Boring Stories

Kenna Sue Groebe was a woman’s woman. She was the most attractive woman in our small group of friends at church. Yet she had simply horrible luck with men. This gave her a humility that made her as easy to love as butter sliding off a hot knife.

We all had children the same age. Instead of trying to find babysitters we just brought our kids together to play and enjoyed each other while they were playing. Every year at Christmas we would gather at my house late Christmas Eve. The kids would play while we enjoyed a glass or two of wine. A few came without the kids because there was always that shared custody thing with the ex-husbands. And I think it helped that the women, at least, were together to share the evening even when their kids were away. Laughter would pour from all corners of the house. As 11 o’clock approached we would pile into our cars and leave for worship. It was the most magical night of the year for us.

I remember one bitterly cold Christmas Eve when Kenna either didn’t have a good coat or her car was not running. It was one of those occasions where you could feel really sorry for yourself. Yet all I could see in Kenna was her excitement in being among friends at times like that, when you’re alone and broke. This is when good friends shine through the cloudy cold night like the Christmas Star.

Kenna died of cancer—as they say, “after a long and courageous fight.” The cancer started in her breast and eventually spread, the way cancer does, to the places that make life hell and eventually kill you. Her friends knew what kept her alive. She had a teenaged daughter and Kenna was waiting for her to finish high school. I think she lasted only a few months after that.

Her friends walked alongside with her while she was sick. Some took her to the doctor and chemo. Some delivered lunch. Some cleaned her house. Some bandaged the sores on her back that she couldn’t reach. Some listened to her questions late at night on the telephone; questions women ask without embarrassment like “Will I get to meet Cary Grant in heaven?” And there was still laughter in those times. Linda and Jan spent one dark night trying to coax her cat out of the bushes when they accidentally let it out while cleaning. I still love to hear them tell the story because they are notorious for their indifference to, if not actual distaste for, cats. And the cat knew it. There was no way that cat was coming out of the bushes. Kenna was in the hospital and it was her favorite cat. It’s stories like that that women love to tell and re-tell.

After about 4 or 5 years of fighting the cancer Kenna arrived at her last night on earth. When Kit called me to come she told me this was it.

When the end came for her, we were all there: the Christmas Eve party friends, others she had made at her daughter's school and in the neighborhood. There were so many of us that we had to rotate between the room and the waiting area as we watched her struggle for each breath. The nurse cautioned us that even though she appeared unconscious we couldn’t really be sure. It was possible that she could still hear and understand us right up until the moment of death. With this in mind we sought out comforting conversations to have there in the room. There is a gentleness about death when women are attending it. As our vigil wore on into the morning we spent time softly reminiscing over our friendship with Kenna. We told stories about kids, husbands, childhoods…stories women tell when they are together. Quiet stories in a dark room.

I think everyone has their own particularly long and boring story that they tell many times over. They know it’s boring but they tell it anyway just to relive the story in their own minds. It was 2a.m. and we had pretty much come to the limit of what we had to say. Even women can run out of things to say. I came to my own boring story.

I started out with “I know I’ve told Kenna this story before…” and in fact, I had indeed told it far too many times to her. I was two sentences along when she stopped her labored breathing. Her body relaxed. A small dot of foam gathered at the corner of her mouth. Eleanor lovingly dabbed it with a Kleenex. But someone else realized what had happened and rang for the nurse while still another ran down the hall to the nurse’s station.

And all this time, may God have mercy on me, I’m looking around the room and thinking, “Wait, don’t you want to hear the rest of my story?”

None of us had ever seen anyone die. It was so peaceful yet it still brought about an enormous sense of panic. Once the nurses had made the final pronouncement our minister led us in prayer. Her friends filled the room as we held hands in shock and disbelief.

It wasn’t until months later when the shock had worn off that I realized the last thing Kenna heard before she died was me winding up to tell my story. I realized to my horror that she probably thought something like “Oh my God! Do I have to listen to this boring story again?” And God, with all the gentleness in the universe, answered her prayer.

