11-Close Encounters of the Lavatorial Kind by Sharon Lurie

© 2011 David’s Harp and Pen

So there I was, standing outside the men’s room at the mall waiting for Zechariah and Jonathan to finish up in the men’s room, hoping it would be incident-free, since so far, I had been unable to get through the day with my dignity intact. After a few minutes, Zechariah came out and just stared at me.

“What? Where’s your brother?” I inquired anxiously.

“He’s having trouble. I think he needs you to wipe his butt,” Zechariah answered. (Jonathan was still not quite potty trained, and he couldn’t tidy himself after making number two.)

I gritted my teeth, covered my eyes, and inched my way into the Men’s Room. I slowly opened my eyes, and thankfully, there weren’t any men using the urinals. I looked at the bottom of the stalls for Jonathan’s little feet, but there was no sign of them. So, I yelled, “Jonathan, honey, do you need some help?”

I then heard two different adult male voices laughing. One of the stall doors swung open, and a late 20-something man, seemingly normal but giving off a creepy vibe, stepped out, walked right up to me, and said, “I’m sorry, Baby, but the kind of help I need, you can’t give me.”

“Excuse me?” I asked him, confused.

“Hi!” he retorted. “I’m Jonathan.” He extended his right hand to me, but given he had just come out of the toilet, I thought it best not to shake his hand.

“That was awesome!” Said the other voice, which belonged to his friend who was in the bathroom with him. When I turned around to see the face that went with the voice, Jonathan’s friend snapped a picture of Jonathan with a huge grin on his face, and me with a look like someone has on their face when about to be led to the gallows.

“I’m gonna post this on All About Me,” the friend announced with laughter, quite pleased with himself, apparently.

“I am so sorry, sir,” I said, blushing. “I’m babysitting my friend’s little boy, who is also named Jonathan, and his brother said he needed some help.”

“No worries, Luscious,” Jonathan answered. Luscious, an innocent enough word in and of itself, took on another, dark, insidious meaning when being applied to a woman in a public men’s room. “You’re cute.”

I all of a sudden felt very nervous, those two strange men and me in there.

“Eh, my name is Margaret, and thank you, but I’m really rather plain, and ubiquitous,” I answered. I felt the need to back up towards the door, but hesitated, because I didn’t want to leave without Jonathan (the small, non-evil one).

“Don’t be so modest,” big, evil Jonathan answered. “Do you have any plans tonight?”

Big, evil Jonathan and his cohort began to move towards me. I found myself tongue-tied. My mind began scramble. Even though I had been taking martial arts lessons and felt quasi-confident I could defend myself against one man, I felt zero-confidence in my ability to fend off two. Also, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the defense from an unwanted lip lock.

“Margaret? Are you okay?” asked an all-too-familiar voice. It was Ryan. I was both relieved and scared that he was there. Jonathan and his buddy, who were both a good six inches shorter than Ryan and nowhere near as ripped, immediately backed off.

“Sorry, Man. No disrespect,” Jonathan said nervously to Ryan. Then he turned to me and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?”

Before I could answer, Jonathan turned back to Ryan and said defensively, “She didn’t tell me she was with someone. Typical woman, right?”

The elder Jonathan and his friend quickly washed their hands and headed out the door. Ryan looked at me with that usual unreadable look of his.

Don’t be embarrassed, Margaret. I thought. You did nothing wrong. Just make it into a joke and go with the flow.

Ryan finally broke the silence and asked, “So, looking for a date for later tonight?”

I let out a skittish laugh and started to say, “For your information, I can tell a lot about a man by the way he…” Then I stopped myself, but there would be no backtracking from that one. I saw the words, like carrots in front of a horse, dangling in the air in front of me, but no amount of reaching on my part could ever take those words back.

“No, Margaret! By all means, finish your thought,” Ryan stated, looking both deadly serious and also like he would burst into laughter at any moment. “What is it about a man you can tell a lot of by watching him in a public lavatory?”

I hemmed and hawed, straining my brain ferociously for something clever to say, but finally gave up. “You know, I really didn’t think that whole comment through before I started to say it, and…”

I decided it best to not even explain any further. Ryan began to laugh so hard I thought he would hyperventilate. At that moment, Zechariah and Brittany walked in to see what was going on.

“Where’s Jonathan?” Brittany asked. I then remembered why I had gone into the men’s room in the first place. I started to push open all the stall doors looking for the youngest of my charges, trying to forget all that just happened.

Oh, God! I prayed silently. I am trying so hard, but humiliation seems to chase me down wherever I go. I pray Ryan will overlook that I am spacey and regularly accidentally say things that could be construed as morally reprehensible in light of the fact that I am so good with children.

I pushed open the stall door on the last toilet in the room. There sat poor little Jonathan, quiet as a mouse, with poo smeared all over his face, hands, and the walls, with toilet paper crinkled up and overflowing out of the toilet. He looked like a little cherry sitting on top of a giant chocolate poo sundae.

As Ryan and I cleaned up Jonathan and the stall, I tried very hard to keep my mind from obsessing and compulsing. I had to get my mind off myself and how I looked and sounded, but I didn’t know how.

No sooner had we all left the men’s room than it began to thunder, lightning, and rain with a fury uncharacteristic even for middle Tennessee during the rainy season. Next thing we knew, the lights in Palucci’s were flickering. Jonathan pulled on my hand and reached up his arms for me to carry him. Jonathan hated storms. I was about to pick him up when I felt a small tap behind me.

“Mommy!” cried Toddler X. I turned around to see him reaching his arms up to me as well.

Slightly aggravated, I picked him up and asked him, “Where are your parents?”

The question apparently confused him greatly. He then pointed to the gun range game and exclaimed, “Wifles! Boom!”

I could see I wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of the kid, so I carried him to the front counter and handed him off to the manager. As I turned to rejoin Ryan and the kids, a huge flash of lightning lit up every open window and sky light, and all the electricity in the place went out. As the subsequent sound of thunder blasting ensued, and every child in Palucci’s let out a single, collective, ear-piercing cry that rose up to Heaven. After the screaming died down, I heard from the direction of the front door the sound of heavy, labored breathing. I discovered, to my concern, it was the kid at the door in charge of stamping hands and making sure the kids who come to Palucci’s leave with the right grown-ups. Concerned, I walked over to the door to check on him.

“Are you alright,” I asked, then glanced at his nametag, “Neil?”

“Hate storms,” he answered in rapid-fire fashion, fidgeting as spoke. “Hate ‘em, hate ‘em, hate ‘em!”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. We’re used to storms like this here,” I said in an attempt to sound reassuring.

“It’s not fine! Can’t you see we’re all going to die? How can you be so calm?”

Ooh! I prayed. This would be perfect time to talk about You to him, wouldn’t it be, God?

“Well,” I answered Neil, “if I die, I know where I’m going.”

Neil looked at me oddly and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Oh, sorry,” I answered. “Well, if I die, I’m going to Heaven. To be with God. Forever.”

“Oh, great!” he sneered. “You’re one of those, aren’t you? I can’t believe in the present age of knowledge and intellect there are still people stupid enough to believe something that’s nothing more than old wives’ tales!”

“My faith is not an old wives’ tale!” I protested.

“No, of course not! It’s true because your mommy told you it was, right? I don’t believe in stupid-stitions. I believe in science. I believe in fact. I believe in logic.”

Another blast of lighting and thunder came through Palucci’s, even stronger than the one before.

“Oh, Sweet Jesus!” Neil screamed like a little girl. As he ran to hide under the front counter, he cried, “I’m too young to die.”

I stood scratching my head as he disappeared from view.

Oh, God! I prayed. I don’t think that went very well at all. I don’t think I said the right thing at all.

God replied, It’s not about you. Are you willing to look bad so that I can look good?

God, I don’t know what You mean. I didn’t know what You meant all the other times you said it today, I prayed in protest.

Suddenly, the electricity came back on, and life at Palucci’s quickly proceeded as normal.

“Margaret!” Brittany yelled as she ran up to me, interrupting my silent debate with God. “Come with me to the finger-painting class! Please!”

Before I could answer, she grabbed my hand and pulled me to the craft room at Palucci’s. Besides all the games, Palucci’s had a craft room where they would have a class with fun stuff like painting or drawing. I jumped into cool babysitter mode and threw myself into finger-painting with her. I worried about Brittany more than the other two, mostly because I knew it had to be hard for her being the only girl in the house. I wanted to be a good role model for her. As the class went on, my lack of sleep from the previous evening finally overtook me. I put my head on the table to shut my eyes for a second, and that second turned into forty winks.

I woke up moments later to the sound of ever-increasing laughter. As I lifted my weary head, I saw strange faces jeering at me everywhere I looked. I felt something on my face and in my hair, so I grabbed my compact out of my purse. I was covered in paint. My face had been painted white, with large black circles around my eyes, purple streaks on my cheeks, and giant red lips. My hair had been doused with orange and red paint. I looked like Ronald McDonald, except not quite as classy. I stared at myself in shock. Then I heard the sound of Ryan and the boys chuckling at the door of the craft room. I felt so goofy and so ashamed, but before I could say anything, Brittany tugged on my arm.

“Do you like it, Margaret?” She asked sweetly. “I love playing make-up and dress-up. I did it all the time with my last mommy, but they won’t let me bring my make-up with me when I visit her in the prison.”

All of a sudden, I felt ashamed for a different reason, namely my self-consciousness. Then I remembered what God had been saying to me all day, and it finally clicked. It wasn’t about me. I had to look bad so a little girl could feel loved and special and know that God wasn’t the indecisive nut job who had thus far been erroneously presented to her.

I bent down to Brittany, looked her in the eye, and said, “I love it! I have never looked or felt lovelier than I do at this very moment. Thank you!”

I kissed her on the cheek as she hugged me super tight around my neck.

“I’ve never seen you look lovelier, either,” said that voice I loved from the get go. I turned to see Ryan grinning at me.

“No, seriously,” he said with a smile, “you look great.”

“Thanks,” I responded. “I feel great.”

It’s not about me! I prayed silently. It’s not about me. Thank You, God, that it’s not about me.

The time was coming for us to leave. We brought all our tickets to the prize desk and traded them in for this humongous, life-sized, stuffed Palucci. When we were done, we walked out to the parking lot. I pressed my keyless entry to open the sliding doors and hatch on my minivan. By this time, the rain was pouring down fiercely, and we wanted to get out of it as soon as we could.

“Brittany, Sweetie, would you please get your brothers into their car seats?” I asked.

Brittany fought with her brothers to get them strapped in while Ryan and I tried our darndest to get Palucci to fit in the rear hatch. After a few minutes, we admitted defeat and squeezed him among the rows of the minivan, even though it was an awkward fit. Ryan slammed the hatch closed, we each closed a side door, and then we took off.

When we left, the rain was falling even harder. I had paint streaming down me, but I didn’t care.

“You seem content,” Ryan said.

“I am,” I replied. “You see, it’s not about me.”

“Really?” he asked. “Do tell.”

I was about to tell him my little discovery for the day, but I was interrupted by the sight and sound of police sirens, which had quickly overtaken us.

“I wasn’t speeding, was I?” I asked, confused.

As I pulled over, Ryan looked in the back of the van and asked, “Eh, Margaret, how many kids did we bring with us to Palucci’s?”

“Three,” I answered with a reasonable degree of certainty.

“Then why do we have four kids in the van?”

My heart stopped before becoming lodged in my throat. After I had stopped the car, I turned around to see Toddler X climbing out from underneath the middle row of seats.

“Mommy!” He screamed with delight.

I felt a terror unlike I had felt since high school. I scrambled for my purse to get my driver’s license, then the glove box for my registration and insurance card.

“How did he get past the Neil kid at the door who stamps everyone’s hands?” I asked frightfully.

“You mean the guy who kept ducking behind the prize desk every time he heard thunder?” Ryan retorted.

The next hour was a blur, to be perfectly honest. I vaguely remember the kids crying, police officers with guns drawn, accusations of kidnapping, and being handcuffed. One of the cops radioed back to dispatch that he had found both the child and the woman matching the physical description of a “deranged Indian chief.” As Ryan and I were put into different police cruisers and the kids were taken off in an unmarked car, Ryan looked at me, almost as if he was in pain, and said facetiously, “Honey, we should’ve stopped after one.”

