Monthly Archives: February 2014

I was doing a lot of running around in town the other day, for my boy. We took him to see The LEGO Movie & he fell in love with the little blind packs of minifigures you can get from the movie.

He very rarely asks for anything specific, the last time was Christmas 2008, when he asked for discontinued Teen Titan toys, so I was going full Super (Crazy) Mom, looking for these dang things & everyone was sold out. We live 20 miles out of town & there’s no “Just hop to the store for one thing”.

As I crossed to the opposite corner of the town, I thought “Man, I’m hungry, my husband’s almost off work, but I have 2 more stops. I wish I lived in town, so I could finish this up later.” But I can’t because of how far out of town we live. I was tired & grumbling & cranky at the world.

I checked the last 2 stores & decided there was no way I was going to cook dinner when I finally got home, so I stopped at the grocery store that’s next to the exit to the highway, grabbed a chicken meal & got in line.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a guy looking at me, it gave me a weird vibe, but not a dangerous one, so I didn’t think much of it. Until he said “HEY! I haven’t seen you since high school!”

I have no freaking clue who this guy is, but he gets in line behind me, so I’m stuck. He’s got an adorable little boy with him & I make small talk with the kid & ignore the guy while the checker rings me up. As I’m trying to swipe my card, the dude says “Man, you sure new how to party.”

Yeah. I knew how to party 17 years ago. Yep. That’s why I have a kid that’s about to turn 16!

I paid, grabbed my bags & headed for the door, hurrying through the parking lot because I didn’t want to get stuck chatting in the parking lot with this guy that remembered me as I was at 17.

That’s when I thought, “Thank fucking God I don’t live in town.”

Sometimes life gives you reminders that you live the way you do for a reason. For me, my desire not to hear “You sure knew how to party!” like I’m still defined by my teen years in a small town, is much stronger than my desire for speedy shopping.

Ick! I was really struck by how the thoughts juxtaposed each other. I enjoyed every long mile of the drive back home to my podunk town on the edge of nothing, even if the trip was a total Lego-man failure.

Being sent to summer Bible camp was one of the things that shaped my core & made me who I am today. But not the way the church probably wanted.

I got yelled at for not capitalizing “he” when talking about Jesus.

My big brother, seeing I was pretty miserable, (& probably also not wanting to get up in the morning to walk me over there any more than I wanted to go) decided I could just stay home with him instead during the summer.

That was the year he made me watch The Fly & The Blob & every other horror movie our gas station had for rental.

So thanks, old biddy that yelled at me for not knowing to capitalize pronouns related to your deity.

You led me down a totally different path & I’m happy for it.

Three other clear memories from Summer Bible Camp:
Meeting a lanky, dark-skinned boy that would NOT BE QUIET while we drank tiny paper cups of orange McDonald’s drink & much preferring his quiet frilly-dress-wearing sister. Being bothered by that loud & constantly-moving boy would turn out to be my first interaction with my husband.

Learning about ammonia from a teen girl that was helping out at the church. She let me smell it (ew), explained to me about the vapors produced when mixed with bleach & held a tiny little chemistry experiment (ammonia volcano) for me, while we were supposed to be memorizing Psalms 23.

We made a sheep magnet out of cotton balls & our sheep dog puppy ate it. I was distraught for a second, but then thought “Well, that only makes sense, since he’s a sheep dog.”