenious tool that would help you get forward in life. You brought it into your home of your own volition and now it has turned against you. Yes, your precious little alarm clock has become your worst enemy.

 

Oh how it taunts you with its bright numeric display and all those buttons...snooze, sleep, AM/FM radio, time set, alarm set... They seem to call out us ‘Press the buttons. Press them.’ It’s all a wicked trick. What loathsome creature could design a device that will lull you to sleep with music when you press the ‘sleep’ button only to rip you from your slumber hours later? And what of the ‘snooze’ button? Do those 7 to 9 ‘extra’ minutes of sleep really help?

 

What about people who press the button again and again and again? Wouldn’t it have been more logical to simply set the alarm for 7:30 instead of 7:00? Why would someone intentionally give up 30 uninterrupted minutes of sleep just so they can drift into a calm, peaceful place only to be yanked back to reality over and over again?

 

Personally, I think there is a darker force at work. And I believe the true purpose of the ‘snooze’ button is to wear us down, put us on edge and generally keep us a little bit off our game. But even though I feel...nay, I believe this to be true, I’ll never get rid of my alarm clock.

 

Why?

 

Because there is a part of my brain that thinks I need it much the way people need a hit of caffeine to ‘get going’ first thing in the morning. Snooze, snooze, snooze...throw back some java. Coincidence?

 

I do not know. . . but this may go deeper than I ever thought.

 

No Good Invention Goes without Punishment

A while back I was watching a reality style show called ‘Pitchmen’ which has been off the air now for a few years after the tragic death of one of the two hosts. The premise of the show was to offer struggling inventors (or those who just got really lucky with a darn good idea) who've dedicated months and sometimes even years into designing, creating, and branding inventions a platform to not only explain and 'sell' their product to the pitchment but also to allow the pitchmen to put the inventions through a series of rigorous real life tests. If the nifty new (or updated by better technology) devices prove to be worthy of 'pitching to the public' the master TV commercial salesmen would then agree to hawk the product using their loud, excited voices (though some might call it a 'snake-oil salesman-like method) to people of the world. The ultimate goal, of course, is not just for the inventor to benefit financially but for the salesmen (think of them as those 'working on commission' vaccum cleaner guys) to sell massive amounts of the product for a commission.

 

When I saw the first episode of the show, I was a bit skeptical . . . . on the one hand. BUT on the other hand, the one I'll simply call my 'holy cow, this is an awesome idea' appendage, all I could think was ‘GENIUS!' Here's a person who came up with an idea that capitalizes on the fact that we humans are amazingly industrious creatures; whatever we need, we find and if we cannot find it, we make it.

 

Take a moment to think back to all the times you’ve wished you had a ‘this’ or a ‘that’ to help you complete a task. Or all the times you came up with the next ‘I can’t live without it’ tool or toy in your mind . . . only you never had the gumption to follow through on bringing it to life. I'll bet there have been more than one or two.

 

And that's natural. Or at least that's what all the psychology books I've read say or allude to because we are an inventive species. When we come to a river, we could simply find a different - longer - way around it OR we could do something like build a bridge because looking for a quick solutions to time-laboroius problems is simply not the way humans are 'wired'. After all, we've thumbs for a reason and it isn't to make holding a stick easy. Those thumbs of ours and our impressive brains are designed to not only hold a stick but also to use it for things other than 'shaking a stick at' things.

 

'Shake a stick at...' An odd sort of colloquialism wouldn't you agree? Who actually shakes sticks at things? Is it proof that we're all 'magical at heart'? Or that we like to come up with phrases to confound people; throw them off topic like tossing a stick for a dog to retrieve for no real reason? It's one of those questions that will perplex man for eons to come... 

 

Where was I? Oh, yes finding solutions to problems.

 

But there is a strange paradox that goes along with our inventiveness because for all the immediate good that comes out of our desire to make our lives a bit less problematic, we sometimes end up having to deal with much greater problems farther down the road.

 

Take for instance the genius of Eli Whitney, Jr. (1765-1825). He was an American inventor and entrepreneur. Whitney has been credited with inventing the cotton gin, interchangeable parts, and the milling machine. Though ‘invented’ might be a bit of a stretch for the latter two. Let’s just say Mr. Whitney wasn’t above borrowing and capitalizing on other people’s ideas every now and again...which, in all honesty, only serves to further prove what a genius he was.