10-A Thousand Shades of Red by Sharon Lurie

© 2011 David’s Harp and Pen

For those who have never been, Palucci’s is like one giant, noisy, grease-oozing, carb-laden, token-sucking babysitter. Theoretically, one could leave one’s kids there for years without the children ever noticing their parents were gone, unless, of course, the kids ran out of tokens. They make the most fattening and flavorless pizza money can buy, but the kids don’t care, because it’s pizza and kids love pizza. Besides, what child cares about culinary excellence or nutritionally sound fare when there are video games, skee ball alleys, and a ball crawl bigger and deeper than most moon craters to contend with? Kids love the place because it’s endless fun. Grownups love it because, after a few hours, the kids are catatonic and in cholesterol coma and will often sleep until of they are of legal drinking age. Brittany, Zechariah, and Jonathan would always beg me to take them to Palucci’s, so as often as I could, I would.

Brittany went on her way to the giant Etch-a-Sketch machine and the boys headed to the skee ball lanes. Ryan and I got a booth and sat down to talk.

“They seem like great kids,” Ryan said.

“Oh, they are. They really are. They just need some TLC,” I answered.

“How many times did you say their dad was married?”

“Three.”

“And he’s been a Christian the whole time?”

“I know, right? I don’t understand it. You wouldn’t believe all the single Christian dads I’ve known over the years who just jump from relationship to relationship, rushing out of one bad situation into an even more disastrous one. And of course, it’s always God who told them to go looking for women online, through the mail, blah, blah, blah. The thing is though, especially with Arthur, his kids now have this totally screwy concept of God! I mean, it’ll be a miracle if they escape with any kind of sense of right or wrong whatsoever.”

“Eh, speaking of right and wrong…” Ryan said as he pointed to the skee ball lanes. I turned and looked, to my horror, to see both Zechariah and Jonathan picking up the skee balls and physically walking them down the lanes. Zechariah had a stream of award tickets shooting out of the skee ball lane a mile a minute. I darted over to the skee ball lanes to set the boys straight. Ryan followed me.

“What are you doing?” I accused, my voice getting squeakier as my temper flared. A large, elderly, nanny-looking sort of person walked up to me with consternation on her face.

“I was wondering when you’d come along. What a reprehensible example they’re setting for the other children here! What kind of mother are you?” she accused.

“I’m not their mother,” I answered defensively.

“Okay. What kind of grandmother are you?”

I was speechless, both from the accusation and the fact that Ryan had heard it. I could hear his suppressed chuckling behind me, and my personal campaign against embarrassment had been dealt another crushing blow.

“It’s interesting, Margaret,” Ryan observed in what I thought was a detailed and methodical manner, “when you get embarrassed, your cheeks turn about a thousand different shades of red in no time flat. It’s like watching twin volcanoes erupt simultaneously.”

As my brain scrambled for the proper reply, Jonathan walked up to me and asked, with that cute little lisp characteristic of all three-year-olds, “Mawgwet, why does Zechawhyah have maw tickets den me?”

“Because, Sweetie, he’s cheating,” I answered.

“But I’m cheating, too!”

“I know, but when Zechariah walks the balls down the lane, he drops them in the hoops, which gets him points. You walk them down the lane and drop the balls in the gutter, which really defeats the whole purpose of cheating in the first place.”

“Will you show me how to trow da ball in da hoops, pwease?”

“Of course, Sweetie!” I answered, hoping to salvage at least some of my efforts to appear motherly.

Now, I knew no more how to bowl properly than I knew how to pilot a Cessna to Ireland, but I couldn’t let Ryan or Jonathan know that. At the time, though, I thought throwing the skee ball down the lane would be pretty straightforward, without much margin for error. I grabbed the ball, reeled my arm back, and was about to release the ball, when I felt a tugging on my shirt. A little boy of about four years of age had walked up to me and was adamant about getting my attention.

“Mommy!” he cried out to me, most convincingly.

I was so shocked; I didn’t pay attention to where I was aiming the skee ball. I let her rip, and it shot straight for the metal edge of the plastic rim over the hoops, bounced off said metal, and hit me full force in the forehead. I fell flat on my back, and for a moment, the rest of the world faded. I looked off into the ceiling, not sure if I was alive or dead.

“Mommy!” The little boy, who I’ll refer to as Toddler X, since I never found out his name, screamed at the top of his lungs as he grabbed my hand to pull me up. Ryan grabbed my other hand and brought me to my feet.

“Stay here. I’m going to take him to the front counter,” Ryan informed me. Then he walked off with Toddler X in an attempt to find his real parents.

God, I prayed silently, this isn’t going well. I’m trying to get through the day shame and embarrassment free, but considering it’s me we’re talking about here, maybe it’s not possible.

It’s not about you, Margaret. Are you willing to look bad so that I can look good? answered that Still Small Voice inside my head. As I pondered what God meant, Ryan returned.

“Your son is a handsome little man!” Ryan said with a little snicker in his tone.

“Yes. He gets his blonde hair and brown eyes from me,” I answered as I batted my blue eyes and ran my fingers through my dark brown, almost raven hair.

“Good one! Say, why don’t we work on that throwing arm of yours?” Ryan asked.

Ryan picked up a skee ball and put it in my hand.

“Jonny, pay very special attention. This is how the pros do it,” Ryan said to Jonathan in a cute, fatherly fashion.

“Do pwos have to use quawters?” Jonathan asked.

“Pros get unlimited tokens, which is why you want to be one. Now, some people will argue that a good throw is all in the shoulder, but I say it’s equal parts shoulder and wrist. Like this,” Ryan explained. Then he stood super close behind me, put his left hand on my left shoulder, took my right hand in his, and threw the skee ball down the lane, landing it square in the million point hoop, the highest-point hoop there was. More tickets streamed out of the skee ball console as Jonathan squealed with delight.

“Yay! Do it again,” Jonathan exclaimed.

“Yes, do it again,” I whispered.

With his hands still on me, Ryan made a second bowling demonstration, landing another skee ball in the million-point hoop. I won’t lie. Having him that close to me made me feel slightly euphoric, and him being so close probably wouldn’t have happened had I not knocked myself out in the first place.

Wow, God!, I prayed in my head. He’s so understanding, and nothing I do seems to scare him off. He likes kids, he knows how to relate to them, and he knows how to bowl! Not only that, but he smells fabulous! Would it be too forward of me to ask him what cologne or aftershave he’s wearing? It smells so musky and woodsy, like he’s some gorgeous, rugged outdoorsmen who lives on the side of a mountain, and he spends all day splitting logs, hunting bears, chasing rainbows, and…

“Margaret?” Ryan interrupted my little fantasy. “Are you alright?”

I felt my twin volcanoes erupt again. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out, except carbon dioxide.

“I lost you again,” he said with a concerned look on his face.

“I’m sorry. I…” I tried to respond, but again, I couldn’t speak.

“No, it’s just that sometimes you seem to go to another place, even though you’re here.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I do. Go to another place.”

“It’s alright. Next time you go there, take me with you. It must be fantastic!”

“Oh, from your mouth to God’s Ears!”

God, I prayed in horror, did I just say what I think I said?

Ryan burst into laughter, confirming my fears.

God, perhaps I could avoid most of the embarrassment I feel if I could just keep my mouth shut, I prayed.

God answered, It’s not about you.

Oooh, how I hated it when God repeated something I never got the first time!

About an hour had passed since our arrival. The kids got loaded up on pizza and soda and were wiping up the arcade and casino floor and earning a whole Amazon rain forest’s worth of tickets. Toddler X made another appearance, insisting I was his mommy. Ryan and I deposited our charges in the ball crawl and returned to our booth when my phone rang. It was Arthur.

“Hi,” I answered. “What’s up?”

“I don’t believe it!” Arthur shot out. “I finally got through to Suzanne. Do you know what she had the nerve to say?”

I was sure I already knew, but to be polite, I asked anyway.

“She said I was smothering her!” Arthur answered, and he sounded genuinely confused when he said it, too. “She said I was moving too fast, and that I was draining her emotionally! Can you believe it?”

“Ummm,” I hesitated before finally answering, “yes! I can totally believe it!”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours! I wouldn’t tell you you’re an idiot if I didn’t care!”

“A true friend will stand by me and support me no matter what!”

“And I do! But I’m not going to keep saying, ‘poor baby’ as you keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again, Arthur! It’s like you have no identity outside of a woman. When you have a woman, you’re okay, or you think you’re okay, and when you don’t, you lose all ability to function. Girls don’t like guys who are clingy and needy and, well, girly!”

“You don’t understand, Margaret. When I love a woman, I love her with everything I have. And if I know that she’s the one, I don’t see any need in waiting.”

“But you should. A girl with any sense isn’t going to make a lifelong commitment to a man without a chance first to test and observe his character. The fact that Suzanne got scared says a lot of good things about her. Any good woman, a woman you would really want to marry, would be scared off by getting a proposal after ten days when you hadn’t even met in person!”

“You don’t understand, Margaret! You’ll never understand!”

“You always say that, Arthur, and yet you keep coming to me for advice.”

“I’m going to hang up now!”

“Hey, before you go, don’t you want to know how your kids are?” Before I could finish the sentence, though, he was gone. At that point, I found myself so angry that I was growling like a grizzly bear.

“What is this man’s problem?” Ryan asked.

“You tell me,” I shot back, still fuming. “I don’t understand, Ryan. I really don’t. Maybe, since you’re a man, you can explain it to me. I have known so many Christian men through the years, particularly single dads, who just jump from relationship to relationship with no forethought whatsoever! They can’t live without a woman, but then when they have one, they don’t seem to fare any better! And they always make it sound like it’s God’s will for them to hook up with whatever girl happens to be there at the moment. Then, they get their hearts broken, but they turn around and do the same thing again and again! The problem here, though, is that Arthur’s kids now think that God is the One that keeps leading their dad into bad relationships, and they want nothing to do with Him!”

As I finished my little tirade, all the sleep deprivation from the night before began to catch up with me, and I feared I might have exerted the last bit of energy I had left.

“It’s a funny thing, Margaret. Most of us can talk a good line about being a Christian, but a lot of these men, by the way they live, are just practicing atheists. They don’t give God a chance to meet their needs. They don’t give God a chance to fill their hearts the right way. It sends a horrible message to his kids. It sends a horrible message to the world, too. What do unbelievers think when we talk about God being our All in All, but live our lives as if He’s anemic, stingy, and powerless?”

After talking to Arthur and listening to his childish talk about love and marriage, it was such a relief to have a grown up conversation with a grown up Christian man. He was making so many good points, and I wanted to make some good points, too, except I was getting very tired very fast, and in my attempt to sound spiritual, I sounded…not.

“You’re right,” I acceded, my voice getting louder as I continued talking. “But you know what the funny thing is? They say they can’t wait for whatever, that God wants them to be happy, yaddy-yaddy-ya, but then when they take matters into their own hands, they’re even more miserable. They’ve got a woman, but they argue all the time, the situation in the bedroom tanks almost instantaneously, and they’re scratching their heads and asking God what He did wrong. I’m sorry, but if I’m a Christian, and God didn’t spare His only Son for me, then shouldn’t I have more joy than an unbeliever? Shouldn’t my relationships be better and last longer than some unsaved person? If the God who lives inside of me is the One who created marriage and romance in the first place, shouldn’t I be having better sex than Joe the Pagan who lives next door?”

For a split second, there was dead silence. It was as if every eye and ear in Palucci’s was trained on me. I could feel my cheeks, AKA “Mount Saint Margaret,” about to blow any second. I turned my face away, because I didn’t want to see Ryan’s reaction. However, I happened to turn in the direction of a pair of very offended grandmothers.

“Blasphemous!” scolded Grandmother Number One.

“As if God has anything to do with sex!” exclaimed Grandmother Two.

I closed my eyes to avoid the women’s glares. As I did, I heard the sound of Ryan’s laughter. I wondered how many stupid things I could say and do in front of him before he realized just how hopeless I was really was. After a moment, I felt his finger as it tapped my shoulder. As I slowly opened my eyes, I beheld, for the second time since I’d known him, him on his knees in front of me as he raised and lowered his arms and chanted, “I’m not worthy.”

“Brilliant. Eloquent. A tour de force!” He said, tongue in cheek.

Pretty soon, it was time for Palucci to make one of his regularly scheduled appearances. All the kids loved Palucci, especially Zechariah. When he came out and began to walk around the play area, the kids came to our table and stared at him in awe. Palucci had all the qualities that children love in a fictional character: largeness, a good sense of humor, furriness, and lots of video games. No one really knows if Palucci is animal, vegetable, or mineral. He’s not human, or not entirely, but we’re not sure if he’s a mammal or even some kind of alien. He’s a bit like Goofy, Mickey Mouse’s friend. Zechariah began to bounce up and down and squeeze my hand in excitement as Palucci made his rounds. However, when Palucci got near our table, Zechariah suddenly got shy and buried his face in my side.

