Thursday 13 for February 21

Thirteen Random Thoughts

1.  Can’t help but notice the tornadoes are dropping around all over the south.  I wonder if mobile homes are trembling on their wheels at night.
2. Sixteen days, people, sixteen days!
3. Ever noticed how one person’s worries are another person’s expectations?
4. I heard today the three worst Presidents of all time were Harding, Pierce, and Buchanan.  Pierce had lost three children before he took office, Buchanan sat and watched the nation fall apart into civil war, and Harding was just corrupt all the way until a bullet took his life.  So who decides these folks were the worst?  Mrs. Harding?  Lincoln?  I always thought Andrew Johnson was one of the worst… why don’t I get a vote?
5. There are days you just have to pick up a banjo and pluck it.
6. I played my harmonica for the first time in months today.  It is amazing how something you used to find so comforting can become so foreign.
7. Watching two squirrels fighting for a nut is like watching people debate politics.  A lot of screaming, lunging, dodging, and bravado goes on but no one is actually worried about the nut, they’re just worried about who owns it.
8. How come the longer you sit in one place, the more stuff you gather?
9. Why is it so hard to part with stuff you know you will never use?
10. I think my stories are losing their punch.  Maybe the fizzling sound I hear at night is my talent fading away.
11. In one day I had three watches fixed.  One I adore, one I am giving back to my brother (it is rather nice and never worked for him so now that it is fixed, he deserves to have it back), and the other was in a box of other “useless” junk.  I love the fact all three work and keep time, especially the Bulova pocket watch.  Total cost: $13.86.  Sweet.
12. I was packing books into totes, getting ready to move them when I came across a book I had really enjoyed at one time.  Sat down and thumbed through it and realized it was like a long lost friend you run into at the grocery store and for a small slice of time you seem to warp back into a time when you both were important to the other one, leaving them behind but relishing the memories sparked.
13. I was told once I was crazy.  I think I am… crazy as a loon.  Loons always sound like they are having a wonderful time though… so maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.

Another Funeral to Attend

Sitting in a church constructed of metal, I listened to a preacher discuss the pain a family goes through when a child dies.  In this case it was a precious child of almost 11, who died last Saturday from complications caused by the flu, or at least that is what they think.  This child was not the kind of child who played with other kids at the club, but the kind of child who wanted to be an adult way before her time.  She would ask to do filing, or work the P.A. system, run an activity, or run interference for the director.  She never stopped talking, always having a question, and loved to have a chance to talk with the director to discuss with great dramatic flair her current crises at school.

She came into the club with the velocity of a whirlwind and left with a whisper.

The funeral was  better than most with a good memories of the child who has left us.  The coffin had two large pictures of her sitting next to her slightly turned head that was adorned with a floral wreath.   She had such a peaceful look which I found eerie since I never saw her without an impish smile turning up on the right side of her mouth.   I didn’t seem right that her remains were interred without the smile.

I am a person who likes to see the potential in a person and then figure out how to draw it out.  Funerals for children are the greatest frustration for me as so much hope, dreaming, and possibilities are stilled forever, robbing this place we call home of another chance to improve itself.