The Fat Wallet Evening

For some reason that I can’t remember I was driving tonight. We were discussing how fat Beaven’s wallet is. I guess we’ve been retired long enough now that we’ve fallen into the “really boring” stage where you spend a lot of time discussing stuff like that. A few years ago we noticed that we’ve had some of the same conversations over and over and over again. Especially with our kids. I told Emily to clean her room so many times that I ended up assigning it Number 8. That way I could just poke my head in the door and simply say “eight.” Or, if I was really upset, I could say “Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight” Of course it never got the room cleaned but it saved a lot of time. So, here we are in the car with me giving him monologue number 25—the fat wallet monologue.

I quit carrying a purse years ago through a kind of gradual transition. I realized a purse wasn’t doing much for me but collecting a lot of loose garbage. Emily sent me the perfect wallet when she was in college. For what we spent to send her to a private college I should have gotten more than a wallet and about 15 credit hours out of the deal. But I love the style and I look for them now in every college bookstore I visit. It’s got a key ring connected to a thin wallet with (I love this part) a Velcro closure. It’s perfect for the no-makeup, no-hairstyle, no-checkbook life I lead. I have room for a couple of credit cards and my car keys. It fits in my pocket while I’m not driving and I never have to worry about having my purse stolen out of the cart at Wal-Mart.

Beaven, on the other hand, has ever piece of plastic and paper he’s ever owned in his wallet. The wallet is so big he can’t sit on it so he takes it out while he’s driving and is always leaving it somewhere. That’s what started the fat wallet conversation- he had left it somewhere. Does he really need his SCUBA diving card driving around in Sulphur Springs in the winter? Or his membership cards for the three or so professional organizations he belongs to and never goes to meetings? His Dallas Public Library card when we haven’t lived in Dallas for 30 years? Or his discount cards to stores that have gone out of business?

I’m going on and on about all the clutter he carries around with him and hear a funny noise. A kind of “blurp.” Three little blurps and I look in my rearview mirror. There’s a cop with his lights on to tell me that I’m going 43 in a 30 mph zone. Thirty miles an hour! On a street as wide as an airport runway and smooth as glass. With nary a school or hospital or old folks home in sight. Who in their right mind drives anywhere at 30 miles an hour?

Anyway, of course the first thing he asks me for is my insurance card. I’m OK with that because I always have it in my glove compartment. Right here in the tidy little group of Mapquest maps with the tidy little pink folder neatly wrapped around it with the word “Maps” on it in marker. I always keep my insurance card in there. Here’s 2003’s card. And 2001 and even 1996. Here’s the map to all my friends’ houses and all the businesses in weird parts of town with tricky turns. And my church directory. Hey, even gloves right here in my glove compartment! Don’t you think it’s cool I have a pair of gloves in my glove box?

Of course, I never found the insurance card and Beaven had one in his wallet. So I had to shut up permanently about the fat wallet.

But my day just got worse when I lost the temporary crown I got yesterday. I think this was the crown that put me officially in possession of more crowns than the Queen of England. Now I have to drive (very slowly) back to Dallas tomorrow and hope the dentist can put it back in. In the meantime, I’m scared to eat or drink anything. I’m scared to do a whole lot of breathing since the bare tooth is sensitive to cold and it is, after all, winter, whether it feels like it or not. And talking would call for breathing so that’s out. When you cut out talking, eating and breathing, there aren’t a whole lot of fun things to do in an evening.

So, here is your wit and wisdom for the week. Please don’t expect anymore from me. It’s been a hard day. Tune in next week and I’ll tell you the story of how I bored somebody to death once.

Numbers

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write this week. I thought about telling you about the time I bored a friend to death. But that’s kind of a downer for the first of the year. Then the idea of numbers came to me when a friend recommended the television show by that name. I’ve written two very different pieces based on numbers so I’m combining them here. Maybe they have more in common than I thought. Just remember when I start talking about fires that I wrote these pieces years ago so it will have no relation to our extremely dry and dangerous weather out here. For that you can read the piece I wrote in July.

$362.11
Three Hundred Sixty Two dollars and eleven cents… $362.11. Remember that number. We’ll come back to it later.

A few years ago Beaven was driving down the road when a horrible noise came from under the hood. He couldn’t figure out what was happening-especially since the car was operating perfectly. He turned off the airconditioner and the noise stopped.
He continued down the road, calculating the cost of a new air conditioner motor. He wasn’t too worried since the car was fairly new and everything mechanical was covered by a warranty. All he faced was inconvenience. We keep all the bases covered at our house. Foolish mistakes don’t happen to us.

