Darkness Falls

Hello Everyone,

So, school is about to start which means my head is also just about to spin around and pop off of my body from the sheer busyness of it all. I am cooking up a new post but while I'm stirring that one around, I thought I'd share an old one with you.  I usually read this one to my classes at the beginning of the school year - kind of breaks the ice and shows the kids that it's not such a bad thing to be able to laugh at yourself...or myself in this case.  This sadly true story happened a few years ago now when Ebay (my younger boy) was still in high school.  Enjoy (but not too much since you'll all be laughing at me)!

Darkness Falls

Let me just start out by saying - it was dark, ok?

It. Was. Dark.

It was dark because the gym that I go to has what they call a “Cardio-Cinema” room. This is basically a big room filled with treadmills, stationary bikes, stair climbers and elliptical machines that all face a giant movie screen. So while you’re getting your cardio in for the day you can be inspired by Dr. Benjamin Gates racing through solving Masonic puzzles in National Treasure, or millionaire Tony Stark hammering on a big metal suit in Iron Man.

Basically watching the movie helps the time pass and helps to take your mind of how much you hate to exercise – which is pretty much why I go there.

Actually I don’t really hate to exercise that much but I do have a hard time being consistent with it. I guess because I need the distraction, I like to hike in the mountains – through the trees, by the river. But it’s hard to find the time on a daily basis to drive up the canyon to hit the hiking trail. Plus it’s not really all that safe for a lone woman to traipsing through the woods. Plus, sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate (like today when the high temperature will barely make it out of single digits). So, even though as you see, I have a list of readily available reasons that I just can’t workout – I actually do try and go to the gym a few times a week.

The one I go to is close to my house, but it’s also close to the local University so the average age of my fellow gym-goers is maybe 22 and all the girls seem to wear the same outfit sported by that girl on that commercial about the shoes that make your butt look better (long legs, short shorts – my basic nightmare). Happily there are a few stalwart retirees that mix in with tight and taunt which is good news for me and makes me feel less conspicuous. Although having said that I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes about feeling conspicuous:

In your twenties you worry about what people think of you.

In your thirties you don’t care what people think of you.

And in your forties you realize people weren’t thinking about you in the first place.
So anyway, the gym makes a useful alternative, plus they have a big movie theater to help me through the pain and, as I’ve mentioned, it’s dark in there which helps with the “conspicuousity” factor.

So one bright sunny day a few weeks ago I talked myself into working out and drove down to the gym. As I said it was a beautiful and bright sunny fall day. And since I was at the gym I like to travel light so I took off my sunglasses to leave them in the car along with my bag. I walked through the bright sunshine filled parking lot, through the gym doors, scanned my card and turned into the Cardio Cinema room. As I walked into the darkened room my eyes struggled to adjust as I looked towards the screen to see if I could tell what movie was playing. “Ah…James Bond. I can walk along the beach with Daniel Craig for awhile,” I thought to myself as I moved along a row of treadmills, picked out an empty one, still looking at James Bond on a Jet Ski, and stepped onto it.

The next moment my feet flew out behind me and I went face and shoulder first into the treadmill rubber. The stupid thing was already moving!

A series of declaratives, questions and I don’t mind telling you more than a few curse words flew through my brain (and out of my mouth too I have to admit). Why was it moving when no one was on it? How many people saw me make a face-plant on a treadmill? How long will it take the skin to grow back on my nose and elbow from treadmill roadrash?

Well, this was embarrassing and to be honest more than a little painful. I can’t help but wonder how they make people fall on treadmills on T.V. and in the movies because man! It really hurt! I kind of crawled pitifully over to the wall, leaned up against it slowly rotating my shoulder and trying to decide if I had permanently damaged more than just my pride. It was at that moment that one of the twentysomething gym employees bounded up to me, asked if I’d had a good workout and would I be interested in a personal trainer? I gave him my best Fortysomething withering stare and stumbled out of the cardio-cinema room and back in the bright sunshine to my car.

I was glad to see that my 17-year old son E-bay was home when I got there because I was in need of a little sympathy. “You all right Mom?” he asked me as I limped into the house. “No!” I told him and explained the whole sorry mess. To be fair Ebay took it pretty well. He expressed an appropriate amount of concern for my road rash and applied his EMT training to helping me judge the mobility of my sore shoulder. But he also had that particular look on his face. The look that says that while he’s holding it together on the outside, he's bursting with laughter on the inside. I recognize the look because it’s the same look I get on my face when my own mother tells me that she’s locked her keys in the car and left it running for the third time in the same week.

I stared him down.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he answered lips twitching suspiciously.

“WHAT?” I asked again glaring at his smug 17-year-old face.

