What do you see?

I’m an idiot. A nut. Unusual. Odd. Different. What ever you want to call me, I’ve already been called it. And that, too, but I won’t type it here, after all this is a family safe blog. That’s the background for this blog entry.

Because of the above statement I didn’t think anything about people looking at me oddly and smiling as I strolled the isles of the McKinney’s Sam’s store this week. At least I didn’t think anything til I went in the rest room and looked in the mirror. I had roughly clipped my now shortened hair before I left the house and it was half way falling down on one side and the other less secured side was as windblown as a palm tree in a hurricane. No wonder people were staring at me and backing away. I thought the meat manager just thought it odd someone was asking for the fat scraps to render for soap making. I never thought it was my wild woman look that caused such amusement on his face.

I remember another time, years ago, when I wore an all cotton shirt dress - bright orange, no less - and went to the mall early to walk before going to work. The mall was filled with senior citizens who were extremely friendly, or so it seemed. Everyone I met smiled broadly at me. I smiled right back. THEN at the end of my walk, I went into the rest room and found my dress had responded to the static electricity of the dry Ohio winter heat and was crumbled up into a ball in the middle of my legs. It looked like I was carrying around a crumbled fabric pumpkin with my thighs while my slip was hanging down around my knees. And although I weighed much less back then, it wasn’t so much less that I wanted to parade around with bare thighs in front of anyone. I often wondered how those old men didn’t have heart attacks, smiling all the way.

My kids never got a chance to embarrass me. I always beat them to the punch line.

But back to Sam’s store this week …. as I stared at myself in the mirror I wondered why in the world didn’t someone have the curtisousy to mention my windblown look to me? Surely no one would think I intended to look that way. Would I say something to someone else? I tend to think I would as I have in the past.

Have you ever tested out that theory?  Have you ever gone in some where, wearing something outrageous just to test how many would mention it to you? Like trailing a long string of toilet paper out back of your skirt or pants? or put a blob of vaseline under your nose for a bugger? or a streak of ketchup on your cheek? Try it some time and see how many responses you get! I won’t tell you if I have done such a thing (who me???) but I will tell you no one has ever mentioned anything to me, tentional or non.

Do we even LOOK at people around us? Do people around us LOOK at us? I do try to actually see the people around us. Before I leave the house I ask God to give me at least one person I can help in some way, either with a word or specific prayer or a smile or whatever. I also ask Him to tell me the whatever! I remember once I was so deep in my own thoughts that I thought I had spoken to an elderly woman before I started lifting her grocery bags out of her cart to put in her open trunk. But I hadn’t said anything and, boy, did she turn on me! “Those are MY groceries!” I apologized, explained my absentmindedness, and continued to help her load her groceries, taking her cart away when we were done.  But I do wonder how many times I have walked by someone who is desperately praying, “If you’re there, God, send someone to just speak to me.” I know people pray that way cause I have before.

I used to work as a cashier at a small grocery store whose main customer base was the local farmers. The women/wives/mothers would come in, work worn and tired, and seldom would smile. I know them because my own Mom seldom smiled at anyone unless she knew them and not always then. I don’t know whether Mom was embarrassed by her teeth (nothing wrong with them) or just afraid someone would actually talk to her and she’d have to talk back (yes, she was shy) but I often wondered why she didn’t smile. Anyway, I made it my goal during my work shift to smile at everyone, giving them a chance to smile back. There’s a connection smiles make that lifts up the heart and brings even a small ray of hope in a struggling life.

A smile. It’s free. It doesn’t wear out. It doesn’t have an end; you can give it away and still have another one ready to go for the next person. Whoa, you think, big deal. A smile. In a drowning, dying world where people are starving to death, others so depressed they kill themselves, crime topping the headlines, financial despair - big deal, a smile????!!!!!

Consider the earth worm. Such a lowly thing to most people. Frankly, I think they are beautiful. What would our earth be like without the lowly earth worm?  Earth worms aerate the soil, fertilizing it as they go (no pun intended, but pretty good anyway). Earth worms keep our soil friable to allow the plant roots to take up oxygen and nutrients, hence the plants (our food) can grown. Plant something in a cement block and you will see what soil would be like without the lowly earth worm. And people wonder why I go around after a rain, picking the worms up off the sidewalks, placing them back in the ground where they can live.

So I offer three  goals for today

1. LOOK at people and SMILE

or

2. SAVE an earth worm

or

3. DO both!!!!

And your goal for all tomorrows,

1. Repeat

PS - if anyone’s interested I’ll post how to build a worm bed and you can grow your own worms!!! Great project for kids to learn composting/recycling.

This entry was posted on March 13, 2009 at 06:27 am and is filed under Homestead living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.