 

But why Eli Whitney? Because his is a name that the vast majority of people in the United States and most of the westernized world recognizes...if only to the extent of, ‘Eli Whitney, yes, the name rings a bell...’ Oh, sure I could talk about Othmar Zeidler an inventor of great merit, a scientist none the less. What? You don’t know who Zeidler is?

 

In 1874 he developed dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane but you probably know it as DDT. There was a time when DDT was considered one of the most important weapons in the war against malaria and typhus because it could wipe out the mosquitoes and lice that carried the deadly diseases. And when it was learned that DDT could also kill all those nasty little bugs that were gobbling up farmers’ crops, it rained down from the sky like powdered sugar on a Bundt cake.

 

That is, until sometime in the mid-1960s when it was discovered that aside from helping farmers grow big juicy fruits and vegetables, DDT was also killing off birds and bees and...more than likely...us. And by 1974...100 years after it was developed, DDT had become a scourge to our world and poor Othmar Zeidler went from ‘hero’ to ‘zero’.

 

But we shouldn’t blame him. Heck, Othmar didn’t even realize it was an insecticide! In fact, nobody really knew what good it was until the mid 1930s. And when the US Army rushed to use it to keep troops from getting sick it became all the rage because saving our boys was the immediate need. Unfortunately, not only are we an industrious species but we also have an amazing ability to act first, ask later.

 

Yes, DDT is one of those things that when it burst onto the scene was thought to be one of those end all and be all products...sort of like Styrofoam. Yes, it does keep cold things cold and warm things warm. Unfortunately it doesn’t degrade and now our world is getting warmer and warmer...but that’s another blog altogether.

 

Other inventors who got flack for their creations that were originally designed out of necessity whether or not we want to believe that it was from necessity include people like: Oliver Winchester (repeating rifle), Hiram Maxim (machine gun), and Alfred Nobel (dynamite). Of course, Nobel didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who developed something to blow things up so he looked to his philanthropic side and bequeathed money to be used after his death that was to be given to people who did something peaceful for the benefit of all mankind.

 

But of all the inventors, in my opinion, no one person gets more flack about his inventions than dear Eli Whitney. Because the cotton gin is considered by most people to either be his greatest achievement or quite possibly his most damning innovation. And the truly ironic part about Whitney’s cotton gin is that he’s remembered for something that did nothing to help his own financial state because his design was ‘borrowed’ by countless other people even though he’d actually gotten a patent for it and fought for years in court to be given credit and compensation for the original design.

 

But by the time his case actually made it to court, the cotton gin and its use had spread through the South like poison ivy on a sweaty kid’s hands. And it was a fight that almost led to his economic ruin even though it helped to seal Eli Whitney’s place in the history books. Though there are many who might argue that he ought to be seen as more infamous than famous because not only did the cotton gin help boost the United State’s economy hand over fist but it led to an increase in slavery which only helped to add fuel to an already religiously, socially, and economically divided nation.

 

For a while Whitney was hailed as a hero in not just the South...but also the North because his milling machines and interchangeable parts innovations helped slingshot Northern manufacturing into another tax bracket. But as with many things that seem like a really good idea at first, it started to dawn on people that maybe that whole cotton gin thing created more problems than it solved. Or maybe it simply brought what was an inevitable end to a quicker conclusion.

 

Now, as for the world today there are so many things that were totally awesome when they came out only to turn to be something we all wish would have never come to light. High fructose corn syrup comes to mind...hmmm...I’m feeling an urge to HFCS laden soda in a big light weight Styrofoam cup.

 

Oh, Necessity...she really is a mother.

 

Yes, there are some things have been introduced in the past few years that I absolutely LOVE and would never want to give up. Caffeine-free sodas, Oxi-Clean, Super Glue and my Magic Eraser. I love my Magic Eraser...I don’t know exactly what’s in them all I know is that they will clean just about anything. Sure I’ll probably grow an extra pinky and die 5 years early from some form of cancer that can be directly linked to the wonder scrubbers...but I don’t care. I love my Magic Erasers and all cheap the knock offs, too!

Classic TV: It's Not Just Your Parent's TV Shows Anymore.

