jennethink

REMEMBER SUSIE CHAPSTICK?

I have a friend who is addicted to chapstick.  I won't post her name here but she knows who she is. 

I screen my friends carefully.  I know this sounds odd but it is true.  I'm introverted by nature - no one believes me but I really am. 

SIDEBAR: This reminds me of a 4 year old I used to know.  She came into my office one day and began interviewing me about the objects in my office.  "What's that?  Why do you have it? When did you get it? Can I have it? What's that? Do you like pink? Pink's my favorite color. What's that?"  This went on for a while and I kept up pretty good.  Eventually I turned back to my work and let her entertain herself with the chalk and chalkboard in my office.  She talked the whole time.  Not to me ... just sort of to herself.  Or to the chalk.  Or to her feet.  You know, whatever.  Eventually she got louder.  I could tell she wanted more attention.  I was busy.  "I'm drawing again!" she called out.  "uh huh!" I said.  "I have pink chalk at home!"  she said "Okay!" I said.  But apparently my little responses weren't enough.  Next thing I knew, she was tugging at me, at my shirt.  "Hey, hey, hey, hey" <tug tug tug> "hey ..." 

I finished typing and turned around to face her , "yes?"

"I'm shy."

I burst into laughter.  "Are you?" I said and laughed again.  Then I said "Sweetie, let me let you in on a secret ... if you like to tell people you are shy, you probably aren't."  And I scooped her up and we went to the lobby to count the flowers.

So that's kind of how I feel about saying I'm introverted.  No one really believes me because most people see me up in front of a crowd or teaching a room full of execs and I'm sure most people reading this are saying "if you have to convince us you are introverted you probably aren't"  but I really am.  Really.  I AM!

Anyway, this is why I'm very selective about my friends.  Because I have limited energy and I want to make sure that I'll be a good friend (and honestly, that they will be too).  So I have sort of selection criteria.  I won't expose my criteria but I will say this,  chapstick addiction is a plus.  Not just because I love chapstick but also because I want my friends to be eccentric.  I want them to be a little - off.  I like it when they shamelessly have a quirk. 

By observation alone, I have counted 7 different lip balms in her possession.  They've gotten pulled out of purses and desk drawers and my personal favorite - out of an arrangement on the coffee table in her living room.  And what's even better?  We've NEVER said anything about it.  She's never said "I'm addicted to chapstick" and I've never said "Don't you think you have a lot of chapstick?"  But inside I jump up and down like a little girl getting a pony every time a chapstick appears.  You never know when it is going to happen or where they are going to come from.  It's just the BEST!

This isn't her only quirk.  She doesn't know this but the first FOUR times I saw her she had on the same sweater.  The first time was when we met at her office.  The next time was at a lunch.  Then we ran into each other at an office downtown and then a few weeks later I had to stop by her office again.  All these times she had on the same sweater.  By this time, we had quickly become friends and had scheduled a dinner with spouses.  On the way to her house I kept asking The Husband "What if she has on that sweater again?" and we developed a plan for him to distract her while I snuck to her closet to see if this was the SAME sweater or if she had a army of them.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed to she her dressed all in black and the sweater was no where to be found.

She and her husband were over the other night and we played Hoopla - my favorite game.  In Hoopla you are required to draw.  You draw and everyone tries to guess what you are drawing.  Like pictionary.  Lipbalm had to draw an elephant.  She started at the back, which, admittedly, is not where I would start.  She never picked up her pencil.  She drew the whole thing without stopping. It was one long line.  It was a side view.  It looked EXACTLY like

a septic system.

Somehow we got the clue.  I don't know how exactly but someone called out "ELEPHANT!"  but it was more like "elephant???"  I do remember asking about the elephant's brain tumor and being told that was its ear.  About this time we all burst into laughter.  And kept laughing and kept laughing. 

And then she reached into her pocket, pulled out a tube and applied Medicated Chapstick to her lips.

IT COULD BE WHY I LOVE PENGUINS SO MUCH

I’m in the process of developing a standard for a client of mine for the type of people they want to hire.You can probably come up with the list, it’s what most employers want, dedicated, hard-working, loyal, creative, fun, etc.  There are some nuances that I believe will be unique to this group but all in all, they want to hire “good people.”