“What are you doing, Z?” I asked. “Palucci’s coming by! If you shake his hand, he might give you some tokens!” Zechariah shook his head violently.

“Why are you getting all shy now? You have no problem peeing on bushes for all the world to see but you’re too shy to talk to Palucci?”

Apparently, Zechariah saw my logic and decided to approach Palucci in all his genetically ambiguous and anthropomorphic grandeur. As the rest of the children rushed at Palucci, I sat back and took in the whole spectacle. Some of the kids were jumping on him. Some were just jumping up and down and screaming in front of him. All of the kids were indulging in silliness of the highest order, without reservation. It was both a heartening and convicting sight. My attention then turned to the sound of a coin being dragged across the table to under my nose.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Penny for your thoughts. That’s still the going rate, isn’t it?” Ryan asked.

I sighed and answered, “Oh, I was just thinking about how when we’re kids, and we’re so free and uninhibited and unashamed of who we are and how we look. I wonder what it is and when it is that we become so wrapped up in appearances and such that we can’t do anything without asking ourselves a thousand times, ‘Will this make me look stupid?’ Is self-consciousness instinctual, or is it learned behavior?”

"It's probably a little of both. When was it for you?" Ryan asked.

"Huh?"

"When was the moment when you became worried about how you looked? When was it that you lost your freedom?"

“Lost my freedom? You make it sound so, so…”

I made the mistake of looking into Ryan’s eyes, which were like optical sodium pentothal.

“Wednesday, September 16, 1981, 9:47 a.m.” I blurted out.

Ryan tilted his head to one side and widened his eyes, as often happened whenever I said something that caught him off guard, and said, “Interesting. You have total recall or something?”

Before I could answer him, Brittany came running to our booth, grabbed Ryan’s hand, and begged, “Ryan, would you please come to the ball crawl with me? I need you to protect me from the other kids.”

“Of course, milady,” he replied, switching to a British accent, like a knight in shining armor. “Your wish is my command.”

The two then ran off and jumped into the ball crawl. As I looked on, I saw two little boys already inside, dressed like space aliens, carrying play laser guns, and shooting up everything in sight.

Some time passed as I sat at the booth, alone with my thoughts. Ryan was right. I had lost my freedom. I surveyed all of Palucci’s. Everywhere I looked, there were kids and adults and space aliens and yet-to-be classified life forms having the time of their lives, playing make believe, screaming at the top of their lungs, and giving no thought as to how they looked to anyone else. Everyone there was free, except me.

Oh, Father, this is just silliness beyond silliness, I prayed. Every person here is having fun, totally unconcerned with appearances, or worrying about saying something that might sound stupid or embarrassing to those around them. I should just, I don’t know, let my hair down and have some fun!

No sooner had I finished the prayer than Zechariah and Jonathan approached me with ants in their pants.

“Mahwgwet,” Jonathan pleaded in pitiful fashion, “we have to go potty.”

I looked towards the ball crawl, but Ryan looked like he was having such a good time with Brittany, I didn’t want to disturb him. So, I decided I would take them to the restroom. Now, the restrooms in Palucci’s were closed due to some plumbing problem, so we had to use the mall restrooms. I had wanted to take the boys into the Ladies’ Room with me, but the two protested, saying they were big boys and could use the Men’s Room on their own. I compromised and told them they could go to the Men’s Room, and I would stand guard at the door.

I will never learn.

9-The Young and the Clueless

© 2011 David’s Harp and Pen

“The humble cannot be embarrassed. When you start to feel embarrassed, it is because you are beginning to move in pride. Let embarrassment be a warning that you have departed from wisdom.”

This appeared in the church bulletin one Sunday. The church secretary said she put it in after reading it in a devotional. An extensive search on the Internet failed to reveal the phrase coiner, but as far as I was concerned, God had spoken it directly to me using a Jupiter-sized megaphone. I had always assumed that I embarrassed so easily because I thought too little of myself. Was the real culprit pride instead of insecurity? Or is it perhaps that conceit and insecurity are two sides of the same coin? All I was really sure of was that I spent too much time thinking about how I looked to others, which was a major time and energy waster. So, one fateful Saturday morning, I decided to start my day with the resolution to not get embarrassed, no matter what happened.

I chose the wrong Saturday to make that resolution.

It didn’t help that I began the day majorly sleep-deprived. I had been up most of the night with Shane, who was facing one of his greatest temptations ever. I won’t go into detail, but it was all I could do to keep him from wiping out the world’s chocolate supply in one shot.

After making my resolution, I went to my friend’s house to pick up his three kids. Arthur Collins was a single dad who went to my church. He wasn’t a member of the power trio because, first of all, if there were four men in the power trio, it would be the power quartet, and second, the power trio would not have him. At that time, I had started to see why. Arthur was about to close on his third divorce, and already, he was trying to line up a fourth wife. His first wife he met in Bible College. She was the mother of his three kids: Brittany, age 10, Zechariah, age 6, and Jonathan, age 3. After ten years together she left him and the kids because, according to Arthur, she said God released her from the marriage so she could marry their marriage counselor.

Four hours after his first divorce was finalized, Arthur married his second wife (in fact, I think the judge that signed the final decree for the divorce from his first wife was the same one who officiated the marriage to his second wife), but that marriage lasted only four months. She was sent up the river after setting up a charity and raising money for non-existent starving children in a non-existent third world nation.

His third marriage was, by far, the worst. They made it a whole year, until she was arrested for polygamy, with husbands all over the country. It turns out she had multiple personalities, and each was married to a different man. Arthur would say in her defense, though, that the personality he was married to was completely faithful to him throughout their marriage.

However, none of his wives had been nearly as scary as his girlfriends. His last girlfriend he met online on a so-called Christian dating website. He proposed to her after 15 days and sent her all kinds of money and gifts. Well, it turned out this beautiful, God-fearing woman in Russia was actually a creepy 63-year-old man in a trailer just outside Lincoln, Nebraska, who had scammed all sorts of men out of all sorts of money.

I frequently watched his kids and took them places because I felt sorry for all of them. I was getting to the point, however, where my sympathy for Arthur was beginning to diminish by leaps and bounds. That fateful Saturday was going to be the icing on the cake.

“Margaret!!” Brittany, Zechariah, and Jonathan yelled in unison as I walked in the door.

“Howdy!” I responded. “Are you guys ready to go to Palucci’s?” Palucci’s was one of those pizza places that had an arcade, kid casino, and mini-amusement park inside.

“I don’t know if I should leave Dad alone. He’s having a really hard time,” answered Brittany, who being the oldest and only girl, often wrongly took on the responsibility of being “the woman of the house.”

“What’s wrong, Sweetie?” I asked.

“His girlfriend just dumped him. He’s very depressed.”

“Where is he?”

“In the den.”

“Hmmm…why don’t you get your brothers ready and I’ll go talk to your dad?”

I walked through the unkempt living room to the even more unkempt den where Arthur was lying face down on the futon, groaning.

“Arthur? Arthur, what’s going on?” I inquired.

“It’s over. It’s all over. She said no. I feel so alone,” Arthur whined.

“Who? What? Why?”

“Suzanne! She said no! I can’t get a refund on the ring, either!”

“Suzanne? Didn’t you just meet her, like a week and a half ago?”

“Yes.”

“And you already proposed to her?”

“Yes. God told me she was the one. Not only did she say no, she blocked me from her email and changed her phone number. Why does God keep letting my heart get broken?”

(By the way, Arthur tells EVERY woman he dates that God said she was the one. I want to state for the record, because I know someone will ask, no, there was never anything between Arthur and me, and, not to be mean, but if he ever DID say to me, “God told me you were the one,” I think I would have to go looking for another god.)

I knew I had to be firm with Arthur and talk some sense into him, so I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth.

“Ummm…Arthur, I hate to tell you, but I don’t think you can blame any of this on God. I mean, as long as I’ve known you, you’ve said God was the one who put you up to getting involved with all of these different women, and I really don’t think God is that fickle…or mean.”

“I’m a good man. Any woman would be lucky to have me. Why can’t any of them see that?”

“So, what are you saying? That it’s always been the girl’s fault that your relationships haven’t worked?”

“Well, to be honest, yes! Look at Suzanne. We had a great thing going, and she just threw it all away. And why?”

“Eh, maybe because you bought a ring and proposed to her after less than two weeks, and you hadn’t even met in person yet?”

“But that just shows I’m committed.”

“Or maybe you need to be committed.”

Arthur got up from the futon and looked at me with derision in his eyes.

“Who are you to lecture me about relationships, Margaret? You’re 35, you’ve never been married, and Clinton was serving his first term as President the last time you had a date,” he said snidely.

There it was. That feeling of shame and embarrassment with which I was so familiar. I reminded myself that I shouldn’t take it personally, that it was only Satan trying to push my buttons. I needed to stand firm, because Arthur’s impulsiveness, stupidity, and selfishness in relationships were taking a toll on his kids, and someone had to say something.

“Oh, so are you saying that because I have so little romantic experience that I don’t know what I’m talking about, Arthur?” I shot back. “Look, just because I’ve never been run over by an eighteen wheeler doesn’t mean I don’t have the right to say that getting run over by an eighteen wheeler is a bad idea! This jumping from relationship to relationship, and telling your kids and yourself that God’s been the One to tell you to get involved with all these women, is bad! Bad, bad, bad!”

“But God says it’s not good for man to live alone. Besides, there are some people, like me, who just do better being married,” he answered, not sounding like he was totally convinced himself.

“But, if you do better married, wouldn’t you, like, still be married? And not working on your third divorce?”

“And my kids need a mother.”

“Your kids have a mother. They don’t need any more wicked stepmothers. You can’t stand there and tell me God would tell you to get involved with all these women with such glaring character defects.”

“God told Hosea to marry a prostitute!”

“Yes. God did. So, what you’re saying is God told you to marry all of your wives and date all your girlfriends to symbolize ancient Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, idolatry, and child sacrifice, which resulted in their subsequent demise at the hands of the Assyrians and banishment to the four corners of the earth? How’s that working out for you?”

Arthur’s face turned red with fury, and he walked right up to me and said, “You’ll never understand my pain! You’ve never had the guts to love someone like I have, which is why you’ll end up old and alone! We are NOT going to have this conversation again.”

He marched out of the den to the boy’s bedroom, and as he walked, he yelled, “Have the kids back by six!”

And that feeling hit me yet again. I knew I was right. I knew I was making an important point. But as soon as I heard his “old and alone” comment, all that discomfiture came rushing back. I knew it was the Enemy (and Arthur) just trying to keep me quiet, because I was right, but I still didn’t know how to get past it, and I knew that the whole shame game was keeping me from being more effective for God.

Well, not the best start for today, but I shall not relent, I thought to myself.

I gathered up the kids and we headed for my minivan (I drive a minivan because of Bernie). As I looked overhead to the grayness of the sky and felt the chill in the air, my cell phone rang. I answered it as I tried to get the kids into minivan. It was Ryan.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Tell me!” He said, with the sound of mischief in his voice.

“Eh…tell you what?” I hated trick questions, especially first thing in the morning.

“What’s the plan for today?”

“Oh, I’m taking Brittany, Zechariah, and Jonathan to Palucci’s.”

“Who are Brittany, Zechariah, and Jonathan and what is a Palucci?”

“Oh, they’re my friend Arthur’s kids. I’m taking them out today. Palucci’s is a pizzeria with video games and a little amusement park for kids.”

“Great! Come get me!” Ryan exclaimed, sounding like a little kid himself.

“But what about the worship arts intern barbecue?” I asked.

“It got cancelled because it’s going to rain, and I’m glad, because I don’t want to be barbecued.”

“Huh?”

“It was a joke.”

It took me a second to catch on. “Oh, I get it! Sorry,” I replied with nervous laughter. It was too early in the morning to even attempt funambulistics.

Don’t get embarrassed, Margaret. Not everyone gets every joke, I told myself.

“Do you want to just meet us there? I’ll give you directions,” I inquired.

“Can’t. The car I’ve been driving is in the garage getting repaired,” Ryan answered.

“Okay, but, are you sure you want to deal with all the yelling, screaming, fighting, etc.?” I asked.

“Margaret, you’re really not that bad,” he answered with a note of sarcasm in his voice.

