Okay!!

My wife is a beautiful woman, still so young looking that when she was with our 11-year-old grandson recently, one man asked her if our grandson was her son.

Me, I’m more attractively-challenged, and I readily accept that.  Oh, I used to have some confidence, but I don’t let it go to my head. (I’m aging gracefully, you know!) But only recently I realized how “challenged” I truly am.

A couple days before Christmas my wife and I were baking cookies well into the night, and about 1 a.m. she tells me she has to pluck one of my eyebrows, so I reluctantly agreed.   She pulled one hair, then another, plucked a third, a fourth and after number five, I said, “That’s it! I don’t care how many more you see, I’m done.”

Then she said those words that only a deeply caring wife and beautiful woman could say to her husband: “I’m trying really hard to make you look…..okay.”

Yes, she did pause before selecting that one perfect word to describe how, with her guidance and hard work, I might sometimes rise to the level of looking….”Okay.”

As I said, I know I’m not handsome, but I had not realized that I was so close to being hideous that it was only through my wife’s hard work that I could be elevated - - maybe only sometimes - - to being at the level of … “okay.”

I’ll try to be better at only walking in the shadows or running my errands at night to save the masses from having to deal with the horrors of…well…seeing me. My special apologies to any little children whom I may have frightened beyond repair…I did not set out to cause them nightmares.

Please excuse me now, as I need to practice my yell of “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” from the church steeple!!

Close to Greatness

If you are like me, on the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday you not only think of the spirit and dedication of Dr. King, but you think of his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” at the March on Washington.

I recently read where Dr. King worked long and hard on that speech, having several important messages to deliver.  (As someone who has written speeches for others for key events, I can appreciate the difficulty of structuring just the right words to appropriately affect the intended audience.) Apparently Dr. King had used elements of the I Have a Dream theme from time to time in other speeches and wanted to use it in the Washington speech, but for some reason could not make it work with all he wanted to say. So he read his carefully prepared remarks. 

His remarks were thoughtful and important, but near the end of his prepared remarks Mahalia Jackson, who had earlier sung two songs at the event and was on/near the stage, shouted out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”  With that, Dr. King quit reading his written remarks and spoke, without notes but from the heart, with what we all know - - even five decades later - - as the powerful I Have a Dream speech.

If you want to hear Dr, King’s famous I Have A Dream speech, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE

Imagine that: Dr. King almost did not deliver what we have come to remember and be inspired by for so many years.   And that got me thinking about how often in our lives we fall short of greatness because we didn’t take a certain path, because we didn’t take some action, because we didn’t take a chance, even if we thought it was the right thing to do.   I know I fall short of things many times. But maybe, just maybe, we should take a chance from time to time, speak from the heart, and say what we really think…just like Dr. King did. 

Perhaps greatness awaits us all.

Those six magic words.

I hate to do mechanical things.

(No, those are not the six magical words...please read on...)

I can write my way out of a paper bag, I have started my own business, I have played nice in the sandbox, I have tried to be a good husband and father and grandfather. But if you want me to fix something or build something, even with detailed, easy-to-follow directions, I don’t like it. 

Oh, not that I haven’t done it.   I’ve built put-it-together furniture. I built, from scratch, a ramp for our 15-year-old dog when his back was so bad he couldn’t take any steps (but good old Carter was smart enough to never walk on that ramp…even he didn’t trust something I had built!).  I’m generally fearful that when I am done the thing I am trying to repair will be in worse condition than when I set out to fix it.

So when our gas clothes dryer bit the dust in January, and our washer would no longer let us wash in cold water (I don’t feel so bad about that, because even the professional appliance repair guys could not fix that after a couple different trips out), we decided it was time to get a new washer and dryer.

Fortunately, for me, the store delivery guys set and hooked up the washer, but I had not ordered the tubing for the gas to use the dryer. While I don’t like installing such devices, I had set up a gas dryer before and knew I could save us $100+ by doing it myself.  Putting the sealant and connections on was not a problem, it was getting the right tubing and fittings that made me squeamish.

And this is where those six magic words come in.

I went to the local Lowe’s (we had purchased the washer and dryer at a different local Lowe’s) and expected to find one easygas dryer installation kit.   Oh, they had kits in the major appliance area, but all for washing machines or ice makers or gigantic intergallatic robots, but not for the dryer.   So I made my way to the plumbing aisle, which I hate because it makes me feel dumber than usual. There they certainly had more kits and more fittings and tubings and little small boxes with even littler and smaller elbows and joints and fittings and lord knows what else.  I found one thing that I thought I needed, an elbow with the right 3/8” dimensions, but even then I had to choose between galvanized and vulcanized and bet-you-can’t-figure-out-what-ized-I-am.  I was more terrified than before.  Finally I found a panel of gas dryer tubing kits, but they all said ½ inch, and I needed 3/8 inch fittings.   I was still in a panic.

Then, in that same aisle, there was an older (well, maybe as old as me, so not that old!!) gentleman who was a Lowe’s employee, and he had just helped two other people in that aisle and was starting his stocking duties when I asked him to help me.   I showed him what I had selected, but was confused by the packages. Fortunately I had also copied the page in the owner’s manual that explained things.  (Well, at least explained things to people smarter than I who are not scared of installing things.)

Then this kind man said those six magic words: “I know just what you need.”

He explained that I actually had selected the right-sized elbow, and assured me that the package he handed me was both the right size of tubing and the right sized fittings at the end, even moving things around in the sealed plastic package to show me what to put where.

In parting he said, “I’ll be here for an hour yet, so hollar at me if something was wrong.” I assured him that I never hollar at anyone, and sincerely thanked him for his help.

And while I trusted this kind man and believed he was right, I was still a bit concerned that I needed something more or different.

But, God bless him, he was right.  And those six magic, meaningful words he said to me in the store were both reassuring and deadly accurate. I should have taken the time to learn the name of the kindly black man who helped me, but I know I will not forget him. And I have six words of my own for him: “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”