The Reason Angels Have Hands In Addition To Wings

It happened back in the early 2000s.  He couldn’t remember the year exactly, but for some reason he remembered seeing a PT Cruiser drive by when she said it.  They were eating at a restaurant, him and his woman.  She had just spilled some food on her favorite pair of pants.  He was not surprised.  Hell–by this time detergent companies had specifically developed pen-size on-the-go cleaner in an effort to save relationships.  And on this occasion his girlfriend said, “What’s the point of trying to not spill if I have a Tide-stick in my purse?  They work wonders!”  Unintended consequences as they are, the invention of Tide-sticks resulted in women, his girlfriend included, becoming more daring while eating.

What happened next was unbelievable.  Women everywhere just gave up on trying to not spill while eating.  At first this was all silly.  He would even find himself laughing at all the funny ways women would splink.  Splinking–that’s what they called it.  Women would intentionally miss their mouth in the most nonsensical situation possible and capture the result on camera.  Like planking and duckface before it, the photrend caught on quickly.  In the first month, the major social media players actually shutdown for an entire day because of the unexpected traffic.  People weren’t laughing for very long though.  What no one seemed to notice was that women weren’t eating as much food anymore.  Weren’t-eating-as-much-food, quickly became weren’t-eating-enough-food.  Sadly, unable to resist the Western-trend, the third world suffered the initial blow.  Never had the planet seen such merciless loss of life.  Inevitably, all eyes turned upward.

Make no mistake, God was aware of the situation.  He just hadn’t exactly prepared for this.  Finally, Michael spoke up.

“I have an idea.”

“I’m listening.”

“All these eons, I’ve trusted in your infinite wisdom.  Specifically, I tried to never complain that you gave the humans hands, while we only got wings.  But with the situation they’ve got themselves into down there, I can’t stand idly by anymore.  It’s time God.  Give us–your messengers of mercy–hands.  With hands we’ll be able to answer their prayers.”

“I don’t think I follow.”

“Here’s how it’ll work.  We’ll be waiting and watching for the female humans to take a bite.  Then, as the food falls we’ll fly in and reach out, with our new additional appendages, to save the falling food.  In that same instant, we’ll return it to the plate and they’ll never know we intervened.  After a couple miraculous interventions, they’re sure to catch on.  It’s the only way.”

In the next moment Michael and the other heralds were happily dashing around the planet using their new hands to ensure women reached satiation.

It worked.

He thought enough time had passed, so he finally delivered his joke, “You know hon…I always said it would take an act of God for a woman to eat a meal without spilling.”

“Not funny.”

He was wrong.

The Lacking Ingredient

At first, like everyone, he was only slightly annoyed.  As time ticked on, however, his curiosity grew.  What made them such positive people?  After all, they could no longer eat bread.

He couldn’t live without bread.  Really, he couldn’t–he had checked.  Right on the Hot-n-Ready box it listed bread as an ingredient.  What could he possibly eat instead of pizza on weekends?  Next he lifted the stack of pizza boxes off the top of the trash can to retrieve the wrapping on his most recent McDouble; sure enough, the material encasing the all-beef patties and cheese was bread.  Even if he was able to find a pizza substitute, there is no way he could give-up his lunch and dinner staple.   Not finding ‘bread’ on his Canadian Hunter whiskey bottle, he thought he was in luck.  Nope.  Mr. Google decreed that ‘rye’ was another word for ‘bread’.

Flustered, he shouted to the night, “How do they do it?”  He couldn’t figure how the new wave of gluten-free eaters were able to stay so positive when life had handed them such a lemon.  Then it hit him.  Gluten itself must contain the answer.  “What even was gluten?” he wondered.  On his way to discovering its chemical signature he deduced the simple truth:  Gluten must contain a healthy amount of realism.  It had to.

Yep, life made sense again.  Until now, he had found himself unable to make sense of the situation.  He couldn’t believe that for the last year he had actually felt bad about himself when he was around glass-half-full gluten-free crowds.  With his discovery, though, he could remorselessly return to his simplistic worldview.  “Finally!” he exhaled, collapsing onto his couch.

Make no mistake, the afflicted’s resilience is remarkable.  It’s just that now he knew it wasn’t difficult to be positive–what with an ingredient lacking.

94. You can cure me, right?

Read first, then admire.

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 “You can cure me, right?”

The psychiatrist pretended to polish her glasses.

“It’ll take time. Patience. Perseverance. But yes, I think I can cure you. You haven’t lapsed a single time since you sat down on that sofa for example. That tells me there is hope.”

The patient expressed his gratitude through a subtle tear rolling from his eye and – later – by writing a big fat check for twelve more sessions at doctor Monroe’s.

“So what was his problem?” her secretary asked.

“You remember that leaflet about protecting the bees the government stuffed into every mailbox in town not that long ago?”