The next morning he got in the car to go to work and immediately smelled that something was dead somewhere. Really dead. And it was dead in just about the worst possible place-the airconditioner ducts. It was going to be a hot day. To put it mildly, his options looked bleak. There are a lot of succinct ways to describe his situation but all the ones I know involve hard-core cussing.

I volunteered to switch cars for two reasons: (a) I had more time to take it to the shop and (b) I had changed more dirty diapers than he had. The few dirty diapers that he managed to change involved the use of an old gas mask he brought home from the Air Force. I, however, was used to smells. Or so I thought.

I had to drive with the window rolled down and my head out the window, breathing in puffs of fresh air as needed. In the words of the repair bill, the car was “engulfed” by a foul odor. That’s putting it nicely. It cost $362.11 to undo the damage a small but acrobatic mouse had done. Mousie had climbed under the hood and inside the AC motor. When Beaven started the car it literally shredded the mouse into bits. Bits that now lay in the motor as rotting and dead meat.

Now, who could we blame? That was the hard part. $362.11 is nothing to sniff at. (As if we wanted to sniff at it.) This was just about the one thing our fool-proof extended warranty didn’t cover. We couldn’t file against our insurance. We couldn’t sue anyone. We just had to suck it in and pay the money. We couldn’t blame God. We couldn’t even blame the mouse. Someone suggested we could blame the cat. She yawned at our accusations. Chasing mice had never been in her contract. We were left holding the bag. I didn’t like it one bit.

I have petitioned God to open a special complaint department. Maybe even one complete with apologies and a magic wand. In the meantime, I’m left with the words of the great bumpersticker philosopher, “Stuff Happens.” It’s not a happy feeling.


----------but sometimes things happen exactly the way they are supposed to happen and it all unfolds so easily that it almost makes it seem boring: ---------



Notes from my life:
August 8, 2002
Sulphur Springs, Texas
$9.96

I was driving into town this morning and saw a crowd of cars stopped on either side of the road ahead. “Must be one of those used tractor sales they have out here all the time.” I thought. One of the things I love about the country is how relaxed their pace is. If they want to have a tractor sale they just do it right where the tractor sits. No fanfare, no fuss. Then I noticed people running toward the side of the road.. “Must be a loose horse” They get those out here all the time, too. People will often pull over to help get a horse or a cow back inside the fence when it’s loose. Then I saw flames and realized there was a fire under the hood of one the cars.

Without so much as a second thought I only had to move my left hand six inches to the silver button by the door handle. Before my car had come to a complete stop the trunk door popped open and I was able to go straight to the fire extinguisher I knew would be in my trunk.
I seldom pay attention to it but I know it’s there. For the last thirty-plus years I’ve been married to Beaven I’ve always had a fire extinguisher and a set of battery cables in the trunk of my car. Beaven takes care of us that way. Sure enough, there it was exactly where I knew it would be.

I took it out of the box and was examining it while I walked toward the burning car Across the road a woman was yelling out “Will that thing explode?” And another woman was running over with the only liquid she had in her car: windshield washing solution. Another car pulled over to the side of the road in front of the burning one. Just about every car that came down the road pulled over to help in some way.

The man from the burning car saw me and ran toward me. “Is that a fire extinguisher?” “Yeah, but I’m not sure I know how to use it.” “That’s OK” He took it and ran back to the car.
The woman who was worried about explosions was now yelling out asking if he needed a cell phone. I saw a burst of white under his hood and the fire went out. Behind me stopped a uniform delivery truck and two men jumped out, one was carrying a five gallon water cooler and the other had another fire extinguisher. They went to where the grass had caught fire under the car. Another man running up behind me called out “Do you need a cell phone?” I looked and saw another man standing by the burned car already speaking on a donated cell phone.

By this time the fire was out. The whole process had taken less than five minutes. I found myself wondering what there was to do next. I decided nothing. There wasn’t any point waiting around for the empty fire extinguisher. I don’t think you can refill them. So I just got back in the car and continued down the road.

Less than five minutes. Ten strangers. Three cell phones, two fire extinguishers, a bottle of windshield cleaning solution, one bucket of drinking water. Less than 20 words had been exchanged.

I had been heading to Wal-Mart anyway. I added another fire extinguisher to my cart. $9.96 dues for being a member of a loving society.