I finished my phone conversation, loaded the boys into their medieval torture—I mean child safety seats—and into my minivan, and off we went to get Ryan. Now, I was always happy to spend time with Ryan in any capacity. However, whenever I was around him, embarrassing antics always seemed to follow, more so than normal, and with a bunch of rambunctious children in tow, my resolve to get through the day abashment free was going to be surely tested.

I picked up Ryan at his host home. The ride to Palucci’s was, for the most part, uneventful, which should’ve triggered alarms in my head. I parked the minivan in Palucci’s lot and unloaded the kids. Palucci’s was at the end of a shopping mall, and on the outside the place was full of shrubbery.

“It’s really nice of you take the kids out like this,” Ryan said.

Omigosh! I thought. This is a test, isn’t it? I bet he’s going to be watching me to see what kind of mother material I am. I better be on my best behavior.

“Yeah, well, they’re sweet kids, and Arthur needs the help. I like to think I’m a stabilizing force in their lives. You know, showing them the ropes,” I said, trying to sound maternal.

Ryan pointed his finger towards Zechariah and asked, “Is that one of the ropes you showed them?”

I turned my head to see Zechariah as he peed in the bush next to Palucci’s entrance.

“Zechariah!!” I screamed.

Zechariah chuckled to himself as he redid his pants. I was so mad I could’ve spit. I walked over to him, determined to set him straight.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. “Couldn’t you have waited until we got into Palucci’s?”

Zechariah answered, “Dad said it’s okay for me to pee in the bushes.”

“Like hell he did!” I shot back, forgetting I was talking to a child.

“Ooh! You said h-e-double hockey sticks!” Zechariah teased.

Brittany, Zechariah, and Jonathan all pointed their fingers at me and chided in unison, “Margaret is a potty mouth! Margaret is a potty mouth!”

“Am not! Am not!” I replied, forgetting I was no longer a five year old.

Joining in the laughter at my expense was Ryan. He walked up behind me with a huge grin on his face. We gathered the kids together and began to walk into Palucci’s.

“You’re a woman, and I know it seems foreign to you,” Ryan whispered to me, “but it’s a man’s God-given right to pee on anything he pleases.”

“Really?” I asked, not sure if Ryan was pulling my leg again.

“Well, within reason, of course, but any kind of greenery is fair game.”

That certainly explained a lot. I started to feel guilty for all the times I scolded Bernie for treating my neighbors bushes like his own personal Port-o-Potties, when really it was just my silly conventions interfering with the natural order of things. It turns out my education for that day was just beginning.

8-R.I.P. (Rest in Pieces)

© 2010 David’s Harp and Pen

I spoke earlier about bullies and helplessness. It seemed to me the worst thing about bullies, whether they be literally or figurative, was that, at least in my experience, they always seemed to attack out of nowhere and when I would least expect them. A big part of my feeling helpless as much as I did was the notion that I could never really be prepared for whenever human or circumstantial harriers would strike. I had to come to grips with the fact that, despite what my Charismatic sensibilities dictated, I was not able to control anywhere near as much of my circumstances as I’d liked. In fact, the only thing I could really say I could fully control was myself. Therefore, I needed to work not so much on how to avoid the real and allegorical Roccos of life, but how to respond to them when they crossed my path.

When I got home from Wednesday’s after defeating that drunk with my awesome tickle- and ice-fu, I went to the dojo’s website to watch a video lecture of Sensei’s. He discussed three stages students go through in training in order to reach proficiency. The first was learned response. In martial arts, through practice and time, we force our brains to react physically to specific stimuli. For example, the first defense and counter-strike Sensei taught me, I had to train myself when I would see a punch or shove coming to immediately block with one hand and strike my attacker with other. The second was muscle memory. This is the stage when certain maneuvers have been practiced to the point that, although I may still have to think about them, it is automatic for my body. Then there’s the third and final stage, which is reflex, when those fighting and defense techniques become second nature. It is the goal of every fighter to get to that third stage, when the training and discipline has become so ingrained in him that, at the slightest hint of danger, he is ready to go on the counter-attack without a second thought. In other words, fight is to him no longer a verb but a noun. It’s no longer something he does but the essence of who he is.

When danger, bullies, pain, anything unpleasant had come my way, my reflex was always to feel afraid and ineffectual. I wanted to get to that place when my first reactions would not be fear but faith and action. The time would come when that would be my first response. Of course, it came sooner than I thought, and as usual, not in the way I had planned.

I can’t properly describe the atmosphere at church when I arrived that Sunday. Everyone looked so somber and dejected. Some of the women in the lobby were crying. I was running late, so I didn’t take the time to ask anyone what the problem was. I took a seat way in the back, and when I looked at the platform, I was surprised not to see Pastor Hadley. Pastor Jackson, the associate pastor, took the pulpit to do the morning announcements. It was then I learned the source of everyone’s sorrow. He told the congregation, choking back tears, that Hannah Wagner’s baby had died! He then related the details of the funeral service, which would take place on Tuesday.

I was anxious for the church service to be over so I could get more details. As soon as Pastor Jackson dismissed everyone, I made a bee line for Rhonda Mitchell.

“Rhonda!” I exclaimed. “Hannah’s baby! Oh my gosh! What happened?”

“Oh, it was terrible, Dear! The umbilical cord became wrapped around the baby’s neck and strangled him during delivery! It was terrible. The doctor and that hospital dropped the ball in a big way. If I were Joey and Hannah, I would sue them for every penny they’ve got!” Rhonda said with increasing wrath.

I found myself very upset and wanting nothing else than to go straight home after church. I couldn’t get Hannah out of my mind. She seemed like such a sweetheart, and the whole thing seemed so senseless and unfair. In my life, I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more fearful or powerless than I have when someone I loved has died. There were several times in my life when friends and/or loved ones had died in rapid succession, and I remember well the dread I felt. For a while, I was afraid to answer my phone or read my email for fear of news that someone else I cared about had been taken from me. Grief is perhaps the worst of all feelings of helplessness, and poor Hannah and her husband Joey were now feeling it in spades.

The funeral service on Tuesday was packed. I had never seen the church so full. The Wagners and the Hadleys had a good reputation with all the other pastors in Nashville, so the church had wall-to-wall people to show their support. Because it was such an emotional time not only for the Hadleys but all of the pastoral team at my church, the pastor of another church would be officiating at the service. As I scanned the sanctuary, I caught a glimpse of Hannah in the front row. Oh, the look on her face! I couldn’t even imagine what she was feeling at that moment. I’d been told over the years that losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare, but to lose one like she did, when she never even got a chance to get to know her baby…it got me so upset to even think about it! I prayed as hard as I could that God would give her some special and unique comfort in the days to come.

The service was so sad, and although the guest pastor gave a comforting, although familiar, word about our hope in Heaven, the natural, human sense of hopelessness and helplessness continued to pervade and rest heavily on every person in that room. At the end of the service, Joey and Hannah stood at the front of the sanctuary by the little casket to form a receiving line. Scores of people lined up to offer their condolences to the grieving couple. I found a place in line next to Rhonda and we waited patiently to make our way to the front.

“Oh, the tragedy!” Rhonda lamented.

“I know. The baby shower seems so long ago now,” I commented.

“It was such a happy day! I just don’t understand. She’s such a sweetheart. And her uterus was so perfect!”

I looked at Rhonda, trying hard to comprehend her thought process at that moment, but decided, to my credit, to keep my mouth shut. I then turned to look at Hannah up at the front. She looked like she was trying to be so brave. I hated every second of that ordeal for her. I felt so helpless, like most of us do when we see someone we care about it pain and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Oh, God, I prayed silently, please, please, please, give me something, anything! Some word, Bible verse, something that will give her any kind of comfort or relief.

It’s in situations like that when I worry most about saying or doing something stupid. As we got closer to the front, however, I was freshly reminded that at funerals, the majority of people come down with Grief-Induced Brain Freeze (GIBF). The first words of “comfort” offered to Hannah that I was close enough to hear started the very short process of setting my blood to boil.

“Well, Hannah, I guess God needed another baby in Heaven,” said a well-intentioned but completely clueless middle-aged woman as she hugged Hannah.

“God needed another baby in Heaven?!” I repeated as a question, and more loudly than I thought.

“What are you talking about?” Rhonda asked.

“That’s a terrible thing to say to a woman who just lost her baby! ‘God needed another baby in Heaven!’ Well, why the hell did He have to take Hannah’s?!”

“Margaret! Language! We’re in church! And we’re grieving! We’re grieving in church!”

“Sorry,” I said repentantly.

An elderly couple was the next to approach Joey and Hannah. The husband took Hannah’s hand and said to her in an aristocratic tone, “Don’t cry, Hannah. God has a plan!”

“Oh, I hate that!” I exclaimed to Rhonda. “Why do people say stuff like that to when someone’s lost a loved one? ‘God has a plan!’ It’s like they’re saying God willed her baby to die!”

“Will you keep your voice down?” Rhonda snapped. “What are you getting so riled up for, anyway?”

“I’m sorry, Rhonda. It’s just that I’ve lost so many people in my life, and I can still remember all the stupid things people would say to me to try to make me feel better. I mean, yeah, I know God has a plan in all that happens to us, but to tell someone when they’re baby just died not to cry because God has a plan is just…well…cruel!”

“I think you’re reading too much into this. Calm down! Besides, Hannah’s strong like her mother. She knows that you have to take what some people say with a grain of salt.”

Trying to calm down, I replied, “Okay. If you say so.”

After the elderly couple walked off, a man dressed in a pastor’s frock gave Joey and Hannah a huge hug. Clutching his Bible tightly to his chest with his right hand and raising his left hand, he said to Hannah, “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but God’s Word will never pass away. That’s why we must learn from this that we should never love anything or anyone too much, because God wants us to put Him first.”

If looks could kill, that pastor would’ve been dead instantly from the figurative steel core armor piercing bullets I shot at him with my eyes!

“Oh no he didn’t!” I growled, finding it harder and harder to contain my displeasure.

“What now?” Rhonda snapped.

“Rhonda, please tell me you didn’t hear that! So, now it’s Hannah’s fault her baby died? Because she loved the kid too much? I really don’t understand why you’re not as upset about this as I am!”

“Margaret…Dear, sweet, naïve Margaret,” Rhonda condescended, “working in a church, especially one as large as this one, I average anywhere between 12-20 funerals a year. When someone dies, people feel that they have to say something, or at least quote Scripture, to the family in mourning. I haven’t heard anything today that’s any worse than anything I’ve heard at all those other funerals. You just smile politely, nod your heard, and let it roll off your back. That’s what Hannah’s doing. I suggest you do the same.”

I nodded my head in acquiescence. I certainly didn’t want to upset the natural order of things. I began to hum to myself so as not to have to hear any more words of (dis)comfort being offered to Hannah.

We finally got our turn at the head of the receiving line. I looked at Hannah’s face. Despite what Rhonda said, Hannah didn’t look strong. She didn’t look like anything was rolling off her back. In fact, she looked like she was carrying the world on her shoulders. Her eyes were cherry red from crying. I felt so helpless…for her and for me. I wanted just some little speck of consolation to offer her. I then looked at Rhonda: strong, experienced, never-at-a-loss-for-words Rhonda, and to my shock, I saw, for the first time, the helplessness I felt written all over Rhonda’s face. She looked uncomfortable and uneasy. Then I wondered, given all the funerals she’d been to, what words of wisdom she would bestow.

After several awkward moments of hesitation, Rhonda put her hands on Hannah’s shoulders and asked her, “So, Dear, when do you think Joey and you are going to try for another one?”

If the funeral had been part of a cartoon, my reaction to Rhonda’s question would’ve been shown with my eyeballs popping out about 12 feet ahead of me, still attached to my eyeball sockets with steel springs. I had heard some awful things said at that funeral, but the words proceeding from Rhonda’s mouth took the (edible ultrasound photo) cake! As if it wasn’t bad enough, Rhonda just kept talking, telling Joey and Hannah to try again right away, because the best thing to do is jump right back in the saddle, blah, blah, blah!

My brain and my patience had reached critical mass. I was absolutely furious for Hannah. I’d heard stories from other former wimps like me about the moment in time when they first fully got in touch with their anger. The stories all differed, of course, but the common denominator in each one was the person getting angry had, how shall I say this, a little bit of an out-of-body experience?