The other day my husband and I were joking about how there are some ‘classic’ television shows that could never be broadcast on primetime network television today because we live in such a PC world. My almost 12 year old daughter laughed and said that we should check out Nick and Night to see if they show them there because, as she said, ‘they’re always showing old stuff like that’. Her words sort of put a lump in my throat because I had often thought of the dreaded day when shows that I used to think were the greatest shows ever officially became ‘classics’.

 

So much has changed in the world of television media today. TVs today aren’t just TVs they’re HDTVs or Plasma screen TVs. They’re flat, relatively light weight and most of them have no buttons or knobs or anything other than a really big manual with tiny print to tell help us understand how to use the slim remotes that will turn them off and on and will change the channels. But we do love our TVs.

 

Then again, we’ve always loved TV. For Pete’s sake, it’s the only type of media that has a style of dining named after it! You can’t go to the grocery store and pick up a radio dinner or eat a Hungry Man movie theatre dinner.

 

No. But you can get a TV dinner. And there must be at least 50 brands of TV dinners on the market with over 500 varieties of food offered by each which begs the question...are there that many TVs that we need to have SO much variety in the frozen foods we eat as we watch them? Is the number of brands and their entree/veggie combinations directly proportional to the number of sets in our homes? I wonder.

 

Think about it...how many televisions do you have in your house? One? (I doubt it) Two? Three? More? Did you forget to count your computer(s)? What about your cell phone? If it can pick up the signal you gotta count it!

 

How many televisions are in my house? I hate to admit it but if we’re counting televisions and any device that can pick up a digital broadcast signal...there can be, at times, 12 of them! But I remember a time when I had access to only 1 (one!) television. And did I ever cherish that baby, too.

 

It was a 19” color TV with a rounded glass screen and a dull white plastic body that my parents bought when I was a toddler back in 1972 so they could watch the summer Olympics in vivid realistic color. It may have been a heavy as hell electronic device but that Panasonic TV lasted until 1985. Nothing electronic lasts like that today.

 

It was the focal point of our den and when it was on you’d better believe somebody was nearby watching it or at least listening to it. And when primetime rolled around we all sat in front of it and watched whatever was offered because there was no such thing as cable TV in the late 70s and early 80s at least not in the small town where I grew up.

 

At my house we were lucky to pick up the 3 network stations, ABC, NBC and CBS, and most often that was only possible with the use of a rabbit ear antenna that sat perched on the top of the crazy heavy television set. But for some strange reason the PBS channel, the one my siblings and I avoided like the plague because we thought it had such boring shows, always came in as clear as crystal. And sometimes, we could even pick up the local independent station. So on a really good day...a day when the good Lord graced my hometown with blue skies and gentle winds...we could pick up all 5 stations at my house.

 

Yes, the image might have been a little fuzzy and there were often times an annoying line appeared at the bottom of the screen and floated up to the top again and again but at least I got to watch all the cool shows that came on. Shows like Charlie’s Angels, Happy Days, and WKRP in Cincinnati were favorites in my house. I’m sure you can recall a few that you’d never miss, too. Maybe you watched the Rockford Files, Good Times or, if you were allowed to stay up late enough you watched a nifty show that pushed the edge of comedy called Saturday Night Live.

 

I remember being ten years old and getting so excited to see my favorite show (whatever it was back then) and hearing the click, click of the ‘changer-knob’ that sometimes I’d turn it so fast, I’d go right past the station I was looking for unlike today where one can press a button on a remote control and select from well over 100 channels. Of course, I also remember absolutely hating being the ‘channel changer-er’ simply because I was the youngest one in the family! No, I didn’t think it was fair that I had to get up from my favorite spot on the floor to put the TV on someone else’s favorite show.

 

There were some shows and their corresponding timeslots that were ‘owned’ by members of my family. My mother had the controlling rights to M*A*S*H*. My claim was ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ but I often had to cede the rights to it because my father had sole ownership of the timeslot for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and it tended to clash with WWD’s scheduled broadcast. Thank God for reruns. Yes, I can honestly say that MoOWK was one show that was a chore for me to watch...but I watched it.

 

Of course, it wasn’t too bad because I did have the best spot in the den for watching TV and it drove my siblings crazy because I got to sit smack dab in front of the magic box since I was small enough that my head didn’t get in the way. Looking back, I suppose that there were some advantages to being ridiculously small as a child. I remember thinking it was funny listening my brothers and sister argue over who got to sit where. As for my parents, they had their own chairs and no one sat in either Mama or Daddy’s chair without express permission.

