Drugged

I have a cold. I caught it from my husband, so for the last two days, I have been uttering, “I hate you” at 2 hour intervals. Fortunately he knows better than to believe it, and agreed to stop at the drugstore on his way home from getting his flu shot to buy me some more Allegra-D. I told him either the 12 hour or 24 hour, whichever was cheaper.

He came back with a tale to tell. Of course, my husband can take out the trash and come back with a tale to tell. Anyway, he had to take a card from the shelf and bring it to the counter to get the medicine, because it contains pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make drugs that do more than cure your sneezes and stuffy head. The woman at the counter demanded to see his ID. (“Demanded” is his word. I suspect she asked politely.) “Why do you need my ID?” he asked.

“It’s the law.” Hubby didn’t like it, but he complied.

Then she gave him a form to sign. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It says you aren’t going to use this drug in an improper way.”

So, hubby says, he took it over to a seat to read it. (I'm sure he reads all 42 pages of the user agreement every time he upgrades software. Me, I could have promised someone a lifetime interest in my house for all I know.) It didn’t say anything of the sort, according to him. He brought it back to the counter and said, “It doesn’t say that.” (Am I the only one who is feeling sorry for this poor clerk at this point?)

“Yes it does.”

“Where does it say that?”

“Sir, you have to sign it.”

So he signed it, and she gave him the price. They didn’t have the packet of ten, just the packet of 20 for $21.

“Well, how much is the packet of ten 24 hour tablets?” he asked.

“I can look that up for you. I just need to see your ID again.” Yes, she made him show his ID and sign another form, just to check the price. I don’t know if that’s really the law or if she was just fed up.

The ten 24 hour tablets were $16 so he got me those.

At this point in the story I asked, “So can I have one?” He got me one with some ice water. It seems to be helping.

But I have to agree with him. That was weird.

Blindsided

To Branson from south Louisiana is a long trip. With stops, it takes about 13-14 hours. The bus we took on our recent trip was new, only 90 days old, and equipped with plugs at each seat for charging electronic devices, and monitors every few seats for playing DVD’s. So for most of the way there and back, I was able to amuse myself with games on my iPad, music on my iPhone, and an occasional glimpse at the movies everyone else was watching. Even though I only watched the last half hour each of  The Pacifier and RV, I had no trouble following the plots.

The one movie I was happy to watch all the way through, even though I’d seen it before, was The Blind Side. As I have mentioned before, I’m a sucker for sappy sports movies, and The Blind Side is better than most. I had forgotten the line toward the end, though, when Leigh Ann Tuohy talks about the murder of a young man from the same project where Michael Oher grew up. The young man had played football back in high school, just like Oher. She concludes, “That could have been anyone. That could have been my son Michael.”

That was my cousin Al. No, he didn’t grow up in a housing project and I don’t know if he ever played football, but on June 28 of this year, three months short of his 20th birthday, he was shot to death. It was a premeditated homicide; the shooter arranged with a friend to set up a drug transaction with my cousin and then shot him. The motive for the shooting had nothing to do with drugs. Al wasn’t the one dealing; he was making a buy so he and some friends that were with him could party. It’s the same thing many of my peers did in their younger days before they got some sense and grew up to pretend to their kids that they never did anything of the sort. I suppose if drugs hadn’t been the lure he could have been shot going to church. The important thing is, he did not deserve to die.

So when I heard the forgotten lines about the murder in the projects, I was blindsided.

I don’t think I ever met Al. Technically he is not my cousin. He’s my stepmother’s great-nephew, the son of her younger brother’s older daughter from his second marriage. My family doesn’t bother with such picky distinctions, though. We’re like the Olive Garden, if you’re here, you’re family. 

I’m not sure I ever met his mother, although I have met her younger sister. By the time my uncle remarried I was living far from home and contact with him was slight. I grew up with my uncle’s children from his first marriage, but I’ve lost touch with them over the years, too, although one of them is a Facebook friend. The impact Al’s death has had on me, other than the shock produced by anyone being murdered, and the sorrow of anyone dying so young, has been indirectly through its impact on the siblings and nieces and nephews I know and love. They were blindsided, too. This was someone my nieces and nephews grew up with just like I grew up with his aunt and uncles. This is something they are still trying to make sense of. This was very close to home.