Re-Drawing the Calendar

Whoever came up with this calendar was a real bozo. It probably was some Roman emperor so I guess he’s dead as a doornail and I’m safe calling him a bozo. You really gotta be careful who you call a bozo nowadays, people get pretty touchy.

At any rate, whichever bozo arranged things this way never had to close out the year end books and return Christmas presents the same week. As a recovering accountant I have always dreamed of re-doing the calendar.

All the holidays are in the wrong month. Like Christmas. I’ve been reading that Jesus wasn’t really born in December. In all probability he was born in the spring when those shepherds were outdoors watching their flocks. Shepherds don’t keep their sheep in open fields in the winter, I guess. Makes sense to me. The December date was picked when early Christians got nervous because the pagans were having a blast celebrating the winter solstice in mid-December and they wanted to have some fun, too. So they promoted Christmas to a major holiday and invented Santa Claus and malls.

Christmas belongs in spring. We’d have to give up snowmen and reindeer pulling sleds. But we could have some great barbecues.

The other advantage of moving Christmas to spring is to get more time for the accountants to get stuff done. We don’t need any fun holidays in December to distract anyone. The accountants need for all the worker bees to be in the office and have their minds on end of the year adjustments and getting the data correct. For myself, when I was working in accounting, I never really minded working on New Years Day. That holiday never meant much to me since we’re not what anybody in their senses would call party animals. I never stayed up late and I never cared about the football games. I actually wanted to come to work on January 1. It was my best day of the year. I was always the only person in the building. I had all the numbers to myself and they couldn’t jump around on me. Plus-- here’s the heavenly side of it—all the year-to-date calculations were so easy on January 1st. Can you imagine anything nicer?

Valentines Day is in wrong place also…strapless dresses to the high school Sweetheart Dance in snow? July 4th in such heat? I say we should get the holidays out of the extreme weather and into times we can really enjoy ourselves. Here’s my suggestions:

January- Let’s turn Martin Luther King Day into something more. Maybe an international brotherhood day when people of different cultures can celebrate our differences and eat each other’s exotic foods. Every holiday has it own food. November and December have turkey. July has hotdogs. Maybe January could have eggrolls, baklava, pizza and fried chicken.

February- I guess we could leave Valentines Day here but it can get pretty icy and all those high school kids are driving to the Sweetheart Dance in the dark and the girls are wearing next to nothing to this dance. What happens if there’s a wreck and she has to stand outside and flag down a ride?

March – Currently, March does not have any holiday. That’s a waste. Move Christmas here. We’ll have more time and better weather.

April- Does anybody really know how we time Easter? I think it has something to do with the moon. I used to think it keyed off Passover (the Last Supper was a Passover meal). But, last year, I think, Passover happened after Easter. I asked all the preachers and Jews I know and nobody had an answer. One word of caution, however: keep it away from April 15. We don’t want anyone traveling out of town when they need to be doing their taxes.

May- only has Mothers Day and Memorial Day. Memorial Day is OK here but it rains a lot in May. Let’s move Mothers Day (see September)

June- nothing here but Fathers Day yet the weather is perfect for picnics. Move Labor Day to June. Maybe we could even move the presidential election to June. June is too great a month to waste on vacations.

July- I propose we eliminate holidays in July and August. The weather is far too horrible then.

Aug- we don’t need any holidays here. The weather is awful. However, my ex-sister-in-law always takes August 8th off work. She declared this her own personal holiday when Nixon resigned and she hasn’t missed a celebration since that year. There’s no reason you couldn’t do it, too.

September- We could move Mothers Day and Fathers Day to September and call it a generic “Cool Parents Day” or “Respected Old People Day”. That way we could celebrate the grandparents who are raising children while the parents serve time in jail.

Oct- Nothing much happens here except for Halloween. The weather in October is far too nice to waste it. We could move another holiday here. Maybe Mothers Day or Fathers Day.

Nov- Keep Thanksgiving in November. We need the fallen leaves to decorate the table.

Dec- we could keep this month free by moving Christmas to March. People could use the entire month to balance their checkbooks. Or take some time to learn how to cook Baklava.

Now, these changes are only a start. Send me your suggestions and we’ll consider them. I say 2006 is the year we re-vamp the calendar to make some sense. It’s time for a few well-considered changes. I’ll admit I haven’t put too much thought into this but someone needs to. Our calendar is a mess.