Wishing Well
March 10, 2010
image courtesy of photobucket.com
And I mean everyone. Kids, adults, and the elderly. Men and women. Different races and different nationalities. All seem helpless to pass it by without pausing to close their eyes, toss in a coin, and hear the plop!
(Yes, I tossed in my own coin. I had to see what the fuss was all about. Aside from the plop! I have yet to receive anything for my wish. Angels have not sung and Lady Luck has not tapped me on the shoulder. But you never know in life. That’s all the fun.)
I asked the nice lady behind the register about the Well. She said the owner put it there back in the 1970s as a joke. Gas prices were soaring, inflation was soaring, everything but optimism was soaring. He figured a Wishing Well could do more good for people than the government was doing.
It’s been there ever since, she told me. It’s become a barometer of the times in a way, a leading indicator of the state of their town. When things are going well, the Well is relatively untouched. When things are tough, it’s full of change.
I asked her if it would be okay if I conducted a little research. She agreed. So I took my place beside the Well and watched as one person after another came through for lottery tickets and beer and coffee, and one wish before they left through the door.
Things went well for a while. But standing there watching everyone make their wish became a little boring. I needed more. I wanted to know who those people were.
So when the little boy managed to beg a nickel from his mother and tossed it in, I thought I’d pry.
“What’d you wish for?” I asked him.
“Can’t say,” he answered. “If I say it won’t come true.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“That’s just for birthday candles,” I said. “This is different. Besides, it’s just a superstition. You know what that is, right?”
“It’s a stition that’s really, really good,” he said.
He never did tell me his wish.
I did, however, get a fair share of other people’s.
One man said he wished for a little overtime to buy his wife something nice for her birthday. Another said he wished for the heating bill to get lost in the mail. I met a lady who wished for a new pair of feet because the ones she had didn’t agree with all the walking around she had to do at work. I met another who wanted just one more good snow (I fished her penny out when she left).
One old farmer threw in an entire handful of pennies for a good crop this year. One old lady simply said, “Brad Pitt.” A teenage boy wanted the attention of a particular girl in his math class, and a teenage girl wanted the attention of a particular boy in hers. Yes, that thought crossed my mind as well. And no, they were different schools.
Some were not as lighthearted. People wished for jobs, for healing, for faith. For hope and peace.
Most wished not for abundance, but simply for enough. To many, this is more a time of getting by than dreaming big.
By the time I left I had realized two things. One was that more than love, even more than faith, it is hope that sustains us. Hope that tomorrow will be better and that life can turn around. Hope that somehow, someway, the prayers we say and the wishes we make count and are not uttered in vain.
And the other is this—perhaps more than anything else, our desires reveal our character. Too many people, myself included, often equate their identity with what they have. I don’t think that’s right anymore. Now I think It’s not what we have but what we wish we did that defines the sort of people we are.
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Grocery store Goodness
March 8, 2010
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I’m standing in a checkout line at the local grocery store with a loaf of bread and a magazine, watching with equal measures of interest and confusion the scene unfolding before me. To either side cashiers smile and chat as they pass cans and boxes over the scanners in front of them. Even the beeps of lasers meeting barcodes sound chipper. Customers walking through the electric doors are greeted with a chorus of welcomes and hellos. A “Have a great day now” is offered with every receipt.
I feel like I’m drowning is syrupy goodness.
Strangest of all is the bell positioned on a small table near the exit, above which is a sign that reads Ring Bell If You’ve Received Excellent Customer Service.
From the sound of things, most of my fellow patrons have received just that. They carry their bags or roll their shopping carts toward the big double doors, pause, and
DING!
At which point any and all employees within earshot will clap and hooray themselves for a job… well, done.
We live in strange times, you and I.
I’ve noticed many businesses doing this sort of thing. The economy’s a wreck, people are being selective in where they shop and for how much, and the name of the game now is making customers happy. Being good brings in the public.
Another DING! More claps and hoorays. I feel like I’m at the county fair.
“Have a great day now,” the cashier says to the person in front of me.
I place my bread and magazine on the conveyor belt and follow them up. The cashier smiles and helloes. Karen, her nametag says. Bright red letters above her name spell out WELCOME!
“How are ya today?” she asks.
Before I can answer an older lady walks through the doors. Karen and everyone else must pause to turn and welcome her to Grocery Nirvana. The woman is literally shaken by the welcome, rocking back on her heels and then forward to catch her balance. She offers a smile that is half amused and half embarrassed and then runs for the produce section.
“So you have to stand here all day and say hello to everyone who walks in here?” I ask.
“Yep,” Karen says, which is followed by another DING! and more cheering.
“That’s gotta get old,” I say.
“Not really. I like it. Makes everyone feel good. Of course, people are mostly scared when we all holler hello to them when they come in here the first time. One guy almost swallowed his tongue yesterday. But they get used to it.”
I nodded and pulled out my cash.
“Do you have a Super Saver card?”
“Nope,” I said.
“You can use mine.”
Karen swiped her own card—saving me nearly a quarter in the process—bagged my purchase, handed me my change and receipt, and said, “Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day now and see ya soon.”
As I grab my bag and shove the change and receipt into my pocket, I’m thinking. My experience here really has been pleasant. I’ve been helloed and thank-you’d and smiled at repeatedly. I’d even saved a quarter, which will make my wife proud.
“Thank you, Karen,” I say. “I’m gonna go ring the bell for you.”