“Bee a friend.”

“You recall the title, hey?”

“It’s a nice pun.”

“Well, apparently he’s the guy that wrote it. Big shot copywriter. Great at witty puns. Trouble is, he can’t stop punning anymore. Every time he hears the word bee or honey or even pollen…

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Living Three Days Out

This was it.  His last day on the job.  He’d waited, mostly patiently, for years to be able to quit as he pleased, and now he’d done it twice in one year.  How does it feel?  Remember Owen Wilson’s description of the ratio between excitement and scared in Armageddon?  Nothing like that.

His life had been so planned up until this year that he still couldn’t believe how relieved this all felt.  He just wanted to drink it up.

The great joy of the journey.  What was going to happen next?  He had some inklings, but no real vision.  Honestly, while he had narrowed down his professional joys, he knew just one thing above all.  He knew he was tired of trying to convince people of his value with his voice.   Experience as his mentor, he was learning that the great thing about self-respect and dignity is that they are heavy enough to squash self-doubt.

How would it all turn out?  That is what he longed to know.  Emerson wrote about what it must have been like three days before Columbus and his crew discovered America.  That day embodied the peak of excitement.  That day exemplified the joy of living.  Intuition caused him to identify with the sentiment as he read those words years ago.  Now, experience was teaching him the full truth of it.

Do Your Dentures Fit Like…

Up until this very moment, he had only heard about what he recently experienced on a road trip.  Some called it heaven, others nirvana, others ecstasy.  If he had to put a name on it, he would call it “Primal Joy.”  But as he spoke those words, they sounded wrong, sounded too weak.  Suffice it to say, the feeling was unmatched, and incredibly difficult to name properly.

What caused this feeling you ask?  The great unknown.  Not just any unknown, but one that follows an especially compelling preamble.  We all have had lesser experiences of this happen in our lives.  We’re just listening to someone speak, and next thing you know they say something like, “So then I said…”  And as the “de” in “said” is made audible the anticipation builds.  Sometimes it is only mild.  Other times it is frighteningly exciting.  These instances are characterized by the listener asking themselves within these varied levels of excitement, “I wonder what he/she is going to say next?”  That is where he was at.  The billboard began, “Do your dentures fit like…”

Analyzing this for a moment, we can deduce at least three facts.  First, this is likely an ad for a dentist or orthodontist.  Second, the size and quality of the sign tell us that this denture-pusher is small time.  Third, given the small/local nature of the shop, we can expect the metaphor describing poor-denture-fit to be colloquial and meant for a very specific target audience–being the denture wearing residents of that small town; itself a group who presumably have a lot in common with each other even before counting teeth.

Surely by now, you have developed some metaphors of your own to complete the ad.  Perhaps you have the upper hand and know some denture wearing folks and have heard them lament about poor fitting dentures with witty metaphors.  Perhaps you even wear dentures.  You’ll still never guess the rest of the sign.

The metaphor proved itself worthy as he nearly shed tears while merrily explaining the sign to his fellow road warriors.

Savor this moment.  Remember that a fellow human, made of the same parts as the rest of us, decided that this was the best way to relay his services to potential customers.

Our characters own tendencies to become over-excited signaled that this creative tooth-peddler probably couldn’t live up to the fantasy he had imagined him/her to be, but that didn’t stop him from desiring to meet the individual who came up with this billboard.  If only the phone number was as memorable as this:

“Do your dentures fit like socks on a rooster?”

For reasons beyond his control, he could only assume this situation would be miserable.

Out Of Touch…The End Is Near

The students took their standardized test.  Everyone waited to see if they had learned anything over the last quarter of school.

Notable results:

When asked why a student’s performance decreased tremendously, the student replied hopefully, “Does that mean I’m out of your class?”

When told that she scored higher than her end-of-year growth goal on this the second assessment, the student says smiling sheepishly, “Oh.  That’s because I didn’t really try on the first one.”

Weirder still is that if an observer wasn’t told the students were the lowest performing in the entire country, the observer would never have guessed it.  Most students had no clue what the test scores were “out of”, yet they proceeded to celebrate and congratulate each other in precisely the same manner as the highest performing students do upon receiving grades.

What really takes the cake, however, was the “lead” teacher’s reaction to the generally positive test results.  In an email to the principal she asked:

“Do we have money we could spend as rewards for the students who are proficient or who have growth on the assessment?  How about $5 in “school cash” toward a school colors shirt/hoodie?”

Yep.  Kids who hate the–admittedly ridiculous and difficult to enforce–dress code (only really concerned with preventing the kids from wearing gang colors) that leads them to choose to just wear school t-shirts and hoodies; kids whose parents have failed to create in them any appreciable amount of dignity or self-respect from which they could base an internal motivation to succeed at anything academic; these kids are going to be happy to have earned a ratty t-shirt.

One day and a wake up left.  Pray for me.