While I’m putting together the list, my mind naturally wanders to questions like “do people like these actually exist?” and “how will we find these people?”  and “what questions can we ask that will help us recognize these people when they are in front of us in the interview chair?”

Then as quickly as that happens, I start mentally thinking of great interview questions.  Mostly I do this because it is easier for me and let’s face it, I’m highly distractible so I like to think about a lot of different things at one time.  And, of course, I can’t just come up with the questions, I have to answer them too.

"Would you rather be the sun or the moon?”  (The moon, for sure)  “Why?”  (Because the moon is so cool and so mysterious and the sun is such a show off).  “What childhood belief do you wish you still held?”  (The tooth fairy – that dame is so cool just traipsing around giving out money for old teeth.  She’s so under the radar.  No big holidays like the Easter bunny or St. Nick just showing up when you need her and giving you a little something for doing basically nothing.)  And “What person – other than your parents - do you most admire?”

And then, right then in my thinking, I stopped dead because I thought of Sister Pat.

I’m not Catholic.  I’ve never been to a mass that I can recall and I never went to a catholic school.  I never wore that cute little plaid skirt and knee socks and I never ate a wafer that turned into the body of Christ.  So you may think it is odd that a nun would be a person I most admire.  That is until you hear about her.

I was 15 when my father died.  If I woke up this morning and a pink pony wearing a tutu was serving me breakfast in bed I would have been no more surprised than I was by the death of my father.  Even though he had cancer my whole long legged life and even though he’d gone in and out (and in and out) of hospitals and even though I knew it was terminal and he was sick I never ever ever thought he would die.  Dad’s don’t do that.

But, of course, he did.  And when he did someone tied a string around my heart and yanked up hard and fast and left an empty space inside of me with nothing but cold air blowing through.  The moment he died, the very moment in time he went from present to past tense, from “my dad is funny” to “my dad was funny” I felt it.  I knew it.  I knew it.  My mother, my sister and I were huddled in a private waiting room in the hospital.  We’d been down to see him just an hour or so earlier.  He had lifted his arm and waved and smiled when I looked back as we left the room.  And then an hour later – just like that – we were a family of three.  Before anyone came to tell us, I knew it.  My mom says she knew it too and I believe her because I can remember her sliding off the crappy couch we were sitting on and falling on her knees and praying.  And I remember I blinked a thousand times watching her and I remember my sister dug her nails into my hand and I remember that’s where we were when a nun came in to tell us what we already somehow knew.

That nun was not Sister Pat.  Sister Pat comes later.  I don’t know this nun’s name.  I do know she was dressed in navy blue and had frizzy hair.  I remember her soft face and her kind eyes.  I remember she was short and sort of round and she looked just like you would want a nun to look.  But she said awful things.  “He’s gone.”  “They worked hard to save him.”  “I’m so very sorry.”  And, the worst of all, “You really should go see him now.”

I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to.

But I was 15 and doctors advised it was best for us to see him.  The tubes are gone, they said.  It’s best, they said.  And a white coat led us down the hall.  My mother.  My sister.  Me.  The fuzzy haired nun in her squeaky shoes followed. I made it 2 inches inside the door.  I saw him across the room.  It’s amazing how much information the brain can take in in a spilt second.  I saw the tubes were gone.  They said that, I expected that.  I saw his hair was messed up.  No one told me that.  I saw his mouth was open.  No one said his mouth would be open.  I saw he was dead.  No one told me I’d be able to see that.  I saw all of this in an instant.  And I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going but I went as fast as I could down that hall away from that dead man.  Hospitals are mazes and I was a trapped rat scurrying down a hall down another bursting through doors and finally collapsing in a bathroom against the wall.  I wasn’t crying.  I wasn’t screaming.  I was sitting.  And panting.  And blinking a thousand times.  I didn’t hear the door open and I didn’t hear her squeak toward me but the next thing I knew, the nun was kneeling in front of me.  My eyelids were still strobe-lighting and I saw her mouth move and I saw her arms reach out and that’s when I punched her.

It took me 12 years to tell anyone that story.  Not the part about Dad dying – that part people knew – but I never told anyone I slugged a nun.  I didn’t tell them how I swung more than once at her.  How she flinched and grabbed at my hands in defense.  I didn’t tell them how I screamed – with my mouth wide open and pushed and punched again and again.  I didn’t tell how I felt more than one of those blows land and how I pushed her against the wall and ran out of that bathroom.

