Nana always told me if I got tired of waiting for someone to pick me up for a ride to go somewhere,1 I should get out my crocheting and start on it. When I would get to the least best part of the crocheting to stop, that’s when the ride would show up. I never did this, exactly. She tried to teach me crocheting to my complete boredom, to the point that I would rather wait for the ride than crochet a stitch.
The principle was not lost on me then, and I’ve since applied it abstractly to all things serendipitous, synchronous, cosmic or otherwise however loosely related to Murphy’s Law. This is superstition by behavior, by definition, chance, by coincidence, by action, by reaction and because we say so.
These things are sometimes frightening, sometimes funny, always entertaining if not memorable, and if for nothing else, good for weaving into a story. Or even crocheting into a story.
None of this works if you try it on purpose. None of the best stories are written. They just happen. Such stories, when written, no one believes.
And so, to make sure a visually stimulating something-or-other will come your way, leave your camera at home. Forget your cellphone has a built-in camera. Thirty minutes later you will regret not having had the presence of mind to take advantage of the Kodak Moment.
And so, when leaving home in your car, start the engine, stay in your driveway ready to back into the street, adjust everything, sort things out. You’ll notice that no traffic comes or goes up and down your street. But when you are absolutely ready to begin the journey and you shift into reverse, a string of cars will come along.
Again, you can’t make these things happen. Trying to make them happen is probably the best way to keep them from happening.
The best way to forget something you know you will never forget is to try and memorize it at once without writing it down. This is the curse of any journalist. Trying to remember a quote or a fact2 and then writing a story only from memory will cause accuracy problem somewhere along the way. Of course, if you write it down with multiple verifications and attributions, you’ll never need to have done so. However, not doing so is a guarantee that you should have.
You never speed. You never exceed the speed limit. Never. The one time you do, you get a ticket. When you get your ticket, it will be the one time you didn’t have your drivers license, your “proof of financial responsibility,” along with having forgotten to get your car inspected. Life gets busy.
this is why I like to take notes
I carry a little notebook or fold of paper around with me most of the time for the purpose of writing down things that happen, things to do, things I want to look up later, things people say… anything. Of course, when I forget to bring the notebook with me… more things will happen worthy of writing in my notebook. Still, I manage to find a lost or misplaced writing tool, a wad or fold of paper, the back of flier or something… and make my notes. Dozens of these leaflets litter my desk and drawers and are interspersed between pages of various books.
Do you get how this works?
half empty and all that
The glass being half empty vs. half full… it’s a fallacy, it really is.
Sure, the illustration works in the immediate. We get it. The positive person sees the glass as half full. The negative person sees it as half empty. Whatever. The purity of language tells us that when the glass is full and one pours out half the liquid, the glass is then half empty. Pour out the rest of the liquid and the glass becomes empty… of liquid, anyway. But then pour the liquid to the halfway mark on the glass and, guess what, the glass is half full.
Think of your car’s gas tank. You fill it up at the pump. When you look at the numbers on the pump and the numbers indicate that half as many gallons have been pumped into the tank than the tank will hold, that tank is half full. Fill the tank the rest of the way up and it is full. The only way for that tank to become half empty is to drive. Put on those miles. Use up that fuel. When the gauge gets down to the half-way mark, the tank is half empty. It’s so easy.
This analogy has bothered me all my life.
Frisco 7th Ward notes from 1st Sacrament Meeting
The theme pushed, stressed, emphasized, however you want to put it: change, adjusting to change, accepting change, going with the flow… that kind of thing. Seems as though some ward members are having difficulty with being in a new ward. Those of us who are easily bored have difficulty understanding this. But so many of us are new, far more, than those of us who are old. Our family moved to Frisco in 1992. My youngest child was only a few months old. That is why we moved here. Then, ours was one of seven families in a town where now are seven wards. We’ve been in as many of those wards, and almost as many Stakes, without having moved.
You get used to changing wards when you live in Frisco, TX, City by the Hay. You get used to being in the same ward and knowing the same people and then, poof, a line is drawn, a prayer is said, paperwork is put in, lives are changed. It’s not a bad thing.
The Frisco Seventh Ward came from the ribs of Frisco’s First, Third and Fifth Wards. Our new ward is in the middle of those three wards. We said goodbye to a lot of people whom we love. We love all of them. The Frisco Third Ward was our ward during the most difficult trials of our lives so far. I wouldn’t mind keeping it that way. I don’t want any other ward to have to step up to serve our family as much as, and under similar circumstances as the Frisco Third Ward. I don’t see how such a thing could be possible. But that is my limited vision. At least I recognize my limited vision.
In saying goodbye to our dear ones in the Frisco Third Ward, we were saying goodbye to some whom we had bid the same before. We said goodbye to them before the moved away and then moved back. We said goodbye to them before the boundary line of some other wards were changed and placed us back into the same ward again.
This time is no different. We are used to it. You get used to it here in Frisco, TX, City by the Hay. You just do.
In our new ward we are saying hello and embracing those to whom we said goodbye. We are saying hello to people we have never known. I am quite sure we grow to love them and cry again when new lines are drawn, when the tree is pruned, the vines are harvested.
Growth is not without pain. Even if it means listening to old friends telling the same stories, new friends throwing out analogies that have bothered us all our lives.
And so, something somebody said during one of the talks in Sacrament Meeting made me wish I had brought my pen and my notebook. That I hadn’t brought them was pure… whatever it was. That my daughter had a pencil was also pure… whatever it was. That I found the black back of a program was also… whatever it was. And so I took notes, bringing to my attention all of the notions above and then some. Here are some abbreviations of some of those things that people said, that I thought, that I wrote down, in no particular order:
We need to make friends. We need to all be friends. Today! Make friends. This is an opportunity to make new friends and to renew old friendships. Build your list of friends. Increase your friend list.3
This is where I came up with the term: Friend Portfolio… and then laughed at the mockery of the business jargon of it.
Wonderful story about the pessimist who, when he went duck hunting and discovered his friend’s dog could walk on water, mentioned that the dog couldn’t swim. I laughed by guts dry. Very embarrassing.
Loved analogy about the sisters who took odd things and weaved them together to make beautiful pieces of art… this is how he hoped our new ward would be… I loved it! Very insightful remark for an accountant to make!
Before we went to church, my wife and I watched a science program about music and the brain, Sting having his brain scanned. The scientist doing the project mentioned that singing songs as a group triggered the production of oxytocin, the nurturing hormone, the hormone that makes us all care about one another. This makes so much sense! It’s what we do at church, at camp, on the bus, marching, at rallies and on and on. As I have sung to you, sing to one another.
The eldest man in the ward mentioned that he is an avid missionary. That was what he was all about. It is what he loved the most. He mentioned that he always carried with him a stack of pass along cards. He offers them to everyone he meets. He’d only been refused that offer once because the lady said he didn’t believe in the same Jesus that she did.
This made me think of pass along cards as collectible. Isn’t that stupid? Like baseball cards. He said he had every pass along card that had ever been made. Now that, my friends, is an accidental collection of some significance, I think.
Mentioning the law of opposition in all things… the deconstruction of it, the outline of it… where the tree of knowledge of good and evil is balanced with the tree of life, the fruit of one being bitter and the fruit of the other being sweet…. which fruit to which tree is which? I had never thought of it before. Never.
I got to lead the music, that oxytocin producing activity, for Priesthood meeting. The song was “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel.” The accountant, again, informed me that particular hymn was also known as “the one-armed truck driver’s song.” I told him that that was the third thing he’d said that day that I had to write down. And so, I did.
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