Another Random Memory

While riding to work this morning, I remembered a couple of things from last summer that made me smile and probably look goofy to people driving past me.

The one that I'll share was from a Bible study last summer that was intentionally light. The other intern, Mary, and I worked on it for a while, making note cards with different celebrities' names on them. We taped them to people's foreheads and everyone else had to describe the person on the card. The person with a card on his/her forehead had to figure out who he/she was.

Understand?

Cards with "Michael Jackson" and "Brittney Spears" were big hits, of course. Then we got into more obscure celebrities, like Bjorn Borg or something. I don't know. As a lark, we put "Lucas Matthews" on one of the cards, and I waited for the maelstrom of insults like "big, big dork" and "laaaaaaaaaame."

But instead, there was a wave of chuckles as people read the card and I remember one of the teens yelling, "pretty much the coolest guy ever." Adjectives like "awesome" and "funny" followed, and I felt my face grow very red.

The cards then became vague, with either stereotypes or short descriptions of random people that you would meet on the sidewalk. Then we rolled out the lesson, talking about how you never know what people are really like or how they would respond to the gospel. That is, we can't pick and choose with whom to share the Good News based on if we think people would be receptive to it.

It wound up being one of our better lessons, and a good day overall.

A Memory

This is yet another random memory that I feel the need to record and share. I just realized a moment ago that it will soon be one year since my Grandfather passed away. Already being a little down due to a paper that must be written before tomorrow, and considering that it is now February, this seems apropos.

Junior year was a horrible year. Over Christmas break, not long after returning from Chicago, I got a laptop and took it with me to school. The CD drive did not work, so I took it to the nearest Best Buy in Little Rock. Then the next-nearest one, as they repeatedly told me that there was nothing wrong with the non-functioning equipment. On one trip, they finally took it and mailed it to the manufacturer to be repaired. I got the fateful call to pick it up some time later, and in the parking lot of Best Buy I got a call from my sister, saying nothing more than that I "need to call Mom and Dad." Mom told me that Grandaddy had died after a relatively short morphine-coma, and I was shocked.

I had driven up to see him, presumably for the last time, a week before and Mamaw was happy that Grandaddy seemed to feel better when I was there. He had even eaten a whole small steak that she had gotten him as a Valentine's Day treat. He was doing better, I repeated! He was eating and doing better! But suddenly he was gone.

I drove through the city without paying attention to what roads I turned onto and wound up in the parking lot of a very pretty, small church. I walked around it and looked at its stained glass, then found a bush of decorative sawgrass. The week before, one of the last things my father and I did for Grandaddy was to cut down his sawgrass. Breaking off one of the bushy heads, I set it down in the car and drove away.

Even before the funeral, my family was rubbed raw and dangerously close to completely disintegrating. Uncles almost came to blows and people were already getting anxious over who was going to get the truck. My uncle left my aunt. My aunt died. We couldn't talk about my sister's marriage with her anymore. We buried the best man I've known.

I got back to school and my laptop was soon stolen, after all those trips to Little Rock just to get the freaking thing in working order for a stranger to look up porn on it. My sister did get divorced. My uncles stopped talking to each other and one practically disappeared after his drug use was discovered. I broke up with my girlfriend because I was tired of her having to be with someone she resented.

And when I unpacked after driving home at the end of that semester, I found the bushy head of the sawgrass in my floorboard under a bag, rubbed raw until completely disintegrated.

Oh, things were dark then.

There is hope, please remind me.

There is hope.

Random Memories

If any of you used to read my Xanga, you may remember my old habit of posting memories when surprised at the synapses firing in such a manner. Like the smell of my Bible reminding me of muggy summer days reading in front of my window, or a song reminding me of a girl singing it to me on the way to Little Rock, and so on.

Memory One: my Junior year of High School, my then-girlfriend was obsessed with any and all things Disney, and so I began to keep my ear to the ground for new Disney things that she might like. This included stooping to enter the Disney store at the mall, something I had previously sworn never to do. She mentioned a new DVD coming out with a "special edition" packaging of a movie she had never owned, but left it at that. I went to a few Targets and never found it until chancing upon it in a Circuit City. Taking it to the cash register, I was so happy to have found it that I forgot to be embarrassed until the cashier cocked his eyebrows and shot me a carefully supercilious look. I suddenly remembered the obligatory shame and explained, "it's for my girlfriend." But I felt a special pride at having a girlfriend to shop for and to talk about to strangers, and I unexpectedly wanted to go buy more feminine items so that I could have the same limited conversation with cashiers.

And she gave me quite a smooch when I surprised her with the DVD.

Memory Two: I was just reading the Gospel of Mark a few moments ago when I came across a passage of the Pharisees trying to trick Jesus. I could hear the exact words being spoken by the voice actors on the New Testament on CD that I borrowed from my then-girlfriend last February. I listened to a good fourth of the New Testament while driving to visit my Grandfather for the last time before he died, and I can see the exact stretch of highway on my side when I heard that passage from Mark. I spent half of the drive crying for my dying Grandfather and the other half crying for feeling alone, spending so many hours on the road without saying a word. When I returned I neglected to return the CDs to Meghan for quite some time, because I wanted them for reminding me of Grandaddy. In fact, I did not give them back until we broke up a month or so later. I don't even remember when that happened.

No significance here. Just a look into my cluttered mind.