Lately, Tired has been winning at work. We are short-staffed as we enter our busiest time of year, and my friend/supervisor and I are starting to fail at some basic things, like using words.
Ruth and I have worked together for five years. What we have survived at the store has basically made us battle buddies. So, even she has since been promoted to management, we still interact much more as friends than supervisor/employee. This week, in preparation for our seasonal craziness at work, the district manager came for a visit. Usually, whenever my boss’s boss shows up, I turn into an awkward, inept, bumbling idiot. And since I have been pulling extra hours, I really expected to fail with aplomb. Apparently, though it was Ruth’s turn to showcase her tiredness. In my usual capacity as friend/assistant, I brought the coffee order for the staff. But after I handed Ruth her coffee, I realized that I hadn’t made her drink water first (Okay, fine: I have a bad habit of momming my friends). Since she was already touring the store with the district manager, I didn’t want to interrupt. Trying to be a stealthy ninja, I slipped up beside her and put a bottle of water in her free hand. Then, realizing she didn’t have a free hand to open the water bottle, I tried to take the coffee out of her other hand. Tried . . . She stopped mid-sentence and turned to me, “No, ma’am, you do not get to take the coffee away! I need that!” We all, Ruth included, enjoyed the humor of her over-reaction as she explained the strain it would put on our friendship if I tried to take coffee from her, and I defended my friend status because friends don’t let friends dehydrate. But then she continued the joke with a line that our audience (the district manager, a twenty-year-old part-timer, and two sixteen year-old temps) didn’t understand. “I want my friendship needle back!” she exclaimed, oblivious to the sudden stillness and nervous glances from our audience as they contemplated whether she had just announced that we were drug buddies. We aren’t. Neither of us knits, but knitting needles are wonderful for poking corners out on bags. So, we split a set of knitting needles, and what do we call them? “Friendship needles.” Later that same day, when another co-worker came in, Ruth greeted him with the exclamation: “I got the bad news that we’re expecting!” She kept right on talking while I enjoyed the show: the confused uncertain look on his face as he tried to figure out just who was pregnant and why Ruth was so upset about it and what the socially appropriate response would be. Finally, I took pity on them both since they were clearly having two different conversations. “No one is pregnant,” I interrupted. “And we are not anti-baby here.” I wish these were isolated incidents, but with our increasing levels of tired and pollen, Ruth and I continue needing to unsay things (expect we are enjoying the humor of those fumbles just a little too much to stop).
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One of my favorite movies from my childhood is His Girl Friday, a fast-paced “jabberwocky” movie according to my mother. It’s a completely frivolous comedy, but one serious idea in it has gotten stuck in my mind this week. The patsy character in it shares about a soapbox speech he heard about production for use.
As I’ve been watching commercials—I mean, tv this week, I was struck with a glaring omission in soap commercials. These various products promise to energize our senses, beautify our skin, nourish, revive, rejuvenate, firm, comfort, and moisturize. Do you notice what these products don’t claim to do? Clean. The focus of the advertisements is so much on the add-ons, the extra features of the product, that the main purpose is completely overlooked. Is our purpose in buying soap to revive ourselves or to clean ourselves? I had the same problem when I started car shopping. A car is produced for a specific use—to get from point A to point B. And the salesman kept highlighting the extra features—a built-in vacuum, a built-in cooler, and heated/cooled seats—as though those features were going to help me get from point A to point B any faster. Those are just a basic features; there were even more features that seemed like the salesman thought that I would be living in the car more than in my apartment. (If it isn’t obvious that I’m an old soul, yes, I have the same argument with cell phone salesmen. I’m buying a phone to talk to people, not a pocket-sized computer.) Normal people get songs stuck in their heads.
And I certainly do get songs stuck in my head (but I really don’t claim to be normal. Not that I try to be abnormal or that I am offended by normalcy, it’s just something that’s not on my radar). Some of my friends can be rather annoying about throwing out lines from songs because they know that I will have the song stuck in my head forever. Even today, just wearing a retro-ish dress that reminded me of the recent movie La-La Land was enough to make me sway to the mental music while my coffee percolated. But, while I know that earworms are a common malady (see, they even have a word for it!), I don’t just get songs stuck in my head. I get words stuck in my head. All week, I have had random foreign phrases dancing around in my head. They are not even profound phrases. And sometimes they spill out. I cannot tell you how awkward it can be to be passing a customer in the store and accidentally audibly mutter “on the chair, in the car, under the bed” in a foreign phrase. It’s probably more awkward for me since I know what the unintelligible words are supposed to mean. Then yesterday, the word dumafache popped into my head. It’s a word I don’t even use! My go-to “I don’t know what that item is called but I need to refer to it” word is whatchamacallit. For a full eight-hour shift, I kept mentally referring to things as dumafaches. And I just found out when I googled its spelling that I got the wrong word stuck in my head. It isn’t even dumafache—it’s dumafLache. (Heads up, dumaflache users, you might want to enunciate a bit more for those of us that prefer whatchamacallit.) The cure for getting a song out of one’s is, of course, to sing it or listen to it. I know of no cure for getting words out of one’s head. So my hope, a desperate one, has been that using my nonword earworm a ridiculous number of times in one blog post will be the needed cure. If this doesn’t work, I declare my obscure word for next week to be smarm. Please excuse me while I smarm my hair. One of the philosophers (I think it was Nietzsche) noted changes in his writing style when he switched to a new medium (the writing ball). His message and manner started to match the forcefulness needed to use the medium, a forcefulness not needed in the more methodical pen and paper. Today, I'm adapting a new medium, hesitantly aware that it has the power to change my message or at very least my manner of communication. Another change.
Yet, I have been reassured in the past week as I visit my family that in spite of all of these changes, things remain the same, too. My siblings and cousins are grown and have their own families now. But in spite of that, some aspects of our time together will not change. I still heard my uncle call my cousin by his full name (this time as part of his wedding vows instead of a warning). I still saw someone taking forever to take one picture because the subjects in the pictures were perfectly posed (this time, the photographer was my aunt's grandson instead of my aunt). I still enjoyed wonderful sobremesa as our conversations meandered around family updates, theological discussions, good-natured teasing about someone particular tastes, and of course, the amazing bundt cakes and coffee (why is it so natural to discuss food while eating food?). And it was still a refreshing treat. I know that families can be messy and loud and stressful (especially if you are a quiet, opinionated pleaser), but I have an extraordinary gift in a family that is a joy to be with. I can come away from a weekend family get-together (which at this stage in our family is mostly for weddings or funerals) feeling encouraged and refreshed. When God saw man alone in the garden, He said it was not good. And His solution to that aloneness was one of His greatest gifts--family. |
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