American Pipe Blue and Parking Lot Cleaners

Yesterday was wonderful. We are easily pleased lately, but still, it was a great day. Usually, I say it was a great day based on the simply stated fact that I didn't have to pick around in the overbaked, dry earth to find some shrivelly, black bug to eat. I mean, you can see how the act of doing that bug eating thing would make for a bad day, so not doing it clearly makes for a good day, right?

Well, yesterday just provided the non-existence of anything weird, bad, and devastating, and that my friends, makes for a stellar day in this household. In a way, I'm secretly hoping that I'm not just being naive. You know, setting myself up for some screwball turn of events that I could have seen coming, had I not been too busy whistling the "Whistle Why You Work" song: I mean, with that said, I could be any one of the seven dwarfs, and I do not want to end up being Dopey!

It reminds me of a story about my Aunt Beth. She worked in the Safeway deli. She had gone to work in her typical lighthearted spirit. Saw all her co-workers, met some regulars to the deli department around lunch time, and even met some new people that day. Continually throughout the day, she noticed how people kept staring at her chest. It was not just a little passing glance, it was a stare, maybe even a bold glare with the inability to turn away and sometimes, a little snickering. She joked to alleviate the strangeness, brushed away anything that could have managed to fall onto her shirt, and kept working. It wasn't until she got home later that day that she found a black sock had gotten stuck to the inside of her white shirt. No one had bothered to tell her of the long black sock boldly stretched out across the inside of her white shirt, across her chest. They just let her naively putter around her day with that sock stuck there, an ill-suited flag announcing the mighty power of static cling.

Sometimes you naively run into something like that, completely without your doing or knowledge, and then sometimes it is completely and utterly your own doing that gets you into a bind, though you might not have foreseen the outcome. My grandfather, oftentimes got himself into those type of binds. Heading for a cliff headlong and full speed, while singing "Whistle Why You Work" was pretty much his typical mode of operation. I mentioned my Grandpa Willard a couple blogs ago. He was truly one-of-a-kind. Very few people have schemed their ways into so much trouble, or maybe it's just that no one else would so readily admit it.

Grandpa worked for American Pipe, and maybe it was the fumes from the metal work, or from the paint that tweaked him just enough for him to conclude one day that American Pipe blue was not only the color he wanted for his home, but the exact paint he wanted for his home AND car. Little by little, my grandfather stole enough American Pipe blue paint to paint both! He'd drizzle that light dusty blue paint into an empty coffee tin, and then tuck it quickly away in his lunch pail, snapping the latches on the dark gray box, so that no one would see.

Finally, he had enough paint to paint his entire house, and what was leftover, he had his daughters roll over the mottled finish of his old Buick with paintbrushes. He achieved the goal, but by achieving the goal, he had created some definitive problems. For instance, when my grandfather came up for a promotion, his boss suggested that it would be a good time to have my grandfather invite him over for dinner. Having his entire house and car slathered richly in stolen paint was in no way a testimony of good judgment, and regardless of how much the supervisor pressed and prodded, my grandfather could not, would not invite his manager over for dinner. Who knows how this hindered my grandfather from getting promoted?

Then, there was the time, having not learned his lesson from the paint scenario, that my grandpa decided he needed a big, water hose he found at work. Convincing himself that no one would miss the loss, he bound and wound this large, heavy hose around his body, and then put his coveralls over the roller-coaster of hose for concealment. By the time my grandpa got out to his car, parked far enough away so no one would see its paint-brushed American Pipe blue color, the hose had wrapped and constricted around his legs, arms, chest, and neck so that he could barely breathe. Falling onto the car, letting his body weight give into the cool, blue metal, he tugged tightly at the hose wrapped around his body, trying to get air. Fumbling with the door, he finally laid over in the front seat of that car, unzipped his coveralls, and unwrapped the hose, so that he could finally breathe.

As much as I'd like to say that I never get myself into my own messes that deeply, I'm not going to lie. I have said often enough, that I don't need help screwing things up, because I'm quite adept at doing it myself. I may not steal paint, or wrap hoses up to steal under my clothing, but be assured, I do enough. Sometimes, I simply find myself wondering what everyone's staring at, just to find the proverbial black sock stuck proudly to my rump.

I've also mentioned before that the Holy Spirit works overtime on me, keeping me from untold disasters. I always wonder if we get to see that Unrestrained Option B when we get to heaven: You know, the way things would have worked out had we always gotten our own way? I expect if we do, my Unrestrained Option B will have me ending up in some under the bridge scenario, fighting for the last scrap in some styro-foam container with other unrestrained idiots. Be assured, I will be a scrapper in that scenario, completely remiss of all good judgment.

As Paul says in the Bible, "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial." With that, I also recall the time I longed and became obsessed with becoming a parking lot cleaner. I know it sounds like I'm making this up, but if you asked my old high school friend Carrie, before she hung up on you for even mentioning it, she would confess that I had, for a short time, become completely preoccupied with that "profession."

In high school I could not fathom anything more fun than being in possession of a leave-blower pack, and little suction truck, those kinds that rumble through parking lots late at night, sucking up all the parking lot debris. How can something so good be wrong? In some ways, I still don't understand how that entrepreneurial concept was wrong, but I learned that when Carrie said she would scream at the mere mention of it, she was not kidding. If I even began to bring it up, she would scream...loudly. I thought I could convince her by committing to allow her the easy job of cruising around in the truck, while I did all the leaf-blowing, but no, she was not moved. "What if we played fun music really, really loud while we did it?" "What if I made up fun dances to make her laugh with the big leaf-blower pack on my back?" Didn't matter what I said, or how I tried, she was not going to be a part of my dream, or even acknowledge that it was a good idea.

In hindsight, maybe she was right. I suppose something bad could have happened. Maybe my grades would have fallen had I gone that route. Maybe I would have never been able to go to college. In the worst case scenario, she could have gotten distracted while watching me dance around with the leaf-blower pack on, and run over me. I always suppose on thinking about it that God saved me from myself in some way, and that though I cannot see Unrestrained Option B right now, I imagine that this option, Option A, the one I'm living out right now, is the one He has intended for me all along - disappointments, blessings, and all.

Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."