Now fast forward 12 years and enter Sister Pat.  I was working for a family doctor and Sister Pat was a patient of that physician.  Sister Pat was 6 feet tall if she was an inch and nothing at all like Fuzzy Hair.  Sister Pat was stern and direct and exactly what I’d always pictured when someone said the nuns beat some kid’s knuckles with a ruler.  Sister Pat was in occasionally and would always nod at me.  And every time I saw her in the hospital she would nod to acknowledge me.  Once.  Chin down.  Chin up.  And each time she did that I just felt like she knew.  She could see right through me.  It must show on my face.  I’m a nun-puncher. 

So finally one day after she’d seen the doctor and after I’d checked her out and filed her insurance I pulled her aside.  “Sister Pat?”  I asked,  “May I ask you something?”

"You may.”  She looked right at me

“Well,” I started and stopped and then like a rush of hot air the whole sorry story came tumbling out.  How I was 15 and how I didn’t want to see my father like that and how I was missing my heart and how I punched that nice nun.  Sister Pat listened to every word without changing her expression, without encouraging me to continue or begging me to stop.  She just stood there.  Stood there and listened.  “So do you think,” I said after I’d gotten the whole disaster out, “do you think she understood?  I mean, as a nun, do you think she understood that I didn’t mean it and I wasn’t angry at her and do you think I hurt her?  I mean, as a nun, do you think she understood?”

And Sister Pat - that stern, direct, nearly emotionless nun who was built like a oak tree and hadn’t broken expression once during my entire confession – reached out faster than I would have imagined she could move and gripped my clenched hands in hers and she squeezed.  Hard.  And she said, slowly, “My dear child,  we consider that,”  and she nodded as if to acknowledge all of it, all the screaming and punching and pain, “we consider that… a privilege.”  

She squeezed and nodded again. “A privilege.”  And looked me dead in the eyes.  Then she dropped my hands and left.

She never mentioned it again and neither did I.  She kept nodding at me in the halls of the hospital and when she visited the doctor.  Chin down.  Chin up.  Nothing more than that.  And I would smile back.

“We consider that a privilege.”  5 words.  5 words that did more than absolve me of my guilt.  They taught me about grace and compassion and the nature of God.

I will never forget those words, or the woman who spoke them.

GOODY! SAM!

Yesterday The Husband and I washed the car.  We had to because it was covered in what my friend Sam calls “Tree Poop.”  That’s the pollen and pods and icky fuzzy things that fall off the trees.  Of course this morning it was covered in Tree Poop again but that’s the way it goes.

Sam is part of Sam and Julie.  Sam and Julie should be pitied. 

Did you ever see that movie where the baby geese followed around that kid because they thought she was their mother?  The Mom Goose was killed or something and then the movie kid was there when the babies hatched and those babies never let her out of their site after that.  That’s what The Husband and I have done to Sam and Julie.  We waddle our car around the neighborhood hoping they’ll be outside.  When they are, we honk as if we are just driving by but then we slow down long enough so one of them will motion us to come and talk.  “Oh no we couldn’t!” we say as we’re parking and walking up the walk. 

Sam and Julie are new friends.  They don’t seem like new friends.  They seem like old friends.  I took off my shoes Friday night in their living room and sat right down on the floor.  We stayed in their living room until it was Saturday.  We weren’t invited over – not really – we had been “oh just driving around!” and they happened to call.  “Where are you?” they said.  “On your porch!” we said.  See what I mean?  We’ve imprinted.  This is why they should be pitied.  We’re stalking them.

Of course it goes both ways.  Sam followed me to breakfast this morning.  Oh sure, he made up a story about going to a meeting that was canceled and then deciding to go to the bagel shop instead.  He even brought a few people from his office with him to make it look legit but I know the real truth.

There are lots and lots of good things about Sam and Julie.  One of the best is Katherine.

Katherine is the daughter person in their house.  Katherine is 17.  Or maybe 110.  You think she is 17 until she joins the conversation and then you think she must be much older – no 17 year old is like her.  Her real name must be Madge or Edna and she was born before toast was invented and well, she must have found the fountain of youth and is sipping it from one of those sports bottles.  That makes much more sense when you meet her than thinking that she’s 17. 