The principal responded “yes” by the way.

How To Start An Argument

(If you’re short on time, skip to the bottom for numbered instructions).

“Are you kidding me?  That’s not at all what I said,” he said, resigning himself.

“That is what you said.  That is exactly what you said,” she replied, her voice betraying her emotion.

“No.  I said that your family does things different from how I’m used to.  I never said they are weird.  I never said they are wrong,” he argued, trying one last time to be clear.

“Well, I think if we Googled ‘synonyms for different’, ‘weird’ would make the list,” she said, calming ever so slightly.

“It might.  But the difference is that ‘weird’ carries a value, whereas ‘different’ is value-neutral,” he said trying not to get excited too early.

“Why does my family have to be the ‘different’ one?  Why can’t your family be the ‘different’ one?” she stammered, signifying she was beginning to understand.

“Because I was the one who said it.  My family can’t be ‘different’ to me.   My family is what I am used to.  Therefore, if your family is not like what I am used to…they are different.  You could say the same thing if you thought so,” he said, hoping to be done with the whole thing.

“Fine.  My family is different to you, your family is different to me,” she said, unable to recall why this ever even came up.

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Your brother, on the other hand, is weird,” he said, laughing heartily as he ran.

Instructions for How To Start An Argument

Step 1 – Fail to communicate yourself fully and accurately on the first try.

Step 2 – Believe the other person is incapable of making the same error.

The Easiest Call To Answer

Breakfast at 7:00 am with his woman, a quick shower at 7:45, and they’d be out the door by 8:30 on their way to the home store.  After picking up a few essentials it would be time to head to the hardware store.  He desperately needed a new tool for weeding, and also a bit of potting soil.  Oh, and winter fertilizer.  If things went perfect, they’d be driving away from the hardware store at 11:00 on their way to meet friends for lunch at 11:30.

It wasn’t quite a sit-down restaurant, but the couples hadn’t seen each other in what seemed like forever, so he budgeted an hour and a half for the lunch.  Farewell handshakes and hugs would conclude at 1:00 pm, so he figured they could be pulling out of the parking lot at 1:05, which would leave plenty of time to drive to the ‘burbs for their nephews game.  The kid was only 6, so it wasn’t exactly organized.  From his perspective it was more like a bunch of adults forming a fleshy boundary which attempted to keep sacred childhood.  Either way, he was excited to see his sister and brother-in-law.

From there, the plan was to split-up for an hour or so to clean up.  Then everyone would meet back up at 6:00 for some Colorado-style pizza.  He figured they’d be out of the restaurant by 8:00–8:30 at the latest.  Afterwards everyone would return to their respective homes, and have a nice quiet night on couches.

Yep, he was pretty proud of himself for having such a thought out plan, but now it was time for bed.

Pulling the covers up–awkwardly as usual–to warm the back of his neck, he shut his eyes, smiling.

He awoke.  Widening his eyes as if that helped him regain consciousness faster, he reached for his phone.  Seeing the time before noting who was calling, he read “5:30” with some confusion.  “Who would be calling so early on a Saturday?” he wondered to himself.  The screen informed him who it was, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Honey,” he said.  “Honey, wake up, wake up,” he said shaking her.

“What time is it?” she mumbled.

“Huh?  Why?  That doesn’t matter.  We’ve got to cancel our plans for the day.  The mountains called.  They’re open!”

The “Prep” Period

The bell rang.  “Alright everyone, we’ll pick up here on Monday.  Be safe this weekend.”

“Finally,” he exhaled, “I have a moment to prepare for the rest of the day.”

After one last glance making sure the hallway was clear, he closed the classroom door.  Inside, he sat alone.  He cleared his throat.

“Do your work,” he said.  But he wasn’t pleased.  He tried again.

“Do your work.”  He still thought something wasn’t right.

“Do your work.”  Eek!  Too much Batman.  He chuckled to himself before continuing.

“Do your work.”  Getting better, but still not perfect.

“Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.  Do your work.”  It was subtle, but he heard improvement.  Looking up at the clock, he saw his prep period was almost over.

“One last time,” he said to himself.

“Do your work.”  He smiled.  “Perfect!  And just in time.”

The bell rang.  Getting up to go stand outside his classroom door, relieved, he said to himself, “Okay, I’m ready for the students.”

She’s A Djeeen-yus!

“Trees,” she said in response to the prompt he gave.

After hearing “I see…” and seeing his finger point to the cars on the page, she responded, “Cars.”

He turned the page.  The next page had two scenes.  In the first, the main character painted a wall blue.  In the second, the main character’s friend colored the wall red with a crayon.  He continued the challenge-response game.

“I see…” he queried, pointing to the blue.

“Paint,” she finished.

Smiling ear-to-ear, he chuckled.  “Ha.  Good.  I would have also accepted ‘Blue’.”