 

I remember the first thing I’d say to my friends when I got to school was ‘Did you see...***...last night?’ And then we’d prattle on and on about the 30 minute show we watched and talk about how excited we were for next week’s episode. Oh the woe we felt for those of us who missed the show because other than hearing our detailed accounts, the poor unfortunate soul would have to wait for weeks before it came on as a rerun.

 

Of course now that we have the ability to DVR or TiVo shows so we can watch them later, there’s no real need for the ‘Ooooh, I’m soooo sorry you missed it!’ condolences that friends used to share. What’s more is that when I was young you couldn’t watch one show and record another one or two at the same time so you could watch them later. Heck you couldn’t even do it with the fancy VCRs that came out in the early 80’s!

 

Back then I could never have imagined a channel devoted to cartoons...those were things you only got to watch on Saturday mornings. And that was before all the ‘television that educates and informs’ requirements that Saturday morning shows have to adhere to today. There was absolutely nothing educational or informative about Hong Kong Phooey. He was just the number one super guy.

 

I remember watching television shows and not ‘getting’ the jokes that were somewhat controversial when my family watched Three’s Company and I wondered what was going on in Jack Tripper’s bedroom when he was fortunate enough to get a girl to go in there. I knew it had something to do with s-e-x but it was never said outright. Subtle innuendo was what shows during that time period were best at but for some reason programming executives at the major networks today shy away from shows like Soap which was outrageously funny because it dared to rather sedately, when compared to today’s shows, broach subjects like interracial marriages, homosexuality, and mental health only to embrace shows like Two and a Half Men, another ridiculously funny sitcom that is almost wholly about sex and is about as subtle as a florescent pink tutu on a white elephant.

 

And ‘reality’ shows in the late 70s and early 80s didn’t exist. There were no ‘beeps’ to keep us from hearing the ‘f’ word being tossed about on a cut-throat cooking show. Nor were there pixilated blurs to keep us from seeing some woman’s nipple as she mud wrestles another woman whose bikini bottom gets tugged off her svelte ‘I’ve not eaten real food for 25 days’ body in a battle for immunity all because they want to win a big money prize. (You know, something about that statement is so very wrong)

 

No...back then we lived in an age of variety shows like Donny and Marie and Hee Haw. The humor was sophomoric and the song and dance numbers were bubble gum flavored and looked like they had been choreographed by Bobby and Sissy during their breaks from the Lawrence Welk Show.

 

But those days are over. They’ve gone the way of roof top antennas and analogue broadcasting. Now we live in a high tech, high speed digital world where the faster we can be instantly gratified is the goal of every programming director and ad executive. One day, in a not too distant future, I imagine people will close their eyes and watch Survivor, Gray’s Anatomy, or some other ‘classic’ show being broadcast directly to their optic nerves via a super-micro chip and chuckle as they think of what it must have been like way back when my daughter was a little girl and had to watch HDTV and only had 150 channels to pick from.

Miss Breck and the Polyester Gospel Quartet

Having grown up in the South I always knew there were some things that were unique to the region. Southern fried chicken, biscuits, and sweet iced tea immediately come to mind. Yes, I realize that all of those tasty things can be and often are prepared outside the invisible boundary between the South and everywhere else but there’s something special about them when they’re made the old fashioned way and enjoyed at Sunday dinner after a good heart-felt sermon delivered at a house of worship.

 

When I was a little girl nothing beat a Sunday that ended with a meal which included those three things especially when the day included one other thing...the Gospel Hour—a regionally broadcast early Sunday morning television show that was filled with nearly 60 minutes of serious gospel music.

 

Many was the Sunday that I’d wake up to the sounds of something inspirational like ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ being sung by a quartet as the smell of bacon and eggs being fried in a cast iron skillet and biscuits baking in the oven filled the air.

 

I remember being 9 years old and watching the singers as they clutched their ultra thin corded microphones and smiled broadly into the camera offering their smooth spiritually uplifting 4-part harmonies to the world (or at least the world that was close enough to pick up the regionally broadcast signal). I can still hear the sound of my father’s voice as he sang along with the upbeat tunes. And I was always so impressed because no matter what song was sung, he knew it...and if you know anything about good old fashioned Southern gospel music, it’s that there are 100s maybe even 1000s of songs.