I have this necklace.  It’s a beautiful necklace and I’m rarely without it.  It isn’t just beautiful, it is significant.  The necklace contains a single hydrangea flower between two pieces of glass.  A long time ago when I was planting various plants and green stuff in my yard someone told me to get a hydrangea.  When I asked at the nursery about it I was advised against it.  “You don’t want that.”  I was told.  “I don’t?”  I found it hard to believe that someone who viewed dirt under his nails as a status symbol would know what I wanted.

“You’ll plant it, see?”  He started.  “You plant it and it won’t make it.” 

“Won’t make it?”  I said. 

“Nope, it’ll die.”  He said.  Just like that.  Then, “Not hardy.  Can’t make it.”

I, of course, was determined, “but I’ll take good care of it!”  I thought.  Even though I knew I wasn’t the best at taking care of things but other green stuff around my house had lived and jeepers, I’m not my mom, after all, who’s philodendron looks like a thin green snake with one yellow leaf at the end.  I mean I sort of know what I’m doing.  And just when I was going to say all of this and grab the plant and dart out the door before he could stop me, Dirty Nails explained something to me that changed my life.

“It’s not you,”  he stated,  “It’s that that plant puts all it’s energy into making those beautiful flowers and it doesn’t grow a strong root system.  So the first harsh weather and it can’t handle it.  It dies.”

And just like that, I realized how much of my life I can spend trying to show the world how pretty and perfect and colorful I am.  I realized how much energy I can put into making a nice show for everyone.  And meanwhile, I’m putting nothing into my foundation – into my root system.  And I realized that, unlike the hydrangea, I have a choice each time.  Each time a situation presents itself, I can worry about how I’m going to look, or I can concentrate on building my foundation.  99% of the time, I can’t do both.  Not simultaneously. 

So I had a necklace made – 2 of them actually – with hydrangeas in them.  And I wear them so I won’t forget the lesson.  I had one of these necklaces on Friday night at Sam and Julie’s.  I took it off and gave it to Kathryn.  I had to, really.  After spending time with her, you would have given it to her too. Even if I was still wearing it. And frankly, if I hadn’t taken it off, I’m convinced that my necklace would have jumped off my neck, crossed the room and wiggled down over her head itself.  Because it knew, like I did …

She gets it.

She’s 17.  She gets it.

SARAH BERNHARDT

In December Mom and I went on a cruise together.  I took the place of a friend of hers that was supposed to go but due to health concerns couldn’t go at the last minute.  I loved that cruise.  I took the opportunity to do some things I’m scared of – not the least of which was going on a cruise with three women who went to grade school with Davy Crockett.  One of those fears is parasailing.  Actually I’m not scared of parasailing in particular just sort of uncomfortable with flying.  And that’s in a plane with all kinds of metal and stuff around me – parasailing is way out in the open without wings or anything.  But I wanted to do it.  So I did.  Since one of my mom’s friends decided she didn’t want any part of

Key West

, I asked my mom to go with me.  The boat driver said she could ride along for 20 dollars.  I was very excited that she would get to see me.

Unfortunately there was a mishap.  See, my mom isn’t the most flexible person in the world and her body just doesn’t move certain ways.  So getting from the dock to the boat (which was a strectch, literally, for me) was not the easiest of tasks for her.  Thankfully the boat driver was helping but apparently instead of helping he dang near ripped her arm out of the socket and beat her with the wet end of it. At least that’s the way she sees it. I actually didn’t know anything bad happened until a bit later on the boat when I noticed she wasn’t really participating in the conversation and when I looked closely at her and she was pale and her lips were in a tight line.  She was also holding onto her left arm. 

“Are you okay?” I asked.  I’ve had some medical training and I know that pain in the left arm is a classic sign of a heart attack.  She was staring straight ahead and didn’t look at me when I talked to her.  She had her sunglasses on so I couldn’t see her eyes but I could see the wrinkles around them and I knew she was grimacing.  “Mom,”  I said again, “Are you okay?”

She shook her head slightly and said, “I’ll tell you later.” Which is so typically Mom and so positively annoying that I wanted to rip out her arm and beat her with the wet end.  I had to push and ask again and eventually she told me “that guy gripped me too hard.”

