Untotaled: Stepping 48 (May 15th, 1969) Mr. Lester’s Work Force… January 3, 2015

  Jonathots Daily Blog

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(Transcript)

By the time I walked out of school, I was a different person.

Less than a month earlier, my father had passed, and a growling discontentment, which had started in the previous September, had now turned into a barking dog of frustration.

I was tired of school.

I was tired of my little town.

I was tired of being a student.

I was tired of having urges and desires that were ignored by my local church and replaced with a series of childish activities.

I was nearly a man, forced to wear boyish attire.

My mother decided I should get a job. She thought it would keep all of the sadness off my mind.

That year, the local Youth Corps was offering employment to students to assist local businessmen in their pursuits, at $1.10 an hour. I signed up. They placed me in the role of helping out the local groundskeeper at the cemetery.

Not exactly the perfect job for a young man who had just lost his dad.

There was no grave-digging involved. My responsibility was to mow around the tombstones in a fourteen-day pattern. By the time I finished the fourteenth sector of the cemetery, it was time to go back to the first section and start all over again.

I could not imagine anything that personified the futility of my soul like this particular ritual.

I hated it–especially when it came time for sector four–which included my father’s grave. Actually it was just a pile of dirt. It was too soon for grass to have grown. And I felt compelled, by some sense of nostalgia, to stop and pay my respects.

Yet it was odd and obtuse.

As I mowed–especially on the very hot days–there was this strange smell in the air. It reeked of concentrated vitamins, similar to what you experience when you open up a new bottle. It gave me the creeps.

Since my supervisor rarely showed up at the cemetery, I decided to sign the worksheet with my hours and not actually appear. Amazingly, I pulled this off for two weeks before I got caught.

Mr. Lester, my representative, was very disappointed in me. I was fired.

I was mostly relieved, for two reasons: I didn’t have to keep lying, but mostly … I didn’t have to keep working.

 

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Count to Eleven… March 23, 2013

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Life is not a plan, but rather, an unfolding story with plot twists and turns, which if one survives, provides the potential and climate for a happy ending.

There you go. That’s the truth.

This week I saw this personified when my business partner, Janet, took off to get her hair done. You may remember, several days ago that I told you she was in the market for a perm. She did her homework, found a good place to go, procured her finance and set aside adequate time for the excursion.

Of course, “the greatest laid plans of mice and men” go kerplunk, kerplop. That would also include the well-thought-out concepts of women looking for a good hair-do. For as it turns out, she was well into the process of getting her hair curled when the young lady who was performing the job realized that it wasn’t going to work and began to make a myriad of excuses about the reason that this mission had become impossible. In the process, bits of Janet’s hair decided to leave its moorings, which required that there be a trimming, which was not part of the plan.

When she returned, I was astounded at how calm she was–at peace and really, overjoyed. Her assessment of the whole event was that the perm gave her just enough curl to make her hair full-bodied, she received a nice dispelling of her split ends and the whole thing didn’t cost very much–because of course, they did not charge her for the privilege of being part of the disaster.

She abandoned her plan, entered the story, survived the details and got a happy ending.

Traditionally we tell people to count to ten whenever they are confronted with a surprise difficulty in order to curb their temper or fear. But I have to tell you–it may be necessary on many occasions to count to eleven.

The art of success is determined through the craft of survival. Here are five things you should consider whenever confronted with the disintegration of a scheme:

1. Look for a clue. Remember–God has no desire to make you look stupid. So often, buried in the midst of a crumbling fortress is a sweet little sign of a means of escape.

2. Open the door. It is no time to get picky, when the world is falling down around you. When you find a door that appears to be a solution, use it instead of over-thinking it.

3. Consider the mix. Remember, all things work TOGETHER to the good. So don’t isolate off one particular dramatic part of your dilemma and focus on it. Set everything down in front of you and evaluate it as a mix instead of individual punches in the face.

4. A time to wait. Human beings were never designed to be patient. Yet sometimes it is necessary for us to delay our expectations. When we know we’re going to have to wait in the airport, we take a book. It is a good idea to have other things to do while you’re waiting for your present situation to improve.

5. And finally, ask yourself where you’ve been. We do not lose our history as we live out our present. Everything we’ve learned, everything we know, everything we believe and everything we possess is of value to us at all times if we don’t act like we just got hatched from a nearby egg.

There you go.

Of course, all those may be difficult to remember in the midst of a crisis, so let me put it in a simpler form:

One, two, look for a clue

Three four, open the door

Five, six, consider the mix

Seven, eight, a time to wait

Nine, ten, where you been?

And finally, eleven: on earth as it is in heaven.

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