 

But, to be honest, my interest was not in the music. Because after hearing what was essentially the same rousing organ-backed, 4 count refrains, about the glory of God and the kindness of Jesus wherein the words had been rearranged again and again, they all sounded the same to my youthful ears. Rather my interest was in the people who actually sang the catchy ditties.

 

I remember sitting in my father’s chair in our den watching the local CBS affiliate, WBTV, and staring in awe at the various singing groups that graced the tiny stage with its mustard yellow carpet and lattice work backdrop which had been decorated with strings of fake ivy interwoven along the criss-cross pattern. But the periphery details weren’t what really caught my eye. No. It was the singers themselves because they weren’t exactly barbershop quartets.

 

It didn’t take me too long to figure out that there was a definite make-up to the foursomes. The members of the groups were more often than not, related to one another either by blood or marriage. And they were set up as 2 women/2 men or 1woman/3 men or 4 men...but never 4 women which I can only assume had something to do with the need for a bass singer. And now that I think of it, I cannot recall ever seeing 1 man and 3 women engaged in harmonious union but I’m not quite sure. (Of course, now that I reread that statement...it sounds as if I’m describing something a bit more risqué than it was!)

 

As for the women they had a mystique about them that started with their ‘beauty pageant hair’. Their coifs were painstakingly teased high enough that they could provide shelter for a family of wrens. But somehow I imagine all the Miss Breck hairspray it took to get the enormous things to achieve and maintain such heights would probably have killed the poor things. By the way, Miss Breck was the premiere hairspray of the 1970s. Looking back now, I cannot help but wonder how much smaller the hole in the ozone layer would be if those ladies had forgone using the CFC propelled hair stabilizer and opted for the smooth, straight ‘Marcia Brady’ look.

 

That was the hair style I had but it wasn’t my choice because apparently God had decided long before I was born that I needed to be the one member of my family to have straight as a stick, fine, limp hair and brown eyes so He fiddled around with my genes until He got just the combination He was looking for. I think it was His way of saying, ‘There’s nothing that can be done in a test tube that I can’t do better and a heck of a lot cheaper.’

 

But my amazement with these gospel songbirds did not start at their hair line and go up. Heavens no! Those women were whole package deals because one simply cannot have a marvelous hairstyle without also wearing the finest of fashions. Granted the women did wear identical clothing which helped to lend to the church choir charm they exuded as a whole but these weren’t your typical choir robes. Not in the slightest.

 

In fact, I suppose that what they wore might have been considered haute couture in the world of gospel music. They always sported floor length pastel colored polyester dresses with long sleeves, ruffled collars, and ribbon-sashed waistlines. And incidentally, the ribbons as well as the other ‘frills’ on the dresses, were always in slightly darker pastel shade.

 

The finishing touch to the look was the makeup the ladies wore. Makeup they took a great deal of time and effort to get just right. It is evident that ‘the look’ was not quite complete to them unless their faces looked every bit as lovely as that which they were wearing. And nothing finishes off a look like frosted blue eye shadow...LOTS of frosted blue eye shadow and ‘cherry blossom pink’ blush applied a little more than sparingly to the apples of the cheeks.

 

And when those women walked onto the stage dressed to impress, I always expected Karen Carpenter to come out from behind the lattice work and break out into ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ but that never happened.  Oh, there is no doubt that those women were quite impressive to look at but I would be remiss if I did not mention the men and their savvy fashions because I seriously doubt we’ll ever have another era where a man could wear that many frills and get complemented on his hip stylishness!

 

Just like their female counterparts, the look for the men started with their hair...hair which I thought looked as though it had been pulled out of a plastic mold and glued to their heads with some sort of adhesive that could keep it in place even if they went tiptoeing through a wind tunnel. I guess it had something to do with the shellac based version of Dippity-Do that they used to make their hair look like it had been styled by the love child of Vidal Sassoon and Jimmy Swaggart.