Oh. Well.  Now I have to tell you that she’s not really known for being the toughest cookie in the box.  (Sorry Mom, but you are a little wimpy.)  Not emotionally – oh no, she’s the strongest of the strong when I comes to dealing with big life issues and wading through the awful crap that life can throw you but if you just barely run into the back of her heel with a shopping cart you’re in for a 10 minute display of gasps and moans followed by her looking back at her leg every 3 minutes to check to see if the non-existent bleeding has stopped for the rest of the trip around the store. Or say you accidentally set a box on her toe while you are moving - nevermind the fact that it was a pinky toe – which hardly counts and it was a box of PILLOWS - You’d think, based on the reaction, you’d just removed her liver with a chainsaw.   So when she said to me “That guy gripped me too hard,” you have to understand, I wasn’t all that concerned.  After all, he helped us ALL onto the boat and no one else was faking a cardiac arrest. 

It was still bothering her at the end of the cruise

And at the end of the next week.

And at Christmas.

So when I was talking to her in February and she was at the ATM and told me she had to get out because she couldn’t reach up high enough to hit her pin number, I thought maybe she probably should go see someone.  Although to be honest I fully expected the doctor to say there was nothing wrong except a lack of use for the past 3 months.

Well as it turns out, she has a full tear in her rotator cuff.  A full tear.  Even the doctor wrote “ouch!” on the MRI report. 

She has to have surgery.  And I’ve already scheduled my flight to

Orlando

to be there with my sister for the recovery.

I feel properly awful about it.   Although, can you imagine what we are in for? 

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

When I was young my father was sick.  Not all the time and not always horribly so but there were occasions when he would get very sick.  Having cancer will do that to you.

I don’t remember the specifics of many of these times, just a vague recollection of being somewhere in the home and Daddy being somewhere else in the home and being sick.  When I do remember specifics, they range from very warm and happy memories, - making my dad plain spaghetti with a huge pad of butter on top and settling down to watch F-troop on a black and white TV with him. – to very awful and scary memories of him being so sick.  So very sick.  And well, I just don’t feel like giving you the examples of those moments but if you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you try and try to scream and nothing comes out then you understand the feeling and the awfulness of being 10 or 11 or 15 and having your father (and your whole world) near death. And we’ll leave it at that.

Somewhere in the middle between F-troop and the Screaming Dreams there lies vague memories of chemo and maybe radiation and the results of those two things.  I hear nowadays they have anti-nausea medication for people undergoing chemotherapy.  I hear it is a wonderful advancement.  I’m sure there are times when the medication doesn’t work.  I’m sure there are many, many who wish it worked better.  I’m sure if I had a time machine and a wheel barrow I would take every bit of that medication back to the late 70’s with me. 

When you are a girl, there are quite a few things you worry about.  Some boy lifting your skirt at school.  Some girls telling your friends you are on your period.  Some teacher asking you to “read that note aloud for the whole class.”  And rightfully so, don’t you think?  I mean I hope The Kid has the same healthy fear of her underpants being seen as I did and protects them just as fiercely.  But there is nothing, NOTHING as scary as hearing your father getting sick.  Chemo isn’t easy on a person – even SuperDad – and the results would often end up in the toilet.  My father wasn’t a small man – in size or in character – and when he would have to tear from his bed to the toilet to empty his already emptied stomach the whole house would shake. 

And then came the retching.

As I type this out, this very moment, some 27 years later, tears are trying to drown my eyeballs.  My chest has gotten tight and I’m actually clenching my jaw so tight it feels like I’ve been chewing on shoe leather.  That sound … that sound of my father being brought to his knees, it is the worst sound I carry in my memory. 

And here is the most incredible part of it all – my mother would be right beside him.  Sometimes he would tell her to leave, to get out, to not hover … because well, I guess Superman doesn’t want to be seen with Kryptonite … but she wouldn’t go far – if she went at all.  And through the retching and the bile and the weakness and the stink, my mother was there.  I never saw her leave the room.  I could hear them through the walls – him with the sickness and her with the support and this is the way it was. 