I don’t remember any of the sixty seconds that followed Rhonda’s equestrian analogy. That was probably a good thing, the not remembering, because if the matter went to court, it would greatly help my insanity plea. My brain reconnected with the rest of me when I heard Rhonda scream. Apparently I had closed my eyes during that minute, and when I opened them, I saw Rhonda face down on the floor, her left arm twisted and cranked into her back, held down by…me! Several ushers were making their way to us when I quickly let go of Rhonda’s arm and jumped to my feet. One of the ushers helped Rhonda to her feet as she moaned and groaned. With all the fury of the Earth’s molten core and the indignation of Godzilla right before he incinerated Tokyo, Rhonda hissed to me, “You! You! You Bride of Satan, You!”

I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even formulate any words in my brain. I felt all eyes on me, and I wondered, if Rhonda had her way, if I would be having a funeral of my own in the very near future. I sprinted to the back of the sanctuary, grabbed my purse, and bolted out the door.

When I arrived home, to my dismay, Bruno was waiting for me. I’d given him spare keys to my house and car, and someone at church had called him to tell him what happened. When I walked into my living room and found him sitting on my couch, he shot me a scowl that would’ve made Charles Manson recoil in terror.

“So! Margaret! Is there something you’d like to tell me?” he asked. Even I knew that was a trick question.

“Eh,” I stalled, “honestly, I don’t exactly remember what happened.”

“Well, let’s recap!” He opened my laptop and went to PeekABoo.com. I felt my pulse spike into the triple digits as he played a video of me at the funeral. My jaw dropped as he looped the portion during which I threw Rhonda down and attempted to amputate her arm with my bare hands.

“Somebody taped that? Somebody taped that and posted it on the Internet?” I asked in horror.

“Oh, you’re a celebrity now! In the 20 minutes since it was posted, you’ve gotten half a million hits! Gotta love the caption, too! ‘Margaret Sims, attending the funeral of an infant, apparently did not feel the condolences being offered the bereaved were up to snuff, so she decided to exercise some quality control.’ Margaret, what were you thinking?” Bruno accused.

“I…I…someone really posted that on the Internet?!” I asked again, still in shock.

“Hey, you think the caption’s bad, get a load of some of these viewer comments! Here’s one… ‘what kind of woman assaults someone in the receiving line of a funeral? Margaret, whoever you are, you’re as bad as those nutty church groups who picket funerals of dead soldiers. There’s a special place in Hell reserved for people like you!”

I fell back on the couch, in shock and unable to close my mouth.

“Oh, wait, they get better! ‘Wow! That Sims chick looks a lot like that lady serial killer down in Florida. I can’t remember her name, but they gave her the Oscar right after she went to the electric chair,’” Bruno continued mockingly.

“The whole world thinks I’m a crazy person,” I muttered.

“Not the whole world,” Bruno said facetiously. “Sensei wrote on here. He said he doesn’t know what was going on but wanted you to know your kimura was flawless!”

I smacked my forehead with my hand.

“You’ll like this one, Mags! They said, ‘Margaret Sims, you’re my hero! I want to be like you in every way, shape, and form,’” Bruno continued.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“Let’s see. Sally Long, founder and president of The Center for Grief and Loss Recovery.”

I lowered my head to my knees and buried my face.

“I knew this was gonna backfire somehow,” Bruno ranted. “I knew letting you take martial arts classes was going to be a bad idea. Lucky for you, I got everything taken care of.”

I felt that anger again, and so I rose to my feet and looked at Bruno.

“What do you mean, ‘I knew this was gonna backfire’? What do you mean you ‘let’ me take the classes? And what did you take care of?” I inquired.

“C’mon, Mags! You’re more of a menace than that dog of yours, and now that you know a few judo moves, you’re even more a menace! Good thing for you, when Rhonda called me about pressing charges, I reminded her that if she did, all those speeding tickets of hers that I magically made disappear might reappear again, and so she backed down. You could show some gratitude.”

I couldn’t contain it any longer. I looked at Bruno and declared, “I don’t need you to do anything for me, not if you think it gives you the right to insult me! Let Rhonda have me arrested! I don’t care! I stood up for what was right at that funeral! Yeah, maybe I should’ve just told Rhonda to be quiet instead of submitting her, but you weren’t there, Bruno! You didn’t hear all the nutty things people were saying to Hannah. You didn’t see the look of death all over her face when Rhonda told her she should just start making a new baby right away, like she was replacing a broken dishwasher or something!”

“Mags, people have been saying stupid things at funerals ever since Cain killed Abel, and everyone and their brother accepts that this is an unavoidable part of life, like death and taxes and hail right after getting your car washed. Nobody makes a big deal out of it. Nobody except you! Listen, at my Uncle Giuseppe’s funeral, the priest walked up to my Aunt Concetta as she was bawling her eyes out and said, ‘Don’t cry, Connie! Gio’s in a better place. Life is fleeting. We’re here for a moment, and then we’re gone. Dry your eyes, because you’re going to be with him any day now.’ She was so distraught she had an aneurysm and dropped dead right there on the spot!”

I stared at Bruno a second, then asked, because I was confused, “Eh, okay. So….what was the point of that story?”

Bruno thought for a moment, then answered in a frustrated tone, “I don’t know. It seemed relevant at the time. I’m so ticked at you right now I can’t think straight! I just don’t understand why you have to be an idiot about everything!”

I couldn’t take it any more. I got up and walked right to him. After a few seconds, he stood up and looked straight at me. I looked straight back at him and gave him a good hard shove, which pushed him back into his chair.

“Did you just push me?” he asked, irate.

“Yes, I did!” I answered coolly.

He stood up and got right in my face and said, “You do realize assaulting a police officer is a crime.”

I shoved him back into his chair and said, “Right now, you’re not a cop! You’re just big mean old bully!”

“What are you gonna do now, Mags? Are you gonna hit me? Are you gonna knock me out? Inquiring minds want to know!”

I wanted an outlet for my anger, but he did have a point about the cop thing. To the right of his chair, I noticed Bernie’s basket of chew toys. I went for the basket and began to throw them at Bruno fast and furiously.

“Margaret Ann Sims! Forget about getting arrested. At this rate, I’m just going to have you committed,” he yelled.

“You are so mean to me, Bruno Spallone! You never give me credit for anything! One of these days, you’ll see that I was right about something and have to say you’re sorry!”

Holding his hands over his head to block the squeaky toys, he answered, “Aw, that’ll be a cold day in Hell!”

Seeing that I had run out of chew toys, I screamed, picked up the basket itself and lunged to put it over Bruno’s head. Right before I did, I felt myself being pulled backwards by two very strong arms. Then I felt a hand move the hair away from my left ear. Finally, I felt the warm breath of the man to whom those hands and arms were attached as he whispered in my ear, “Let it go, Margaret. He’s not worth the jail time.”

I turned around to see it was Ryan. All my anger evaporated and I became a Raggedy Ann. Bruno jumped to his feet, looked at us, and grimaced.

“How the hell do you do that, O?! She’s been carrying on with me like raving lunatic for the last thirty minutes! Then you come in, say two words to her, and she turns into…she turns into freakin’ Bambi!”

“It’s the accent, Bru. The women fall for it every time,” Ryan answered suavely. I nodded my head in agreement.

Bruno almost looked hurt. After a short pause, he said, “But…but I’ve got a cool Brooklyn accent.”

“It’s not the same,” Ryan replied. Bruno looked at me and I shook my head to concur.

“Well, maybe you can talk some sense into her with that Irish accent of yours. I’m going to the bathroom,” Bruno grunted as he headed to the bathroom.

As soon as Bruno was out of the room, Ryan let go of me and I turned to face him. He had that unreadable look on his face again.

“So, the funeral,” he said.

“You heard?” I asked.

“I was there running sound. I heard AND I saw,” he answered.

My anger rushed back instantaneously. I began to rant, “Oh, so you know, and I guess you thought you’d come down here and give me a good talking to just like Bruno! Well, save your breath! I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it!”

“And what exactly am I going to say?” he asked.

“You’re going to say it was uncalled for, that I was being stupid, that I’ll probably be ex-communicated, and I should’ve let sleeping dogs lie. Well, you weren’t up there! You didn’t hear all the idiotic things people were saying to Hannah and how she looked like she was dying a little more with each comment. When Jesus went to Lazarus’ funeral, He cried and then He raised him from the dead, so unless they’re gonna cry or resurrect the corpse, people should just keep their mouths shut! Yeah, I’m sorry I hurt Rhonda, but I’d be sorrier if I didn’t do or say anything. It was like Rhonda was Rocco and Hannah was me, and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing while she got verbally assaulted, so you can just keep your opinion of the matter to yourself!”

“Well, actually, I wasn’t going to say any of that.”

As I stared at Ryan, I heard a sound in my head equivalent to the air being let out of a balloon at an abnormally high speed.

Slightly embarrassed, I stuttered, “Oh. Wh…wh…what were you going to say, then?”

As Bruno walked back into the living room, Ryan got down on his knees in front of me, bowed his head low, raised his arms up and down, and said, “I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!” Then Ryan grabbed my right hand in his hands, looked up at my face, and said, “Oh, Great and Powerful Ninja Goddess, please, let me just touch the hem of your garment, because I know if I do, I can be a real man!”

Bruno became enraged and yelled, “O, what the hell are you doing? For God’s sakes, don’t encourage her!”

“Shut up, Bru! She’s made major progress here!” Ryan shot back.

“Progress, O? Progress?! She’s on video pile driving a semi-elderly woman into the ground at a baby’s funeral for the whole world to see! This is regress! I know you feel protective and responsible for her and all that crap, like she’s your pet basset hound or something, but this is bad! This is very bad! It may seem cute to you now, but I’ve been dealing with this for the last five years I’ve known her, and by the end of the first year, let me tell you, the charm wears off!”

“I think she feels bad enough already!”

“No, I don’t think so! She always feels bad, and yet she continues to do stupid crap like this again and again!”

“Yeah, and I can see clearly that five years of you yelling and ripping her head off every time she screws up has made things so much better!”

Bruno and Ryan continued to bicker, getting closer to each other as they argued. I really thought they might come to blows. Although I felt awful about it, I couldn’t help but be a little happy. For the first time in my life, someone had stepped up to defend my honor. The argument was interrupted, however, by the ringing of Bruno’s cell phone.

“We’ll finish this discussion later,” Bruno snarled at Ryan. He then opened his phone and answered, “Officer Bruno Spallone…oh, hello!” He seemed to be surprised. “Look, I talked to Rhonda. She’s not going to press charges. As for the church, Margaret feels really bad and will do anything to…Really?...Well, I can do one better. I’m at her house right now. She’s standing right next to me…Sure. Would you hold on a second, please?” Bruno put his cell phone on mute, then looked at me and said, “It’s Hannah Wagner. She wants to talk to you.”

“Me?” I asked, in shock. “What does she want?”

“Your cannoli recipe!” Bruno snarled. “What do you think?! She wants to talk to you about the funeral! Listen, before you talk to her, you’re gonna put the phone on speaker so all of us can hear.” He then handed me his cell phone.

“Why do I have to put in on speaker?” I asked.

“I wanna hear what’s going on, because even though you don’t deserve it, I’m going to try to save you from yourself.”

I made a face like a scolded child as I unmuted the phone and then put it on speaker.

“Hello, Hannah,” I said as nonchalantly as I possibly could.

“Hello, Margaret. The graveside service just ended, and I wanted to call you before it got too late in the day,” Hannah said, her voice cracking a little.

“Hannah, I feel so awful about everything. I mean, what happened at the shower was bad enough, but my behavior today was, well, there was just no excuse for it! I am so sorry! I just have no words for how bad I…”

“Listen, Margaret, you don’t have to go through all this. The reason I called was to say thank you.”

“Thank you?”

“Thank you?!” Bruno mouthed silently.

Hannah continued, “I absolutely dreaded today. I told Joey yesterday I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the funeral. I mean, my baby died, and I told God that I wished that I had died, too. Of course, Mom and Dad have so many friends that have called and visited, and I know they’ve all meant well, but, the thing is, at funerals, people think they have to say something, anything, and well, more often than not, what they say is more hurtful than helpful. Lots of people told me I shouldn’t cry because my baby’s in Heaven, or that it was all God’s Will. One person at the funeral said to me before it started that it was better that he died, because if he’d have survived, what with being choked by the umbilical cord, he’d probably be special needs, and all…” She got all choked up. “Like I would’ve cared whether my child had been born with learning problems!”

I felt myself getting choked up as she talked.