I’ve known other young people who died. We’ve known three young men around my son’s age who died in car accidents, one of whom was the son of a co-worker and a schoolmate of my son. My boss’s daughter died of an aneurysm. Another co-worker’s son died of a gun accident. The father of one of the young men who died in a car wreck said something that will stay with me forever. “You worry about them whenever they go out the door, but you never really expect to hear that something bad happened to them.”

You may worry about crime, but you never expect murder to happen to someone you know. When it does, you’re blindsided.

Noah, the Musical

My husband and I just returned from a bus tour to Branson. The trip was sponsored by an organization of state retirees, and was quite reasonably priced: $600 each for transportation, all breakfasts, three dinners, and tickets to five shows. There was also a winery tour and trips to other area attractions. 

There was also the benefit of not having to do the driving, find a hotel, or research all the shows and decide what to see and then figure out how to get there. The disadvantage of leaving all the planning to someone else was that the show selection was not always what I would have picked. Specifically, it meant that we wound up seeing Noah, the Musical. 

Noah the Musical is a production of Sight and Sounds Ministry. Sight and Sounds Ministry was founded in 1976 and owns theaters in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Branson, Missouri. The ministry is not affiliated with any church denomination or other organization. According to their website, 

It is our goal to visualize and dramatize Biblical truth through live stage productions - to illustrate truth in the same way that Jesus did, by storytelling. Our desire is that our audience will gain clear understanding and inspiration through these presentations, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and deepen their relationship with our Father through Him.

Statue of lion and lamb. I call it "Saying Grace".

Lobby of Sight and Sound Theater

In some ways, I’m glad I got to see Noah. It’s in its last week, soon to be replaced by Joseph, not to be confused with Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. The performance was packed. I heard there were only three empty seats in the entire theater, which seats 2,000 people. 

The size of the theater led me to be somewhat distracted throughout the entire production. Due to an accident when I was in my teens, I  fear being trapped in a fire. There were maybe fifty people in my row between me and the fire exit, which did not lead directly to the outside, but to the large lobby and from there to the outside. The show included several pyrotechnic displays, which kept me glancing nervously to the exits more often than to the stage. I kept reminding myself that the place must have passed a fire inspection at some point and that the show had been running for five years without incident, but I was happy to be safely outside again when it was all over.

I might have relaxed sooner if the show had been more compelling, but it was not. The acting was competent and the music was forgettable. I think I forgot some of the tunes while they were singing them.  The staging is the real draw of this production. In addition to the pyrotechnics, there is the sheer size of the stage. The stage can present sets up to 40 feet high and that wrap around 300 feet. That meant that an almost full-sized ark sat onstage for much of the first act, and that the second act opens with the audience sitting in the ark, as the cast leads live animals to the stage. (Oh, goody, more competition for the fire exits.) Most of the animals, and all of the large ones, like elephants, were animatronics, but there were a good number of live animals, plus two cast members in chimpanzee costumes. The opening to the second act was a truly impressive visual feat. 

Unfortunately, the staging also led to skeptical thinking on the part of at least one viewer, my husband. “You know,” he said in all earnestness, “You can just look at that boat and see that the center of gravity is much higher than the center of buoyancy.” (He does that during science fiction movies, too. “Willing suspension of disbelief” was not a concept taught in his high school.) I suspect that even if you don’t know what a center of gravity and center of buoyancy are, if you’ve ever seen ships on a river or even watched a few episodes of The Love Boat, you’d know there was something wrong with the design of the ark. Not that I see that as a problem. I didn’t critique the ship design watching Jason and the Argonauts in my youth, and I didn’t see it as the point of the Noah story, either. I was perfectly willing to accept Noah, the Musical as a retelling of a beloved Bible tale, not as a history lesson. 

The Sight and Sound people, however, see Noah as a history lesson. They did admit up front that they added episodes and characters that were not in the biblical account. The musical ends with the ark changing into a cross while the announcer tells the audience that Jesus is the Safe Ark for us. An actor playing Jesus appears to quote Bible verses, including the one about “In my Father’s house there are many mansions”.

That is the major problem I had with this production of Noah. Throughout the entire story, we learn how different Noah is from the other people of his day.  He and his family continue to worship Jehovah while all their relatives and neighbors have abandoned him. His insistence on building the ark leads everyone else to reject his family as peculiar. At one point the eldest son asks, “Why do we have to be so different?” and Noah breaks into forgettable song explaining why.