I always marveled at that.  As much as I loved my father, I couldn’t imagine standing there, being there, watching that.  But she did.  And I bet if you asked her, she would say she did it without thought or planning.  She simply did what needed to be done.  There has always been a part of me that wondered if I could be that strong.  Could I get in the filth with and for another person?  Would I be willing to do what it takes, to do what needs to be done simply because it needs to be done?

Monday I took The Kid to the airport.  She’s flying back to NJ for a while and these moments at the airport together are always the most precious and the most dreaded.  It’s when we say goodbye.  We always go early because I love sitting at the gate with her.  Those moments are the best – we talk about what we did and what we will do and we tell each other we are the best – the best step-Kid and the best step-mom.  We talk about the plane trip and about the snacks packed in her bag.  We take pictures.  We try to guess who she’ll be sitting next to and we wonder how many naps she’ll take on the plane.  We put on chapstick and wash our hands with purell and inevitably we both cry – but that’s okay.  We tell each other that’s okay and we set a time limit.  “Let’s be sad for 60 seconds,” I’ll say, “then we’ll think about all the things that make us happy.”  And it helps.  It really helps.

But before we can get to the gate, we always have to make a pitstop.  So together on Tuesday, we went into the bathroom.  She went in one stall.  I went in the one beside her.  I was trying to hurry because I don’t want her finishing and standing alone even though I pee bent over so I can see her shoes the whole time.  In my haste I put her boarding pass and paperwork on the shelf behind the toilet.  And I know what you are thinking… you’re thinking I left it there.  I did not.  I stood, turned to get it, drug the paperwork across the shelf and in an instant, my driver’s license – the very one I was going to need to pass through security with my “unaccompanied minor” and sit at the gate with her – fell into the toilet.  More desperate than that, it was an autoflush.  And it had started autoflushing.  Which meant my license was heading down the hole. 

It’s amazing how fast your mind works.  In a blink I remembered that, autoflushers being somewhat unreliable, it was not a clean bowl when I entered and although I most often remedy that with a pre-pee flush, I had not this time because I was in the race to beat The Fastest Pee-er in the

MidWest

in the stall next to me.  In that same moment I realized there would be no way security would let me enter the gate area without my license and my final moments with The Kid would be spent staring and waving through the glass wall that would separate us. 

And I think that’s why the moment I saw that piece of plastic with my picture and weight from high school fall, I plunged my hand into that bowl, down the hole and somehow caught that license between my two fingers.  I did it. I actually did it.  I put my pristine hand in that dirty bowl.  The very moment it happened I thought of my mom and I thought, “I guess I have a little bit of that Mom strength in me after all!”  and even then and there, during my hand-swirly I felt warm and proud.  Proud of myself.  Proud of what I could do, if I had to.  I clamped my fingers together.  The toilet finished flushing.  I still had the little bugger.  Victory.

The glow, however, was short-lived.  My hand was stuck.  My hand was stuck in the hole in the bowl.

The next few minutes were a flurry of desperation.  Yelling to The Kid to stay put, trying to wedge around and unhook the door, pulling like a bear caught in a trap at my hand being swallowed by a porcelain piranha.  Eventually – and not without some pain – I yanked myself free – still alive and still able to legally drive. 

The Kid and I sat at the gate together.  We talked and cried and took pictures.  We did what we do and eventually the flight attendant loaded her on the plane.  With her bag, with her snacks, without me.

I left about 45 minutes later with tears in my eyes, a small but well-earned bruise on my knuckle and, thanks to my mom, my driver’s license in my pocket.

These are the moments when I hope God is gracious enough to peel back the curtain of heaven long enough for my father to catch a glimpse of what he helped make - a woman who is willing to plunge her clean hand in the dirty potty for her little girl.

It's not everything I want to be.  But it's a start.

I KNOW, I NEVER THOUGHT I'D POST AGAIN EITHER

This will not be long.  It has been such a crazy and wonderful and exhausting week.  I will update as I can about my experiences in Orlando and facilitating the Women's Conference there. 

I will say this, however.  There are many reasons to love women.  Women are so different in some ways from men.  But shockingly similar all over the world.  The first night of the conference, I had a short meeting and dinner with these women. I really needed to get to know them a bit since I was going to be leading them through all kinds of exercises over the next 5 days.  I needed their buy in.  It was important that I connected with them.  Maybe not all of them, but some of them.  A few of them.  One at least.