She went on, “Like I said, I know people mean well, but some of the things people said to me just came off as so cruel. And contrary to what people think, I’m not tough like my mom. She loves a good insult. She never backs down from fight. Not that anyone there was trying to insult me, but you know what I mean, right? I almost felt like I was being ganged up on, understand?”

“Yeah, I do,” I answered.

“So, anyway, halfway through the receiving line, I told God and Joey that I wasn’t going to make it. Then when Rhonda came and said I should just jump right into having another baby, just replace one kid with another, like that’s even possible, I thought I would die right then and there! Well, you come along, and, well, you put Rhonda in her place in short order! After I was done with the receiving line, I excused myself to my dad’s study, and I laughed my head! The most horrible day of my life and, as crazy as it sounds, I found one glimmer of joy, and it was because of you! So all that to say…thank you!”

I looked at Ryan, who had a big smile on his face. I then looked at Bruno, who scowled so hard I thought his face would freeze that way.

I said to Hannah, “Ah, you’re welcome! I mean…yeah, you’re welcome! So, you’re really not mad?”

Hannah answered, “Margaret, I’ll tell you a secret, and you can never tell Rhonda I told you this, okay? I love Rhonda, but she’s so pushy, and what you did to her today is what the rest of us have only dreamed about doing!” Bruno slapped his face and dragged his hand across it.

“I won’t say anything,” I answered, relieved.

“Listen, Margaret, the next few weeks are going to be crazy for me, but maybe we could get together after that? I’d love to get to know you better,” Hannah asked.

“Really?” I asked excitedly.

“Yeah, I would. Is my number showing up on the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. This is my cell. Send me a text from your cell so I have it. We’ll connect in a few weeks, okay?”

“Yeah! I would totally love that!”

“Me, too! Well, I have to go, but thanks again, Margaret. You’re a good woman to have around! Have a good rest of the day.”

“Yeah, you too! I’m praying for you.” I hung up the phone and handed it back to Bruno who looked so angry I probably could’ve fried an egg on his face.

“We will never speak of this again,” he grunted as he headed to the door.

“Ah, Bru,” Ryan asked, “isn’t there something you want to say to Margaret?”

Bruno’s eyes shot back and forth between Ryan and me, and with an angry grin on his face, he bowed slightly and quickly to me and said, “I’m not worthy.” Then he bolted out the front door.

I turned to Ryan and said, “I did it! I did it! I stood up to the bullies! I stood up for what was right, and I did it my own way, and now I might have a girlfriend out of it!”

“That’s me girl!” Ryan chuckled.

“By the way, how did you get in here?” I asked.

“I can walk through walls.”

I stared at him with my jaw dropped for a minute. He laughed.

“I’m just screwing with ya! Shane told me where you hide the spare key! I just love that look on your face!” He chuckled.

I remembered I had left Bernie in the garage and walked to the door to let him into the living room. As I opened the door, I said to Ryan, “You better not tease me like that anymore, because now I’m rough and tough and can stand up for myself.”

When I opened the door, Bernie charged in, jumped on me, and knocked me straight to the floor. Ryan bust out laughing as he picked me up off the floor.

“Baby steps, Margaret! Baby steps!” he said with a light in his eyes. I felt a little deflated again. Ryan then backed up to the front door, bowing to me and saying, “I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!” as he headed out.

As I closed the front door behind him, I pondered yet another huge stride made in such a short period of time. I was no longer the victim. I was the victor, and I would never feel powerless again…except until maybe the next time.

7-Daniel(le) LaRusso

© 2010 David’s Harp and Pen

Most of my life, I have had, besides rampant insecurity, a terrible, looming feeling of helplessness. The two go hand in hand, I suppose. I still remember vividly when that awful sense of powerlessness became my life-long companion.

It was the first day of first grade. Rocco Campizi, the school bully, saw me in the schoolyard. When he walked up to me, he knocked my lunch box on the ground, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “I knew from the moment I saw you, that I wanted to kill you.” (He always knew how to talk to the ladies.) That afternoon, we had gym class. Our gym teacher, Mr. Patillo, always on the lookout to enhance the elementary school physical education experience, got the brilliant idea to let us play dodge ball using a brand new volleyball. That thing was hard as a rock and must have been filled with lead. For reasons I don’t remember, I was picked to be “it.” I was placed in the center of an imaginary circle, not unlike gladiators in the Roman coliseums on their way to be slaughtered, while my fellow classmates threw the volleyball at me. Rocco decided I had not suffered enough, so he grabbed the volleyball, ran up to me, and slammed the volleyball into the right side of my head over my ear. For the next month, I alternated between hearing a terrible ringing nonstop to not being able to hear anything at all. The ringing eventually went away, but I never got all my hearing back. Of course, Mr. Patillo wasn’t paying attention, and all the other kids thought it was funny, so when I told the principal, it was Rocco’s word against mine. In other words, nothing happened.

Thus began a pattern that repeated itself throughout my entire school career. Each year, some new kid would be elected student body bully, proceed to torture me, I would report him or her, and for whatever reason, nothing would be done about it. As I endured this, I would, from time to time, seek the advice of some adult I trusted, hoping for an intervention, but what I always heard in response was something like this: “Kids wouldn’t bother you if you just (fill in the blank). Speak your mind, don’t speak your mind, stand up to them, ignore them, show them you’re the bigger person. Those bullies wouldn’t treat you like that if you didn’t invite it.” I don’t remember saying to any of those little thugs in elementary school, “Oh, please, please, beat the snot out of me and tease me as harshly and often as you like. I do so love a good flagellation!” I would’ve liked it if, just once, instead of an adult telling me the proper way to react to being ritualistically sacrificed, they would rather have gone to the mass-murderers-in-the-making like Rocco and said, firmly yet lovingly, “You better leave Margaret Ann alone or I’ll push you in front of the school bus and make it look like an accident.” No one ever stood up for me but me, and as it can already be gathered, I did a terrible job of it.

I tried a few times to tell the members of the power trio about the bullying as a kid, but it always fell on deaf ears. Bruno would say, “No one respects a door mat. You should’ve fought back. You have to learn to stick up for yourself.” Of course, that didn’t apply if the person with whom I had to stick up for myself WAS Bruno. Shane said it was because I am shy, and to un-shy people, shyness is seen as snobbery, which according to Shane is a capital offense. My favorite explanation, however, came from Larry, who said it was God’s good pleasure that I endured hardship so that God’s character could be perfected in me. As I’ve said before, I know Larry always means the best, but the way he said it, I might have taken it better if he had merely said God enjoys seeing me suffer, because when He squashes me like a grape, it makes me a better person.

I started out in life being pushed around by bullies. That constant fear made it hard to focus, which probably explains my propensity for accidents. Although I’m sure the people in my life only meant to encourage me, I took their encouragement to mean that somehow, all that torture from the other kids was somehow my fault. As I grew older, the bullies I faced changed from mean classmates to life itself. I know that a good part of what we face in life is out of our control, but I always felt I was getting the message that not only was it in my control, but when painful stuff happened, I somehow brought it on myself. I didn’t want to be a klutz any more. I didn’t want to be fearful. I didn’t want to feel powerless. Like I said before about fighting temptation, sometimes it’s not about trying the same ineffective things harder but trying something different.

It didn’t dawn on me until well into my early 30s that growing up, I was always one of the biggest kids in my class. However, I always saw myself as the smallest and weakest. I desperately wanted that perspective to change, to really know deep down that I was the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, seated in Heavenly places with Christ, and all that other stuff we Charismatics quote when we’re afraid or when we’re vying against some random Baptist for that last parking space at the mall. I didn’t want to feel victimized and helpless any longer. It turned out, like so many other things in my relationship with God, that I needed a major paradigm shift to change the perspective.

The Monday after the infamous baby shower, I drove to a martial arts school where Bruno had been taking lessons for a long time. That night was his promotion to purple belt, and he had invited all of us to watch. While my experience with martial arts was limited to poorly dubbed movies I watched as a kid, I was always impressed with martial artists’ physical discipline and what seemed to be their total lack of fear. When I pulled into the parking lot, I got an itch on the scar I’d received from the bear trap. I looked at that scar as I scratched it and started to feel that awful helpless feeling again. Three trips to the emergency room in six weeks was a record, even by my standards. It was terribly embarrassing. The staff at the Davidson County Memorial emergency room had such a hard time believing me when I said I was really that clumsy that I had to make up a story about an abusive boyfriend just to save face!

I gingerly peaked my head into the classroom where Bruno said he would be. I was immediately taken aback by what I saw. There were guys wall to wall, dressed in gis (martial arts uniforms), all impressive physical specimens, executing their respective maneuvers with expediency, precision, and all-around awesomeness, like well-oiled machines. I was so absorbed in watching the martial artists I didn’t notice Ryan standing to the right of me.

“Are you okay?” He asked, concerned.

“Yeah. Why?” I answered.

“I said hello to you a few times, and you didn’t respond.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t hear very well out of my right ear.”

“Really? Is that why you’re always screaming at me?”

“Eh, come again?”

“Are you jealous because I have perfect hearing, or is it more of a ‘misery loves company’ thing?”

Before I could answer him, Bruno walked up to us, soaked in sweat.

“What are you two doing here so early?” Bruno asked.

“You said to be here at 8,” I answered.

“No, I didn’t. I said 9,” Bruno replied.

“No, Bru. You said 8,” Ryan interjected.

“Oh, wait a minute! You’re right,” Bruno said. “I told Shane to be here at eight instead of nine so he’d really be here by nine. I must’ve told you two eight, too. Why don’t you come in and watch the class?”

I started to say, “Oh, that’s alright. I’ll just come back la…”

“Sure, we’d love to stay,” Ryan interrupted. He then grabbed my wrist and pulled me in behind him as we walked. As we made our way to a row of chairs at the side of the classroom, my eyes scoped the room back and forth and back again. Everyone there looked so in shape, so confident, so in control. I didn’t remember a time, even at the baby shower, when I felt more out of place. I sat down, my gaze still locked on all the martial artistry in front of me. Ryan sat in the seat to the left of me.

“So, what happened to your hearing in your right ear? Were you born that way?” Ryan asked.

“No,” I answered. “It was Rocco Campizi.”

“What’s a Rocco Campizi?”

“He was the school bully. He slammed a volleyball into my ear because he thought it was funny and I lost part of my hearing.”

“Omeegosh! That’s horrible! What happened to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Nothing at all? He cost you your hearing!”

“It was his word against mine. It’s no big deal, really. He did a lot worse to me through elementary school. Nothing ever happened to him.”

“What about your parents? Your teachers? They all just stood by and didn’t do anything?”

“It’s really nothing. I mean, I shouldn’t have been such a wimp. Maybe if I had tried a little harder to be friendlier, or something, the other kids wouldn’t have bothered me like they did.”

I turned and looked at Ryan. His face had turned dark red. He looked at me, then got up, walked away, walked back to me, walked away, and walked back, pacing like a madman. Most of the time, when I told people about Rocco, which wasn’t very often, they usually responded by saying something like God had a plan, or Rocco was just being a typical boy at that age, or I should’ve tried harder to make friends with the kids in school when I was younger. No one had ever reacted like Ryan did at that moment. It really threw me for a loop, and I didn’t know how to respond to him. I became very nervous, and as I normally do when I think someone might be even minutely angry with me, I stood and went to Ryan to apologize.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said nervously.

“What are you apologizing for?” Ryan asked angrily.

“I don’t know. You just seemed to get really upset all of a sudden. You probably didn’t want to hear that whole sob story about my ear. I should just be a man about the whole thing and…”

Ryan shushed me as he put his index finger over my lips and said, “Don’t ever let me hear you talk about being a man about anything! Like you had any control over what that little monster did to you?”

As he moved his finger away from my mouth, I looked deep into his eyes. I couldn’t think of anything to say to him, and I felt a few isolated tears run down my face.

“If you had been my daughter, my sister…no, if you had just been some girl in my class, and I saw you get tortured day in and day out, and no one did anything, I would’ve taken Rocco out into the woods, ripped his still-beating heart from his chest, and then eaten it, just like Magua did to Colonel Munro in The Last of the Mohicans.”

I was so taken aback by not only what he said but also how he said it. The only way I can describe the look in his eyes at that moment was undefiled rage. I was afraid. I was very afraid.

“Hey O,” Bruno called to him from the other side of the room. “Come check this out.”

Ryan turned and walked away to Bruno, not saying a word to me. When he got to Bruno, Bruno showed him something called a crab throw. The two of them started to work on it together. I stood by my seat, thinking and staring. Who was this guy I had been crushing on for weeks? I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone that angry, not even Bruno! I turned away and looked at the wall for a moment.