“You really fell off a treadmill?” He asked.

“It was dark!” I barked back.

“But it was moving!” said Mr. Twitchy Lips

“IT WAS DARK!!”

Well, he held it together as long as he could – bless him. At my last outburst he started laughing and has pretty much been laughing at me ever since. It’s become an excuse for everything at our house:

You didn’t put gas in the car – it was dark.

You put the empty milk carton back in the fridge – it was dark.

Have you seen my keys – was it dark?

The road rash has cleared up and I can pretty much move my shoulder in all the ways a shoulder should be moved – but I’m still going to be hearing about this one for a while.


Yeah....I don't know what's happened to my life.

Superfriends

Friendship isn’t a big thing – it’s a million little things.

 - Author Unknown -

So do you all know what Oprah is up to lately (I know, she never calls me either)? But, it seems that now that she’s not doing the daily talk show thing, she has time to set up her own cable network - actually called OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network – how handy are THOSE initials huh?).  Because I’ve always worked full time, I never really got in the habit of watching Oprah’s regular show because she was on during the daytime when I was at work. But even so, I guess I generally like what she’s about. Especially once she decided to stop doing the really exploitive stuff that was so prevalent on all the talk shows in the 1990’s and kind of turned to the self-help and book clubs and of course it’s hard not to like someone who gives a car to everyone in their audience on a fairly regular basis.

But my point today isn’t really to talk about Oprah or OWN, except that I’ve been thinking about something for a couple of days that I heard on the Oprah Channel on a program she calls Super Soul Sunday. This program (which of course is on Sunday) is apparently about helping people think about spirituality, or becoming their authentic selves or discovering their true purpose…you know all that kind of Oprah stuff.  I truly don’t mean to sound flippant about any of that – If I’m being honest and self-aware I could probably use help with all of those things. Anyway, I was kind of watching this while I was getting ready for church on Sunday (to go do some more soul-searching) so I was kind of listening out of the corner of my ear.  Oprah was talking to an author named Gary Zukov who wrote a book called The Seat of the Soul (and a lot of other “soul” books too apparently).  They talked about the fact that we are essentially spiritual beings who, in order to gain “authentic power,” need to align our personalities with our souls…. Yeah I’m not really sure what that means either.  But at one point in the discussion Mr. Zukov was talking about how what we project outward in our lives is what comes back to us. He believes that we can tell the kind of person that you are, the energy you project by the friends that you have and the kind of people that are in your life.  If we are selfish, suspicious, judgmental, unkind, and other negative qualities, we will find that this type of energy comes back to us and we are met with those negative qualities in those around us – in other words we create our own Hell.   But if we are generous, kind, giving, non-judgmental, those qualities will be reflected back to us by the friends and people who are drawn to us. I can’t honestly say that this is the first time I’ve heard this particular type of philosophy. I guess what made it stick with me this past Sunday was that Gary Zukov was talking about this “friendship reflection” as kind of a litmus test for our own personalities.  If you want to know what you’re sending out there in the Universe, take a look at your friendships and relationships and see what they tell you.  Now I haven’t read The Seat of the Soul, and I don’t know anything about Gary Zukov, but I did like what he had to say on Super Soul Sunday mostly because it made me feel good…about me.

You see if Gary Zukov is right, I must have put some pretty good stuff out there in the Universe because I have some really, really lovely friends.  I have collected most of these friends over many years, some all the way back to elementary school. Other friendships were formed from having worked together in various jobs that I’ve had over the years or through volunteer or church work. And the thing about my friends is that they all have some kind of super power – really, they do. 

For example…

My friend Ev is a friend I met at my current job – we both started working there at about the same time and had similar opinions about what we found there. It was such a relief to have someone to come to for a reality check – was I really seeing what I thought I was seeing…and everyone is ok with that?  Luckily for me Ev was able to say, “Yes, you are seeing that and it’s not ok.” It was reassuring and empowering to say the least.  You see one of Ev’s superpowers (she has several) is her strong sense of ethics. She has a powerful belief in doing her best and that everyone should meet that same expectation (especially when you work in public education). She’s a great example of someone who always tries to do what is right and that has given me a lot of courage over the years.

My friend Kris is someone I met a long time ago at one of my first serious grown-up jobs. I was in my early twenties at the time and Kris was in her late 30’s. Kris was one of the first people that I didn’t feel treated me like a kid. She talked to me about important grown-up stuff and let me see her life as it was. I learned a lot from her transparency about what to do and what not to do and it was so very helpful.  Kris' superpower is just to be who she is with no pretense, façade or diversion. I learned a lot from Kris about being authentic and just to not waste time trying to be something I’m not.