So I began listening and eavesdropping during the meeting and dinner to see who my first - and maybe only - victim would be.  I guess this is hard to explain but as a facilitator, if you can get one -just one- person to buy off on you, to agree and nod as you are talking, to laugh at all the right places and to shhhhhhh when everyone is talking over you, well, if you can do that, the battle is half won.  So I started taking inventory. 

There was a soft spoken woman from Thailand who giggled with her mouth closed had HUGE brown eyes who without ever dating him, had agreed on a plane 17 years ago to marry the man who is now her husband. There was a woman who was born in Singapore and now lives in Australia with the most wonderful accent who told a story about starting a ministry to fellow women (by "fellow women" I mean women who are alike, not trannys) called GEMS, Growing and Encouraging My Sister.  There was a beautiful coffee colored woman from Mexico who told us that her favorite food was meat. There were women from Poland and Budapest and Africa and women with last names that looked like someone spilled the scrabble board and women who I wanted to smuggle home in my suitcase. 

But no real connections. 

Until a blond pixie little woman sitting beside me saved the day.  At the beginning of dinner, after she’d pushed lettuce around her plate without eating it for 10 minutes and without really knowing anything about me, she leaned close, put her hand to her mouth in the typical “I don’t want anyone to know what I’m talking about” move, pried open one side of her mouth and whispered “I’m uh, I'm a salad snob.”

Since I don’t eat salad at all I felt a little guilty hearing her confession.  Like Ted Bundy listening to someone say “I’m sometimes mean to my girlfriend.”  It was the craziest thing to say to someone you didn't know and so Seinfeld-esce that I immediately fell in love with her. 

Connection.

I was halfway there.

IT'S 90 DEGREES HERE - HOW HOT ARE YOU?

I'm in Orlando this week facilitating a global women's conference and will only be able to post occasionally.  Not that that's all that different from how often I usually post but since I have a built in excuse, I might as well use it.

Birdy recently mentioned in a comment that I never said why I asked the question about the hole in one or the near miss.  He's right, I didn't.  I think probably because I didn't really have a reason other than I was curious.  Curious to see how people would not only answer, but how they would respond to the question.  I found the reasons people chose their answer much more insightful than the answer itself which really is a good life lesson:  Never be satisfied with an answer - yours or someone else's - until you've asked "Why?"

There's this movie, maybe you've seen it, Seabiscuit.  It's shockingly wonderful.  Lots of hurrah! moments and lots of David and Goliath type story stuff.  Lots of tear-jerker moments and lots of warm-fuzzies.  But I think the best reason to see it is a single line give about a quarter of the way into the movie.

The short version goes like this.  There is this guy, Red.  Red grew up in the depression.  His parents gave him away - that's right - they gave him away to work in some stables for a nice man because they couldn't feed him anymore.  He didn't want to go and they didn't want to send him but they had no choice.  He lost all track of his family and grew into a young man who sometimes rode horses, sometimes drank too much, often fought and sometimes won.  Some interesting things happen and a horse owner decides Red is the jockey for him and for Seabiscuit who, as a horse, had his own share of difficulties. 

They enter their first race. 

They lose.  Not because Seabiscuit wasn't the fastest horse, but because along about the middle of the race, someone on another nag cuts Red off.  Red rages and the next thing you know he's bearing down to chase the horse and rider who fouled him.  He loses sight of the goal.  He loses the race.

The conversation outside the stable later between Red, Tom (the trainer), and the owner goes like this:

Tom: What the hell were you thinkin'?
Red: He fouled me.  What am l supposed to do, let him get away with that?
Tom: Well, yeah...
Red (angrily): He almost put me in the rail!
Tom: Well, did he? Look, we had a plan.
Red (now so angry, his face matches his name) He fouled me, Tom! What am l supposed to do?
He cut me off! (Shouting with clenched fists)  HE FOULED ME!

And then my favorite part.  The owner, who been listening the whole time steps up and quietly says, "Son? Son ...."  then pauses. He then takes a deep breath and softly says,  "What are you so mad about?"      

I've run into quite a few people lately that I've wanted to ask this question to.  They are angry.  They are clenched teeth and bulging veins.  They are rising blood pressure and short answers.  They've been fouled, put on the rail, cut off.     - Or at least they thing they have.

And I want to say, what are you so angry about?