 

The clothes they wore were cut from the same soft pastel colored polyester that had been used to make the women’s frocks. And these men donned some of the finest frilled shirts and tuxedos ever fashioned from synthetically processed material in shades of dusty rose or carnation pink, or maybe even sage green. Though if I’m being honest, a soft powder blue pseudo-cloth tux with the coat buttoned at the waist always made for a good look because it went along famously with the eye shadow worn by the female members of the group. And no Sunday morning television worthy suit was ever complete without the slightly darker matching vest, cummerbund, and bowtie with a pair of shiny white leatherish looking Jarman shoes.

 

In the end, when those ladies and gentlemen came together and their dulcet tones filled the airwaves, it was quite impressive if for no other reason than the sheer fact that there was never a horrific fire at the television station caused by someone standing a little too long underneath the harsh studio lights. And thankfully I never heard of a quartet being burned alive because of a hairspray ‘touch up’ near a lit cigarette. Can you even begin to imagine what would have become of all those good God fearing singers if either of those things had happened?

 

I know I did! Because even at such a tender age, I knew what happens to polyester when it burns. It melts and contorts but never quite burns away. And aerosol cans ought to have ‘doubles as blow torch’ printed beneath the words ‘super hold’ on their labels. Yes, it would have been terrible!

 

But deep down inside, I knew I didn’t have to worry because apparently God did like their singing so Jesus kept them from harm and I got to eat my scrumptious Sunday breakfast with the knowledge that there was a higher being somewhere out there tapping His toes to a lively version of ‘Nearer My God to Thee’.

Does She Have Any Idea How Crazy She Looks?

A few days ago, after I’d dropped my daughter off at school, I was driving to the local gas station praying that I had enough fuel left in my tank to get me there because something about that bright yellow, low-fuel warning light always sends me into a panic. When I came to the stoplight and could see the gas station to my left I gave a frustrated sigh because I was worried that my car might stop right there. But I reminded myself that patience is a virtue and took a couple of deep breaths as I waited for the signal to change from red to green.

 

I looked to my right and saw a woman sitting in a minivan that was slowly creeping forward, getting ever so close to the car in front of her while she, too, waited for the green light. I laughed to myself, totally forgetting my petrol-woes, and thought of all the times I’d done that very same thing—sneaking up on the car in front of me hoping that the driver would look up in his rearview mirror and be so frightened by the sight of my vehicle he’d accelerate as soon as the light changed just to get away. Only deep inside I knew that the effect was more often than not, the exact opposite because people have done that to me and I’ve intentionally taken my own sweet time to go forward just to prove a point.

 

After watching the woman for a few moments I realized that she wasn’t trying to strong arm the person in the Honda in front of her because she was having a rather animated conversation with someone via a cell phone and was not really paying attention to what was happening. Her car inched forward and then came a quick, startled sort of halt. I can only assume that her internal periphery distance radar (IPDR...you can make anything sound legitimate when you abbreviate the name of it) had gone off and she’d realized that she was 3 inches away from running into the back of the little car ahead of her and slammed her foot onto her brake pedal in the nick of time.

 

I watched as she laughed uproariously and waved her hands around never once stopping her lively discussion. In fact, I imagine her near miss was probably a juicy addition to the conversation. Of course, I can only assume she was talking to someone on her cell phone or maybe she was wearing a Bluetooth earpiece or had some other type of ‘hands free’ gadget because I did not see her actually holding any telecommunications device. Because if she wasn’t talking to someone on her phone, then she must surely gone off the deep end.

 

Which was an altogether valid probability because when the light changed and her vehicle finally made it through the intersection, I noticed seven little white stick-figure decals stuck to the back window denoting how many people were in her family. According to the sticker, she was married and had 2 daughters, 2 sons and one dog. And considering that she was still driving an official ‘I’ve got at least one child under the age of 14’ vehicle, I knew the odds were good that she was probably a little more than frazzled so maybe she was talking to herself. But even though I knew she probably had every right to be chatting it up with the air around her, I couldn’t keep myself from thinking, ‘does she have any idea how crazy she looks?’

 

I didn’t think much of that brief 45 second snippit of my life until this morning when I went to my computer and started thinking about what I’d write today for my blog. And like always, I did what I do before I do anything...I double clicked the internet icon and read the news. Then I typed in the words ‘this day in history’ in the search engine and got my daily dose of the historical low-down. Yes, I’m one of those weird history people that gets all giddy when they realize that this day is, as all days are, historically significant in some way.