It’s true that some of the added episodes involve Noah trying to get his friends and relatives to join his family on the boat, and them rejecting his offers. For the most part, though, the production emphasizes how different Noah and his family are from those mocking unbelievers. So to get from that to “In my Father’s house there are many mansions”, well, I don’t know how you get from that to “In my Father’s house there are many mansions”. There may be a way you can tell the Noah story and do just that, but this wasn’t it.

The Difference Between My Husband and Me

Recently we took a trip to Branson. We take a lot of trips. In 2004 we went to Thailand to visit our former foreign exchange student. With us was our 2003-2004 foreign exchange student, a young man from Denmark.

While we were on the Branson tour I heard my husband telling the story of our flight to Bangkok to some of our fellow tourists. It occurred to me that if you want to know the biggest difference between my husband and me, you can listen to each of us tell that story.

The way my husband tells the story, we got to the airport in Narita, Japan and waited for our flight to Bangkok to be called. And waited. And waited. Every time we asked for information about the flight, we were told an announcement would be made soon. Finally, an announcement was made. The flight had to be cancelled due to mechanical difficulties.

At this point my husband will add that there had been other flights leaving for Bangkok, and if they had cancelled the flight earlier, we could have been on one of them, but by time they told us, all the other flights had gone, so they had to put us up in a hotel until the next day. The three of us were dressed for the weather in Louisiana (mid-80’s) and Bangkok (low 100’s). The night temperature out there in Narita was 40 degrees. Then when we finally got to Bangkok, our luggage wasn’t there and we had to wait until the next day for it.

All of that is true. Most of that would also be in the story as I tell it. However, the story as I tell it includes details he leaves out.

The airline put us up in the Narita Hilton, a hotel we would not have been able to afford on our own. The break in our travels meant we got to take a shower and sleep in a bed for the first time in something like 18 hours. We were also given vouchers for a phone call to tell our friends we wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, and for dinner and breakfast. So as I tell the story, we got to eat real Japanese food in real Japan. The hotel also had a beautiful garden, and on the way back to the airport, we saw cherry trees in blossom.

Garden at the Narita Hilton

Furthermore, we snagged business class tickets for the six hour flight from Narita to Bangkok. As compensation for our being inconvenienced, we later got three $200 vouchers for future flights, which we used on Memorial Day weekend to go to St. Louis for the Louis and Clark exhibit I had been hoping to see.

It is only next to my pessimistic husband that I look like a sunny natured optimist. My husband’s ability to feel aggrieved, however, accounts for the business class tickets. When we got to the airport, we were told to wait by the ticket counter for an airline official who would give us our tickets. John, being fed up with the whole situation, looked over at the counter and saw a clerk at the business/first class counter. He politely explained our situation to her, she said “I can find you tickets”, and gave us not only the tickets for the flight, but passes to the business/first class lounge as well. If he had listened to Little Miss Look on the Bright Side instead, we would have had another hour of waiting in the waiting room for the flight and six hours of being crammed into the cheap seats we had paid for.

So if there is a moral to this story, it’s that we are good for each other. Hubby benefits from my relatively more optimistic outlook on life, but I also benefit from his capacity to feel righteous indignation and act on it. 

Still, whenever I hear him tell the travel story, I wonder if we were on the same flight.

Elephant Ride in Thailand

An Open Letter to People Who Write Open Letters

I have an irrational dislike of writings that are titled “An Open Letter to _______”.

I say “irrational” because I usually read them even though no one is making me, and because some of them are well written and make good points, and if they were given a different title and didn’t begin with “Dear President Obama” or “Dear Teabaggers”, or dear whatever person is being criticized in the letter, I might not dislike them. So what is it about the open letter format that irks me so?

To start with, an open letter is pretty much an admission that the person being addressed wouldn’t know the writer if s/he tripped over the writer in the road wearing a name tag. I know that isn’t always true, as sometimes well-known authors have resorted to the open letter technique, but the open letter format is generally an admission that the person being addressed isn’t taking your calls, so the likelihood that s/he is going to read an open letter in the newspaper or in the blogosphere is also remote. That means the person being addressed is not really President Obama or Sarah Palin or Hank Williams Junior, it’s the rest of us poor slobs. So why not admit that up front?

Also, with rare exceptions, an open letter is going to be critical of the person it is nominally addressed to. I can understand the appeal of being able to address criticisms in the second person rather than the third person, but to me it sounds less thoughtful and nuanced and more just plain mean. 