Then Karen does something that can only be described as peculiar. She reaches across the scanner and grabs my arm.
“Please don’t do that,” she says.
I stare down at her hand. Karen jerks it away and apologizes.
“Don’t do what?” I ask her.
“Ring the bell.”
“You don’t want me to ring the bell?”
“No.”
“Why?”
And then she tells me. Tells me the truth. About the bell and the hellos and the goodness. About how it’s a new program designed by corporate with the intent not to actually be good to people, but to keep the money rolling in.
And about how goodness shouldn’t be rewarded because it was its own reward, and that bringing attention to it didn’t make it better, it only made it less.
“People should be nice not to get something for themselves, but to give themselves to something. Do you understand?” she asks.
Oh, yes. I do.
I only wish more did.
(This post is part of the Goodness blog carnival hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more posts, please visit her.)
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Taking a Tumble
March 8, 2010
- image courtesy of photobucket.com
Though saved by grace, I’m far from graceful. I’ve taken my share of falls in my thirty-seven years, ones that required casts or stitches or kisses from my mother (and in once instance all three). I’ve gotten better at staying on my feet, though. In fact, I figure I went a good fifteen years or so without tripping or falling over anything. For the most part.
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An Invitation to Hell
March 5, 2010
photo by photobucket.com
For the last three months my buddy Kirk has sequestered himself in a rented cabin deep in the Blue Ridge mountains. As far as I can tell, he took with him only the barest of essentials to complete his stated purpose—a dozen bags of deer jerky, four cases of MREs (that’s Meal, Ready to Eat for you non-military folks), three cases of beer, and two dozen protein bars. That should get him through, he says. If not, he’ll just go hunting.
Get him through for what, you ask? Well, now there’s a story.
Kirk is an old high school classmate and friend. Back then he was awkward and shy and always had his head in a book—three characteristics that guaranteed he’d have a tough time until after his senior year. But he sat in front of me in freshman English and, well, some friendships are born of compatibility and others location.
Even then Kirk wanted to be a writer. A published one. But as both his talent and his confidence were lacking, he always qualified “I want to be an author” with “Probably won’t, though.”
Like a lot of high school friends, Kirk and I lost contact after graduation. But then I ran into him at the mall three months ago.. Well, not him. Not the Kirk I knew. This was New and Improved Kirk, and version 2.0 was quite different.
He had found a cure for all that awkward shyness.
Kirk had become a Ranger in the U.S. Army.
Now that he was out, he was back to pursuing his goal of writing a book. And in the spirit of his down-and-dirty Ranger training, he was locking himself in a cabin in the middle of the wilderness to do it.
And you know what? I bet he will. I can almost guarantee it.
There were a lot of reasons why Kirk wasn’t ready to be a writer in high school. You have to grow some and learn some and fail some and hurt a lot first. But more than that, you have to be trained. Kirk told me he’d had his training now. He was a Ranger.
I’d never considered special forces training and training to be a writer to be one and the same, but he was adamant. They’re exactly alike, he said. Both are a process that tests you, then breaks you down, and then shows you whom you truly are.
But to Kirk, his Ranger training gave him one very big advantage—he’d been taught how to be comfortable in misery. He knew how to embrace the thirst and the hunger. How to endure the cold and the heat. And above all, he knew he was being readied for war and that war was hell, which is why his drill instructors trained him to, in his words, “Get the damn job done. Regardless.”
I think he’s onto something.
Because you can (and should) read all the books you can about the craft of writing. You can learn about plot and character and point of view, learn to kill your darling adverbs and adjectives, and speak in present instead passive voice. But until you learn to be comfortable in misery, you will not succeed. Ever.
There are times when sitting down to write is an invitation to pure bliss, when the words leap from your fingers virgin and perfect and you know without doubt they come from the very best part of you. Enjoy those times. They will be few.
Because for the most part, it’s just the opposite. The writing life is not bliss. It’s roaming through the desert of one submission after another, searching for whatever scrap of food or drip of water you can beg, borrow and steal in order to stay alive. It’s enduring the cold of having nothing to say and the heat of knowing you must write anyway.
And above all, writing is war.
It is a war fought not against agents and publishers, but against yourself. It is a war in which the enemy isn’t acceptance, it’s surrender. And yes, it is hell. No doubt about it. But you know what? A writer, a real one, wouldn’t have it any other way.
I haven’t seen Kirk since. For all I know, he’s still up in the mountains writing his book. I like to think he is. I like to think he’s pounding away at those keys and fighting his war.
That he’s getting the damn job done. Regardless.
I like to think that’s what you’re doing, too.
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Playing Hooky
March 3, 2010
Photo by L.L. Barkat of seedlingsinstone
Let’s get this out of the way first off, shall we?
I am not perfect.
In fact, I am the most imperfect person I know, mostly because I know myself better than I know most anyone else. Not a perfect man, not a perfect Christian. Not a perfect husband. And I am most assuredly not a perfect father.
And now that all of that’s out of the way, I feel better telling you what I did with my son the other night.
I taught him how to play hooky.
Yes, I know. Not a good thing. But I did so with only the purest of intentions. Cross my heart and hope to die.
To hear what my intentions were and why I feel so strongly about them, please follow me to High Calling Blogs. And remember — Judge not, lest ye be judged.
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I’m a writer whose first novel, Snow Day, will be published by FaithWords in 2010.
But don’t let that fool you. I’m just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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