Lee's Just Trying: October 2006

Hi Mom.

Ah, hello. In the past two days, there have been two coincidences in my life, close together both chronologically and in general cause, which were a bit strange, fun, and totally blogworthy (yes, that's right, blogworthy. One word, no hyphen. I am hereby declaring that blogworthy is a word. Googling "blogworthy" gives 151,000 results, yet it is recognized by neither dictionary.com nor wikipedia.org (nor even its bastard cousin wiktionary.com), and having perused the first three search results, I am quite confident that there is not yet a campaign to put this word into full use. I am thus, in this over-long parenthetical note to an otherwise blogworthy entry, declaring that blogworthy should be used not only when directly referring to blogs (i.e. "Everything Lee writes in his blog is so damn blogworthy. Damn.") but also in everyday language (i.e. "Wow, that story is so blogworthy", "So, anything blogworthy happen to you lately?" or "Oh man, the most blogworthy thing just happened", etc.) It bears noting that I have just used parentheses inside my original parentheses, and that I'm only even pointing that out in order to avoid doing this: "))", which is totally ridiculous.).

So, two blogworthy coincidences in the past two days. No foolin'. First: for the past week I've been staying at Becca K-S's house with Rachel K O. Becca was away for most of the week, but I stayed an extra night to hang out with her. My next destination was Seattle, and my friend Jarret's mom Fran's friend Candis is living in Seattle, so I am staying with her. I had told her I was coming, and then, in order to see Becca, told her instead it would be the next morning on the 9am bus. For some reason, in conversation, Becca mentioned her mom's best friend Nancy who she then remembered I had met at Jarret's little brother's Bar Mitzvah, where I found out that Nancy knew Becca. Because I knew Nancy was a friend of Fran (since she was at the Bar Mitzvah) I mentioned in passing that maybe Nancy and Candis know each other. To which Becca replied "you're going to stay with Candis?" As it turns out, Nancy had visited a few months ago, and she brought Candis down to Olympia to visit Becca, so they know each other. This was a bit odd.

Because I stayed an extra evening to see Becca, I took the 9am bus on Saturday (that in itself, those who know me will attest, was wildly unlikely). As I was riding the bus, a guy got on who I thought I recognized, and so I kept sort of awkwardly glancing at him, and by the time we were approaching the end of the line I thought he was actually someone I knew, decided I would ask him, and, having assumed I was probably wrong, had also decided that he already thought I was extremely crazy and creepy (and possibly attracted to him). So we both got off of the bus, and he actually turned to me and said "Lee?" at which point I said, "Will?" Between 11th and 12th grades, I did a Jewish youth trip to Montana to do Habitat work. Will was pretty much my best friend on the trip, but I hadn't spoken to him or heard anything about him since the trip, which was about 6 years ago. He was from New York, but we ran into each other at 10am on a Saturday in Tacoma, WA. We chatted for a while, and there were a few other coincidences as well. He has known our good friend Avi K since he was in elementary school. Also, I had gone hiking with him and our trip leader in Glacier National Park during the program, and we both ended up writing college essays about the experience. We determined that we might hang out in Seattle or somewhere else on the west coast, but that either way we'll keep in touch through the magic of Facebook.

Neither was really a big deal, I know, but putting them together in such a short timespan, my mind was sufficiently boggled.

Here's something else:

In their bathroom, Candis and Ted have a book called The World's Shortest Stories which are the winning results of a contest asking authors to write a fiction piece of 55 words or less. The stories are okay, but I really like the concept. So here's the first one; it's from the "With Murder in Mind" section and it is a pretty good example:

BEDTIME STORY by Jeffrey Whitmore

"Careful, honey, it's loaded," he said, re-entering the bedroom.

Her back rested against the headboard. "This for your wife?"

"No. Too chancy. I'm hiring a professional."

"How about me?"

He smirked. "Cute. But who'd be dumb enough to hire a lady hit man?"

She wet her lips, sighting along the barrel.

"Your wife."

---------

That has nothing to do with anything, but I don't know, I guess it's blogworthy.

Yeah.

Rules are stupid.

Especially self-imposed rules about blogs (which are also stupid).

Well, y'know, sometimes. Anyway, I guess I'm starting over, if I'm starting at all.

Let me just say this: "you could at least be honest about lying to me." Brilliance (and I mean that unsarcastically) from Cram Raisin.

A couple of days ago, I was riding a bike to a Sprint store here in Olympia, WA, and I was going quite fast because the technician was leaving at 5pm and it was already 4:45, and I think the bike may have had little air in its tires, and I haven't biked much in a while, and Olympia has a bunch of difficult hills, and for some reason I hadn't had anything to eat or drink that day...

Anyway, I got to the store, stood in line, had a short conversation with a Sprint employee, and the whole time I felt a bit light-headed, like everything was a little far away, like I had cotton-balls in my ears (and the metaphorical equivalent in my eyes). I then, as far as I can figure, collapsed. Not totally, not unconscious on the floor, I caught myself on the counter. I didn't even think it was a big deal, I tried to collect myself and continue finding out what I could do about my broken phone, but then it happened again. And the gentleman with whom I was speaking quickly sat me down and got me some water, which he did partly because he was kind, and partly because at this point I was making a scene in this Sprint store.

But this is not about that. This is about the short, mid-40's black woman who came over and asked if she could pray with me. Largely confused, and having no particular to say no, I agreed. So there I sat, with my eyes closed, and she placed one hand on top of my head and another on the back of my neck. And she began to pray. She had asked me my name, and so she was able to ask Jesus "to watch over Lee and help him to feel better" and affirm her knowledge that "Jesus will help Lee to be okay". Some of her prayer was in English, some in a language I did not recognize. She prayed for me for about five minutes, while I sat there, with my eyes closed, listening, regathering myself.

She finally stopped, and for a moment we just sat there and smiled at each other. There was a young man with her (probably her son) and, when the aforementioned kind and concerned Sprint employee brought another cup of water, the son took it from him in order to give it to me. And so we sat, and I smiled and drank and smiled, and then finally she got up and went about her business (whatever he reason for having been in line at the Sprint store in the first place).

I will admit that, at first, I felt a little weird. I wondered whether, as a Jew, there was a problem with silently allowing her to pray, with my name, to a god a don't believe in. Also, the physical contact with a total stranger was a little surprising, her hands on my sweat-soaked head. But really the overwhelming feeling was just how sincere it was. How her religion manifested in a concern for me, a total stranger, to the point that she felt the need to appeal to her faith to help me, and her son felt the need to be the one to hand me the water. I think that there are a lot of problems caused by religion, and I think that recently I've been exposed to a lot of cynicism toward faith, but right then, I felt good about it, like sometimes it's as nice as anything.

So, there. Jesus inspired me (to Blog).