Not only that, but it also sounds like bragging. I not only want the person I am nominally addressing to have my brilliant insights into the problems facing him or her, I want anyone else with access to my open letter to see what brilliant insights I am offering as well. Okay, it’s true that the reason I have a blog is so that I can offer my brilliant insights to people who wouldn’t know me if they tripped over me in the road wearing a name tag, but even I don’t think that I am such a special snowflake that not only does Hillary Clinton need my input on foreign policy, but also that other people need to see what fantastic advice she’s missing out on by not inviting me over for tea. Although if she did I could wear a hat.

So, dear writer of open letters, I know you don’t know me and aren’t reading this and don’t care about my opinion on open letters anyway, but I have some advice for you. Please stop.

Very truly yours, 

Obscure blogger

Dolphin Tale, a Review

I had a plan today to take the curtains off the French doors and scrub them before the man from Acadian Flooring comes around tomorrow to measure them for new blinds. That was the plan, then my husband asked if I wanted to see a movie. Housework, movie . . . housework, movie. Oh, how to decide?

The movie he wanted to see was Dolphin Tale, a movie based on the true story of Winter the Dolphin, who was rescued in Florida and given a prosthetic tail after her own had to be amputated. I first encountered the story of Winter in an edition of News-2-You, a newspaper for young readers who need picture support published weekly by Unique Learning Systems. Back when I was working, I got all my news from News-2-You. I first learned about Pope Benedict’s 2008 visit to the US in News-2-You. Winter’s tale (you saw what I did there) is a fascinating one in its own right. It would have made a terrific movie all by itself.

I say “would have” because while Winter’s story is the basis of the movie, it’s not the only plot point. I’m fairly sure that whoever conceived of this movie jotted down a dozen or so movie cliches on little bits of paper, put them into a hat, and then had the writers pull out four or five to add to the true story. So in addition to Winter, we have Sawyer, the struggling young pre-adolescent (in his first two scenes I wasn’t entirely sure he could talk) who blossoms through his friendship with the dolphin; his cousin Kyle, the athlete turned bitter wounded veteran turned athlete again; Dr. Clay, the director of a non-profit facility which is about to be closed down and sold to a developer for a new hotel; and the crusty businessman with heart of gold. Really, who needed all that? It’s as if Kate Middleton had worried that her wedding dress wasn’t flashy enough and decided to dress it up with a feather boa, a dozen silk calla lilies and a large lapel button that read “Hot damn! I’m getting married!” And then wore it with roller skates.

Keep in mind, I love sappy movies about triumphing over adversity. I was at the movie theater the second it opened to buy tickets to Miracle. I made my husband take me to Huntington , West Virginia after we saw We Are Marshall*. So if a movie is too sappy for me, you can start boiling up maple syrup.

So should you go see this movie? I don’t know. It does have some good moments. Me, I kinda wished I’d stayed home and washed the doors.

*It was on our way home from Ohio and we were on our way to visit his sister in Tennessee, so while it wasn’t the most direct route, it was barely out of the way, and now I can add West Virginia to my list of states I’ve been to. Eleven more to go.

Discharged

I had my last visit with Dr. S about my foot on Thursday. We discussed exercise and I am allowed to do my Strong Women routine, minus calf raises but including squats. I’m pretty much banned from calf raises forever. I can live with that. We didn’t discuss deadlifting but I have decided to wait until next spring before adding those to my routine, by which time it will be a year since I broke the foot and it should be as healed as it will ever get. So my plan is resume walking once a week with my friend D, go to the Y once a week with hubby and ride the exercise bike, and weights at home starting with one time a week and working up to three times a week. I may eventually resume the Little Old Lady Exercise Class, or I may see what they have at the Y, since we’re paying for it anyway and it’s closer.

Dr. S actually proved to be a font* of information about exercise, especially bicycling. He agreed with me that squats should strengthen my knees and reduce knee pain. He also gave some tips for how to set the seat on my bike to reduce the wobbling in my knees when I ride, leading to less pain. As much as I sometimes wanted to throttle the man, I’m grateful for his help.  

So I guess I am officially All Better. That means I no longer have an excuse for ducking the housework, but on the bright side, it means my shoe choices have expanded from one pair to four, so I can at least look better while doing it.

*Font? Fount? I looked it up online to figure out which it should be and it turns out no one else knows either.