My friend Ron is really one of my favorite people in all-the world.  We became friends when we both worked at the same elementary school.  I was working on putting together a play and Ron walked into the gym one day and announced that I was going to need some help…and he was going to be that help. Ironically, Ron had a great program that he was heading at the school and, after his announcement that he was going to help me (which he did), I thought it was only right that I help him.  That trade off between the two of us started one of the most rewarding periods of my life so far and a partnership with Ron (and a group of other teachers) that I will always treasure. Plus, since we stopped working together Ron always checks up on me - which I so appreciate.  Ron’s superpower is his ability to see the best in everyone and really just disregard whatever negative qualities they may have. I saw him do this with the kids in his class.  He would really focus on the positive and actually inspire and require the positive. He just didn’t give any energy to the negative qualities and very often, those qualities just wouldn’t be an issue.  That’s a pretty good power for a teacher and a friend.

My friend Cindy is someone who is kind of a mentor to me.  She saw qualities in me that I didn’t even know I had. She showed such trust in me to take the ball and run with it that I actually began to believe in my abilities myself.  Cindy’s superpower is her strong sense of what is right, fair and good.  She was always about what was good for kids in a system that was increasingly about what was good for test scores.  Cindy really did expend a lot of effort tilting at windmills sometimes successfully and sometimes not. I’ve learned a lot from Cindy about how the good is sometimes in the effort and not always the outcome.

My friend Jenny was a fellow “team” mom with me when our kids were in high school. We ended up on a lot of trips together and put together a lot of meals and programs and parties and such for all of those kids. Jenny is exceptionally lively and outgoing, (qualities which I struggle with quite a bit) which makes her really fun to hang out with. Jenny’s superpower is that jovial personality – the ability to find the humor in almost any situation and just lighten up and not take the whole thing so darn seriously…whatever that thing might be.  She was always a great example to me when I would just get way too serious about things.

My friend Mark is actually kind of a newish friend. We have known each other for a number of years, but last year, when my friend Jason passed away suddenly, Mark made the connection (through some mutual acquaintances) that this had happened, recognized how really upsetting it was to me, and kind of upped the ante on our friendship. Like Ron, he just kept up a kind of regular mental health check-in with me and let me know that he was available if I needed something.  I can’t tell you how much that meant to me at the time and frankly how much it still means to me.  It was a thoughtful gesture that I felt was really sincere and I enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about him through those brief conversations.  Mark’s superpower I think is the ability to talk to people and make them feel like he really cares about what they are saying.  Now that I know him a little better, I’m not sure if he really does care about what everyone is saying, but we all surely think that he does because he has such a great ability to engage with people in such a funny and cool way. 

My friend JP and I have been friends since being in the same 6^th grade homeroom class – and that was a long time ago now. It was such a long time ago I really can't remember exactly how we came to be friends. Proximity was one reason I suppose, and John’s wicked sense of humor was, I'm sure, another (he is awfully witty).  

JP’s superpower is quite simply friendship. He’s so great at making connections with people and pulling them into his life. He pays attention to what is happening with his friends and does what he can to help in just a plethora of ways (yes the fancy vocab there was a throw-back to pretentious high school writing JP). First of all, he remembers everybody.  And he remembers their details too - what they do, who they’re married to, who their kids are, where they’ve been, where they’re going and why. I think JP also has a tendency to look out for the underdog, the disenfranchised, the lonely and alone – a quality I think he gets from his parents. For those of you who are my Facebook friends, you know that JP and I went on a trip together a couple of months ago. Actually JP took me on a trip, all planned and paid for to the UK and France (I know, right?!). I’ve always been overwhelmed by the generosity of JP and that feeling was just magnified by this amazing gesture.  I don’t think there’s been a day since we got back that I haven’t stopped at some point during the day and thought to myself “Oh my gosh, I’ve been to LONDON (or Paris, interchangeable excitement there really)!  Not really sure when or if that is going to wear off - probably never. JP, you’re the best…even without LONDON (or Paris).

It can be a tricky thing when you start listing friends. For the record, this is by no means a comprehensive list of everyone who is important to me. Melissa, Jim, Gaelyn, Courtney, Jack, and Carol, Michael, Marilyn and oh yeah, my grown-up boys are all people who I consider friends and who all have friendship superpowers.

My only complaint about my friends I suppose is that I really don’t see many of them much as I would like too – we’re all so busy all the time.  But I know they are out there and, just like my faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have faith that my friends care about me, want good things for me and will be there for me if I need them.

I don’t know if Mr. Zukov is right and all of these lovely people are just good Karma coming back to me from what I’ve sent out into the world.  But when I think about my friends, I do know that I feel lucky and grateful. Besides, it’s just so flattering isn’t it - when someone decides to become your friend?