 

There’s just something about reading the ‘born on this day’ section that always makes me wonder what the world would be like if Miss So’n’so had never been born. And cruising through the ‘died on this day’ notices instantly draws my mind to consider what other things Mr. Whatzhisname could have done if only he’d lived a little bit longer. I’m sure you’ve done that on occasion too or am I a just a little off center?

 

Then I get to the real meat of the historical matter and check out the ‘history changing events’. I always get a kick out of learning or recalling something really big that happened on a particular day. It’s kind of like I can touch that moment in time. And just as I consider how the world would be different if someone hadn’t been born or had died at a different time, I wonder what the world would be like if a particular event hadn’t happened? Think of all those ‘big’ moments in history that you had to learn about when you were a kid or that have taken place in your own lifetime and imagine a world where they never happened. Sort of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

 

Once I’d procrastinated for what I felt to be a sufficient amount of time, I clicked the Word icon on my desktop and stared at what is essentially a blank canvas waiting for me to draw a story on it with my words whether I am writing for my blog or working on something else. And when it comes to my blog, most of the time I have ideas swimming around in my head for hours and can’t wait to sit down and start typing away.

 

But there are some days when I simply cannot wrap my head around anything that motivates me enough to devote the two or three hours it takes me to write, edit, and post something that I feel I'd like others to read.

 

Today was one of those days. I stared at the blank page and realized that nothing was floating around in my brain which can be so frustrating. Then I found myself talking to the expanse of white and feeling discouraged because it didn’t reply. There I sat, expecting my computer to tell me what I wanted to hear when it dawned on me that if one of my neighbors looked through one of my opened windows and saw me chattering away to absolutely no one they’d think I’d lost my mind.

 

That’s when I chuckled and recalled the other day when I sat at that stop light. I thought of how deluded we must sometimes seem to others. And then I recalled something that’d I’d read just 10 minutes earlier when I was perusing the ‘this day in history’ page.

 

It was one line... “May 8, 1429—Joan of Arc leads the French to victory at Orleans against the British during the 100 Years War’

 

That was it. Just one quick line about what became a defining moment in history. And it was all because of one young girl who led an army based solely upon her undying convictions that she’d been told to do so by God. Two years later she’d been captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English and was burned at the stake after having been accused of, tried for and convicted of committing of heresy and witchery because of her claim that she’d talked with God and refused to recant (and she also wore men’s clothing...which was actually against the law back then)

 

If she’d said that it was all a lie or that ‘the devil made her do it’ then more than likely they’d have tortured the poor girl (even more) but odds are likely that they might not have executed her. Personally, I think it’s quite interesting that it was perfectly alright back then to admit that you’d conversed with Satan because you could be punished and forgiven (alright so sometimes they still executed you but it was by beheading or hanging...both of which I’m sure are a wee might less painful than being burned alive) and in the end everything would be back in balance.

 

In 1429 the notion that a poor peasant girl, whose piety preceded her, could literally hear the word of God or angels or any Heavenly embodiment was absolutely impossible even though much of the Christian faith is based upon many such events. No...she had to either be crazy (but she seemed fairly sane to her accusers) or she was lying because they could not fathom the notion that if God wanted to talk to someone surely He’d not have picked some teenage country girl when He could have had a one on one with the Pope.

 

And using their logic, the local laws, as well as the very strict laws of the Church, which had clear punishments for what was often a rather fuzzy area, she was convicted and executed. (But many years later she was later named a martyr, then beatified and then many, many years later she was officially named a saint)

 

However, if Joan of Arc was alive today we wouldn’t burn her at the stake for stating and standing by what she truly believed happened. No. We’d give her lots of medicine and try to convince her that what she’d thought had happened, hadn’t and that it was all ‘in her head’. And that makes me wonder just how far we’ve really come in nearly 600 years.

 

I’ve no idea who that woman was talking to the other day in her car but I do know that I’ll think twice before I jump to say, ‘does she have any idea how crazy she looks?’ because we all look, act, and sound crazy or irrational to someone at some point in our lives. And we’ve all had moments where we’ve called out to a higher being for guidance. Does that make us crazy? No...it makes us human. And I don’t know about you...but I’m good with human, flaws and all.

 

Besides who am I to say who has or hasn’t spoken to God? But I can guarantee you, if He ever decides to dial my cell phone number that’s one call I will NOT let go to my voicemail.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.08.2014

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