Holy… I thought. What if he’s criminally insane? What if he’s one of those guys who turns out to be really jealous and possessive? What if one day I come home and find Bernie boiling in my bathtub because Ryan thought I liked my dog more than him? Oh, no! I think I’ve done it again and gone and fallen for a lunatic!

I turned back just in time to see Ryan triumphantly throw Bruno flat on his back. As Bruno got back to his feet, Ryan turned to look at me, winked, clicked his tongue, and flashed that million-dollar smile I had grown to love.

Well, God, I prayed silently, he may be a lunatic, but he’s a handsome, godly, charming, protective, and attentive lunatic!

“You come to try class?” Said a voice from behind me in broken English and a heavy Oriental accent. I turned to see a Chinese man in his 60s about five feet, ten inches tall, with short, spiky jet black hair, slightly gray around the temples, clothed in a black gi with a black belt. His name was Chi Wai Kwong. He had a black belt in several different martial arts. He had been a missionary all over the Orient in his younger days, and he often went on expeditions to smuggle Bibles into China. He came to America 15 years ago to avoid capture by the Communist government in China and opened his own dojo. I was pretty sure he never had a nervous or fearful day in his life.

“Oh, no. I’m just here to see Bruno get his purple belt,” I answered, a little in awe of the man who stood next to me.

“I show you few basic things. All women should know how to defend self.”

“Ah, you don’t understand, though. I’m a career klutz! Besides, centrifugal force and I have been at odds for so long, if we started to cooperate, I’d lose my whole identity!” I joked nervously.

Sensei Chi looked at me oddly, then said, “No idea what you say, but I repeat: all women should know how to defend self. I show you basic defense and counter strike. Try and punch my face.”

I slowly made a fist with my right hand and aimed it at his nose. He leaned slightly to his left, pushed my wrist away with his left hand, made what’s called an “iron palm” with his right hand, and lunged it towards my face.

“See?” He asked. “Is very easy. Now you try.”

He aimed his right fist straight at me, and I proceeded to freeze, like I normally do when I feel under attack.

“What is wrong?” Sensei Chi inquired.

“I’m sorry. I…ah…try it again,” I answered apologetically.

He aimed his fist at me again, and again I froze. I realized at that moment that I was conditioned to react to confrontation with fear and helplessness, and I didn’t see any way of breaking it.

“Your eyes say fear is your master,” Sensei Chi commented matter-of-factly. Tell me something I didn’t know.

“I…you know what? I’ll just sit this out. I appreciate the effort, but, I just don’t have it in me, nor do I have the coordination.”

Sensei Chi pointed to my head and said, “If can change here,” then pointed to my heart and said, “and here,” then made circles with his index finger in front of my body, “can change here.”

I looked at him and shuddered in shame as I heard myself say out loud to him, “I can’t change.”

“No, she means she won’t change,” said Ryan, who had snuck up beside me with Bruno, as was his usual fashion.

Surprised, I turned to look at him and asked, “What do you mean?”

“You like being a klutz. You like people feeling sorry for ya. You like the attention.”

“That’s not true!” I shot back nervously. Ryan once again got in my face and moved forward, causing me to have to move backwards. Then he raised his hand to me and gave me a good hard shove, which caused me to almost fall backwards.

“Yes it is. You love being surrounded by drama and everyone looking at you saying, ‘Poor little Mags! Can’t win for losin’!’” he said mockingly, still moving forward as he shoved me harder a second time. I grew increasingly scared, but I felt a new sensation, too, as he tooled me around the mat: anger.

So he’s one of those, I thought. He acts really sweet in the beginning, but then he turns out to be a demon.

Bruno began to move towards us and said, “O, knock it off!” but Sensei, sensing something big and important was going on, held Bruno back.

“No,” Ryan said defiantly. “I’m just calling this spineless little Yankee like I see her.” He shoved me yet again and increasingly harder.

“How dare you say that when you know so little about me!” I said, trembling with a mixture of fear, disappointment, and growing ire.

“I know enough to know I don’t want to know any more,” he said so coldly, in a manner reminiscent to me of so many of the bullies I’d cowered under in school. I was hurt, I was disappointed, and I was angry. Somehow in the short time we had been at the dojo that night, Ryan’s respect for me had completely tanked and now he thought he could bully me, too. We were almost to the wall when he raised that massive right hand of his, which was attached to his colossally strong right arm, to shove me again. I was certain at that moment that he would succeed in shoving me clear through the wall. Although I’m sure it all happened quickly, everything seemed to pass in triple slow motion. As his right hand approached my left shoulder to knock me down, I tilted to my left, knocked his hand away with my left hand, and iron-palmed him square in the nose with my right hand. The force of my actions were so strong that he fell straight backwards and landed on his back on the mat with a bloody nose. I gasped when I realized what I did. Sensei and Bruno ran up to us as I kneeled on the mat next to Ryan.

“Great, Margaret! You killed him! We’ll have to send him back to Ireland in a body bag!” Bruno chided.

“Oh, I am so sorry! I…oh crap!” I cried as I helped him Ryan sit up. I thought for sure he would then try to kill me, but as he turned his face to me, he wiped the blood away and flashed his famous, mischievous grin.

“That’s me girl! I knew you had it in ya!” he said, chuckling. Bruno helped Ryan to his feet while one of the other students handed Ryan a roll of paper towels.

“You can do it,” Sensei said to me. “You come here and I train you.”

“Eh, I don’t mean to throw cold water on your enthusiasm, Sensei,” Bruno interjected, “but Margaret here doesn’t…I mean, she has trouble walking and breathing at the same time without falling down.”

I looked at Bruno with disappointment and asked, “You don’t think I can do this, do you?”

Bruno hesitated for a second, then without looking at me, answered, “No, I don’t.”

Sensei declared, “I train man born blind and deaf. Man I teach get black belt with no arms and one leg six inch shorter than other. If can train them, can train puffy American woman.”

I got a little miffed and asked, “Did you just call me ‘puffy’?”

Bruno leaned into my left ear and whispered, “Don’t talk back to him, Mags. He’s a grand master in seven different fighting disciplines and can kill you just by thinking about you.”

Sensei continued, “We work together and I turn puff into power. I give first month lesson free.”

My first month free definitely appealed to my coupon-clipping sensibilities. I wondered what would be left of me after that first month, if I survived it. I had a flashback of every accident I ever had, every confrontation from kindergarten to the present when terror came to call, and I would cower, petrified, and sit back helplessly. I wondered if there was anything that could break that 35-year-old cycle, but then I remembered that sometimes, desperate times called for desperate measures. Maybe something this radical and so far out of my comfort zone was just what God wanted to do the job. I didn’t understand, either, why Sensei, this total stranger, had such confidence I could do it, while someone who had been my friend for five years was so quick to pooh-pooh the whole idea. I then remembered all the previous times I tried to toughen up and stick up for myself, and how I failed each time, and how so very tired I was of being the only one to stick up for me. As my brain churned to decide what to tell Sensei, I felt an arm around my shoulder. I looked up to see it was Ryan’s.

“First month free for both of us, or she walks,” Ryan said with all the swagger of one of those high-powered sports agents. I turned to look at him and wondered if he had any idea what he was getting himself into.

“Very well. Free month for puffy American woman and her boyfriend,” Sensei conceded.

“Oh, she’s not my girlfriend,” Ryan exclaimed. That dose of reality stung me more painfully than all the devil bugs in the world, but before I could read into it any further, Ryan turned to me, winked, squeezed my shoulders really hard, and continued, “she’s my inspiration.”

Knowing the proper way to react to gorgeous men when they spoke to me was always a struggle, and I was always self-conscious about appearing too goofy, but when he said that, I lost all self-control and lit up like the giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center.

“Very good. Class Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 7:30 to 9. On table information for get uniform. Must return to other students,” Sensei remarked. He then bowed to Ryan and me and walked away. Bruno stared at the two of us, scratched his head, and walked back to the rest of the class.

Ryan, with one hand on my shoulder and the other holding paper towels to his nose, looked in my eyes and said, “What happened to you in school wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t stop it, but you’re not that helpless little girl any more.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just stared at him as I bit down hard my lower lip. I had, for the first time, gotten a taste of power, and I really, really liked it!

When I got home that night, my brain was overloaded with the magnitude of what just happened and the revelations about how I’d lived my life and why I reacted to things the way I did. As I processed all of it, I got on my computer Bible to do my “Bible-in-a-Year” reading. The passage for that day included 1 Corinthians 9:25-27, which says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”

I wondered at what point I had decided that my life was a pass/fail course instead of a letter grade event, and why I had settled for merely completing the race instead of winning? Perhaps I had always seen my life as something merely to be passed instead of something that could truly be excellent, praiseworthy, or A+. All I knew at that point was I didn’t want to beat the air any longer. Ryan was right. I wasn’t a defenseless kid any longer, and maybe with a little help, I could overcome all that helplessness and klutziness and attain greatness.

I went to the dojo every time the doors opened over the following two weeks, and Ryan was right there with me. Although I felt empowered by new resolve and outlook, the reality of 35 years of walking with two left feet began to dampen my enthusiasm. I racked up so many bruises and cuts that I named them all and made them my pets.

The Thursday night of my second week of training, I decided to go to the dojo early to talk to Sensei. I’d told my editor Brian about him, and Brian thought his story might make an interesting article in Worship and Warfare. As we sat down to talk, I found him very charming and engaging. He had so many stories of smuggling Bibles into closed sections of the Orient, and as hard and fast as the various Communist regimes would pursue him, he always remained one step ahead of them. With each successive tale of heroism and courage under fire, I found myself increasingly awestruck and jealous. I couldn’t take it any more, and so I finally asked him the obvious.

“So, how do you do it? How do you live your life and do what you did with no fear whatsoever?” I asked him, trying so very hard not to gush all over him.

He looked at me with a slight grin and answered, “No fear is myth. Trick is keep fear always at respectable distance, and make to miss God’s promise greatest fear.”

He then got up to meet some students as they began to arrive to class. While he spoke with them, my eyes wandered to the various banners and signs that graced the walls of the main room inside of the dojo. One banner in particular caught my eye. It was white with red lettering. There was a caricature drawing of a small man scaling a very high wall, along with writing in what I found out later was Traditional Chinese.

When Sensei returned with the visitors, I asked him what the writing was, and he said it was Hebrews 4:1. He left again briefly with the visitors, and I looked up the passage on my Smartphone, and the verse said, “THEREFORE, WHILE the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered [today], let us be afraid [to distrust it], lest any of you should think he has come too late and has come short of [reaching] it.”

By the time Sensei had finished with the visitors, the rest of the class had arrived, and so I couldn’t finish my conversation with him. I watched silently as all those brave and athletic-looking guys filed into room. I decided then and there that there was no reason I couldn’t do what they were doing.

Fast forward to the end of the first 60 minutes of class. I had collected a new colony of contusions so purple they almost appeared regal. The last two classes we had been working on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and ground fighting, and I was having an awful time keeping all the moves straight in my head. Bruno and Ryan were as patient as they could be; well, Ryan was patient, but each grappling session concluded with me getting beaten, usually within about 30 seconds.

“Ugh!” I moaned as I once again picked myself up from the mat and headed for my sports drink. “I’m never going to get this!”

Ryan walked after me as I chugged what must’ve been my tenth bottle of super sweet electrolyte replacement juice.

“It’ll come to you eventually. You just have to keep at it,” Ryan said in an encouraging fashion.

“Are you finally ready to call it quits? I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d last one class, let alone six,” Bruno said condescendingly as he walked up to the two of us.

I stared at Bruno angrily, wanting to tell him just what I thought, but I soon realized that, as much as I hated to admit it, maybe Bruno was right. Maybe I just didn’t have what it took. Maybe I would always be a wimp and powerless to stop the literal and figurative bullies that had plagued me for so long. I let out a big sigh, shrugged my shoulders, and headed with my drink to the chairs on the side of the mats. Ryan followed me.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s a cop. It’s his job to always look for the worst case scenario,” he said with a bit of a chuckle in his voice.

“What if he’s not?” I shot back. “Nothing’s clicking! I’ve learned all these different maneuvers and techniques, but when it comes to using them, they all melt together in my brain, and I’m no better off than when I started. Maybe he’s right. Maybe once a klutz, always a klutz! This is more than me just trying to learn some moves and get in shape. Maybe I don’t have what it takes even mentally. I mean, everyone here is so sure of themselves, and physically in control, and I never, ever feel in control…except…”

“Except?” Ryan inquired. At this point, Bruno had joined us on the sidelines.

“Oh, you’ll think I’m nuts when I tell you this,” I answered, dejected.

“You say that an awful lot, Margaret. You should get that on a button or a tattoo. It would save you a lot of time,” he said mischievously. I looked at him intently as I bit my lower lip.

Continuing his inquest, he asked, “You were saying? You only feel in control when…?”

“When I’m shopping! I go into the store, armed with my coupons and store circulars, and I’m out for the killer bargains, and no cashier or sales person is going to trick me into paying full retail, because the money I save is going to support all the world’s missionaries, so no matter how they protest, or try to convince me the coupons or specials are expired when they’re not, I never back down, because I’m on a mission from God!”

Ryan got very quiet, and a deeply pensive look appeared on his face.

“I’ve got to hand it to her there, O. She is the Coupon Queen,” Bruno interjected. “You think what she does when we got out to eat is impressive! You should see her when she goes grocery shopping. I’ve seen times when the store’s paid her, instead of the other way around. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was illegal.”

All of a sudden, Ryan got an inspired look on his face. He jumped to his feet, pulled me up with him, and said excitedly, “That’s it! Margaret, you have to look at grappling like you do shopping!”

“I don’t follow,” both Bruno and I managed to say simultaneously.

“What did you tell me were the three pillars of shopping? Store sales, manufacturer’s coupons, and mail-in rebates. And what did you say the trick was to unlock all the savings? Only buy things that are on sale at the store that you also have a manufacturer’s coupon for.”

“So? How does that relate to this?” I asked, dying of curiosity.

“Okay. When you’re grappling, the first thing you want to do is get your opponent off balance. Your sweeps are your store sales. Once you’ve got him on the ground and unsettled, depending on how he lands, you then go for mount or some kind of guard to subdue him. That’s your manufacturer coupon. And finally, depending on the advantage you have, you go for a lock or a bar: arm, knee, whatever, and you submit him. That’s your mail-in rebate, when you go in for the kill!”

I stared at Ryan for a second, and then turned my head to stare straight into the wall. I tried in a very short period of time to take the vastness of what Ryan just said and chop it up into bite size morsels I could easily digest. Because my brain was working so hard, I temporarily lost my powers of speech.

“O, I think you may be on to something,” Bruno said, obviously impressed, which doesn’t happen with him very often.

“What do you think, Margaret? Want to give it another go?” Ryan asked excitedly.

I turned to look at him and nodded my head. Although everything he said made sense, I still wondered if, in the heat of battle, I could remember all that and pull it off successfully. As we walked back to the mat, I had another revelation, and I turned to Ryan for confirmation.

“Wait a minute,” I said to Ryan timidly. “You mean, you actually paid attention when I explained my coupon thing to you?”

With a gleam in his eyes, Ryan answered, “Oh, Darlin’, don’t you know I hang on your every word?”

With all the goofiness of a love-struck school girl, I looked at him with a goofy smile and asked, “Really?!”

“No, not really!” he answered, unable to say it without laughing. Bruno walked up to Ryan and gave him two high fives.

“That was brutal, O! I knew I liked you for some reason,” Bruno chuckled.

I stopped in my tracks on the mat, bit my lower lip again, and stared at the floor.

“Whatcha starin’ at down there?” Ryan asked, obviously quite amused with himself.

“Tha-, tha-, that was mean,” I mustered the courage to say.

Ryan walked up to me, stuck the index finger of his right hand under my chin, lifted my face up, and said, “Look at a man when you talk to him, Woman!”

Still embarrassed, but getting slightly miffed, I shot back, “Th-that was mean!”

He then got right in my face and said forcefully, although almost in a whisper, “You’re right! It was mean, it was rotten, and it was dastardly. Now make me pay!”

Then he took his great, big hands, which were attached to his powerful, ripped arms, which were attached to his muscular, military-grade chest, and once again, he gave me a good, hard shove, which knocked me flat on my butt. Something inside me snapped, and when I looked up at him, I didn’t see the cute Irishman who carried me up a flight of a thousand stairs when my foot was busted or through mile-high foliage when I got stung by the devil bugs. I saw Rocco. I saw every bully that had owned me or made me look foolish. Not only that, I saw every store cashier who had ever told me I had too many coupons, even though the store had no printed policy that restricted me to a set number. I was incensed. I was determined. And for a brief, fleeting moment, I was fearless. I got up, let out a primal scream, rushed for Ryan, and knocked him down. As we both fell, he turned slightly so that he landed on his side. I got him in triangle hold for a split second, then I rolled his left arm into an arm bar. He tapped on the mat with his right hand, which signaled defeat. He then turned towards me, pain written all over his face as he clutched his left arm to his chest. Once again, I found myself feeling guilty.

“Are you okay? Oh, I’m so sorry!” I cried out as I leaned towards him. The look of anguish on his face turned to anger. He pulled me down, put me in mount, and braced my wrists to the mat with his hands.

“For Pete’s sake, will you stop apologizing, already?” he screamed angrily. “Are you going to apologize to a man for beating him up after he’s broken into your house, shot your dog, and tried to rape, pillage, and murder you?”

I broke loose of his grip, knocked his legs out from under him, rolled him, put him in mount, braced his wrists to the mat with my hands, then looked in his eyes and answered sheepishly, “Uh…yeah! Probably!”

I looked to my left to see Sensei as he watched us from the side of the mat. He raised his head slightly and rubbed the tip of his chin with his index finger. Then, with a slight smile, he said, “Look here! Puffy American Woman not so puffy anymore.”

I leapt to my feet, and my gaze immediately turned to the white and red banner with Hebrews 4:1. This was a major milestone I would not soon forget. I turned back around to find Bruno as he shook Ryan’s hand ferociously.

“Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! O, I can’t tell you the debt all the law enforcement, fire, and medical personnel of Metro Nashville owe you! I’m going to call the mayor tomorrow morning and demand you be given a key to the city!” Bruno said enthusiastically.

I looked at Ryan and realized, for the first time, what he had done for me since I first stepped inside the dojo. I ran towards him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He curled his arms around my waist, picked me up, and twirled me around several times.

“This is cause for celebration,” Ryan exclaimed. “Let’s go to Wednesday’s! My treat!”

Lots of other people in the class came up to me to shake my hand and tell me what a good job I did. It was some long overdue validation. While I went through the motions of showering and changing into my street clothes, I pondered the significance of the events of the last two weeks and wondered how what I’d gained would translate into the rest of my life. As usual, it wouldn’t take me long to find out.

I was the first one to arrive at Wednesday’s Sports Grille. Bruno and Ryan had stayed behind at class to grapple some more and would be arriving in ten minutes. Larry and Shane had agreed to meet the three of us there, too. When I walked in the front door, the first thing I noticed was the frightened look on the hostess’s face. She was staring into the bar area, tapping her foot hastily as she let out a series of small whimpers. I turned to the bar and immediately saw the object of her concern: Kyle, one of the bartenders, was being suffocated in a rear naked choke by a drunken man much larger than Kyle. The drunk, dressed in ripped jeans and a white-with-yellow-stains wife beater repeatedly chuckled in a low, gravelly voice as he pulled Kyle around like he was a rag doll in that chokehold. Some of the patrons appeared concerned, while others laughed as if the whole thing were a big joke. I wanted to do something, but that old familiar fear and helplessness came over me again as they sought to erase all the progress I’d just made. As terror tried to master me another time, for a split second, I had a massive perspective change. When I looked at the drunk and Kyle, I suddenly saw Rocco and me. Although I remembered well the sense of powerlessness and futility of never being able to stand up to those schoolyard bullied, I recalled more vividly the embarrassment of being gawked at by the other kids and the desperate desire for someone, anyone to come to my aid. I knew what I needed to do.

I waited until the drunk had his back to me. I snuck behind him, ready to take action, but at that moment, all my recently acquired martial arts knowledge fled out of my brain and straight out the front door of the restaurant! There I stood behind the biggest, scariest, creepiest bully I’d seen since high school, and I couldn’t think of anything to do. As the drunk’s chokehold on Kyle tightened, however, I knew some kind of action, any kind of action, was better than nothing, so I did the only thing any sane person would do in my situation: I reached my hands under each of the drunk’s arms and I tickled him! His grasp on Kyle loosened immediately, which allowed Kyle to run behind the bar. The drunk turned around, stared straight into my soul, and began to move towards me. I tried not to look scared as I moved backwards along the side of the bar.

“This is no business for little girls!” the drunk said in a slurred fashion as he moved towards me and clenched his fists.

“I…I…I’m not afraid of you,” I sputtered back. I don’t think he heard me, because the level of fear I felt at that moment forced my voice to a decibel that could only be heard by dogs. He made his way closer to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pitcher of ice water sitting on the bar. Just as he raised his right arm to strike me, I grabbed the pitcher and threw all the ice water in his face. When he took his next step towards me, he slipped on the ice that had landed on the floor, fell backwards, and hit his head first on the top bar rail, then on a bar stool, followed by the bottom bar rail, and finally the hard wood floor. I ran up to him as he lay on the floor and discovered the hits on the head on his way down had left him completely unconscious.

“Whoa!” yelled Kyle as he leaned over the bar to assess the damage. I was in such shock and disbelief that the preceding events had actually happened, I didn’t notice the arrival of Ryan and the Power Trio. As soon as Bruno saw the drunken guy out cold on the floor, he immediately went into full cop mode, dropped to the floor next to the guy, and took his vitals.

“What happened?” Bruno asked authoritatively as he reached for his cell phone.

Kyle answered, “This dude was plastered, Man! I told him he was cut off, and he wasn’t cool with that. He started pushing and shoving me, and then starts choking me from the back. Margaret comes in, gets him off me, and lays him out flat! It was totally righteous!”

All eyes shot straight to me.

“Margaret?” Bruno said in doubt.

“Mags?” Shane exclaimed in shock.

“Jesus…” Larry said. Bruno, Ryan, Shane, and I all turned our heads to Larry at once.

“…is Lord,” Larry quickly—and awkwardly—added on. Although I couldn’t say where it says in the Bible, I was pretty sure Larry using God’s Name in vain was a precursor to Armageddon.

“How did you do it, Mags?” Shane asked with all the pride of a dad whose son’s team, against all odds, won the Little League World Series.

“Eh, well, I’d like to say I knocked him out using my newfound martial arts prowess, but the truth is…I tickled him,” I answered, slightly ashamed.

All the boys burst out laughing.

“You tickled him? Margaret, Sensei doesn’t even get into tickling techniques until you start training for your green belt,” Bruno chided, feeling very pleased with himself. “So you tickled him into unconsciousness, huh? Sensei will be happy to find out what you’ve done with your free lessons.”

A little annoyed, I protested, “Ha! Ha! Very funny! Okay, tickling him wasn’t the most sophisticated thing, and I guess it was just dumb luck that he tripped on the ice I threw at him. But the important thing is Kyle’s safe, I’m safe, everyone in the bar is safe, and…well…I did it my way! So there!”

Expressing a mixture of being perturbed and amused, Bruno looked at me and said, “Whatever you say, Danielle LaRusso. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna call this in.”

After Bruno got up and walked away, Kyle walked around the bar to where I stood, took my hand, shook my arm off, and said, “You the man, Mags! You the man!”

“Hey!” Ryan interrupted. He got between Kyle and me and said to him, “She’s a lady and don’t you forget it!”

Timidly, Kyle backed away from me towards the bar and said, “It’s just an expression, Dude!”

When Kyle got back behind the bar, Ryan looked at me and brushed the hair on the right side of my face behind my right ear.

My voice starting to break with emotion, I said to him, “I did it! You said I could do it and I did it! Omigosh! This is huge first milestone in my own personal evolution! Oh, if Rocco could see me now!”

I was so excited that I didn’t pay attention to where I was about to walk. I put my right foot down on a patch of ice next to the sleeping drunk, slipped, and began to fall backwards. I thought I was a goner for sure, but Ryan, with his cat-like reflexes, caught me before I had a chance to go completely horizontal. I stared at him in embarrassment, but he just smiled as usual, let out a quiet chuckle, and said, “Baby steps, Margaret! Baby steps!”

He then lifted me above the ice on the floor and set me back down on dry ground. We began to walk away when I turned to take one last look at the silent bully as he lay on the ground. One of many Goliaths had finally been felled, and when the next giant menace came out to the Valley of Elah to defy me, I would be ready…or at least I hoped.