But ... But I Thought ...

The funniest thing happened in Sunday School this morning. Our classroom is large, with ample area in the back for a refreshment table. My husband is the teacher and his podium stands at the front of a wide center aisle formed by two big sections of chairs being placed on either side of the room. People sit anywhere they want in the first ten or so rows of chairs, on both sides. This morning just as class was getting ready to start, one of our men walked up the aisle balancing his Bible with his donut and a cup of coffee, and sat in the first seat off the aisle to his right ... next to his pretty wife ... he thought. But actually his pretty wife was sitting directly across the aisle from where he sat! She had even saved him a seat! Turns out the lady he plopped down beside has hair of a color and length almost identical to his wife's ... and she was also saving her husband a seat. Donut-And-Coffee obviously wasn't paying very close attention as he approached the area where he usually sits with his wife, and he ended up sitting by the wrong lady. He was so embarrassed when he realized what he'd done! He's a funny kind of a guy -- you know, the class clown type -- so he laughed at himself and we all laughed with him (except the "wrong" wife ... I think she would rather the whole thing hadn't happened) -- and it was a pretty cool way to start Sunday School. Clearly I don't get out much.

I tried to make Funny Guy feel better by sharing that once, years ago when we attended the same church as my husband's brother and his wife, I made a similar mistake. See, my husband and his brother are nearly identical from a distance. They're both very tall, dark, and handsome. The service was over and I had gone to retrieve a kid or two from the nursery, and when I returned I surveyed the clots of people standing and talking, trying to locate my husband. I spotted him (I thought) a few aisles away and made a beeline for him. I may have gotten distracted by one of my kids on the way, which would account for the fact that, when I reached the suited form I thought was my husband, I grabbed and squeezed the arm of my brother-in-law instead! When he looked down and smiled at me and I realized what I'd done, I was horrified! We are Baptists! This is how rumors get started! Good thing I noticed that I'd plastered myself to the wrong man before I leaned in and whispered something racy like, "Meet me out back in ten minutes, for a good time ..."

Recently as we traveled home from our daughter's house in North Carolina, a very large bird mistook our car windshield for ... something else ... the atmosphere, perhaps? We were driving along the interstate at 75 or so miles per hour. It was a very windy day. Next thing we knew, this bird -- in size I would put it somewhere between a crow and a turkey vulture ("Hawk," my husband intoned ... he sees hawks everywhere ... which is why I call him Hawkeye) -- HIT the window just to the driver's side of the rearview mirror. It sounded like a five-pound bag of sugar had slammed into the car, dropped from a one-story building. The doomed bird's carcass bounced and flipped off the car's roof like it was not a roof but a trampoline, and landed in a heap of feathers over on the side of the interstate. Gone. Gone forever, because he thought my car window was his air road (or maybe just got blown astray by a gust of wind). Either way ... costly mistake.

Interesting how we are always looking, even subconsciously, for the familiar, the comfortable, the safe, and the loved. And when we look around and don't find it, we immediately begin searching for it, and we usually don't give up until it has materialized on our horizon once again. We try to forget the times -- sometimes silly, sometimes scary -- when we looked up and what we expected to be there, was not there. What was there instead was something -- or someone -- wholly unexpected and often completely unfamiliar. And we had to think quickly (if, unlike the poor bird, we were still alive and kicking and in possession of our faculties) in order to set the situation right. To get our little train back on the right track, as it were.

This reminds me of a terrifying and potentially dangerous experience which befell our daughter, Audrey, when she was barely five years old. I had taken the girls (Andrew wasn't born yet) to Water Tower Place, an atrium mall in Chicago. Stephanie was about seven; Erica was small enough to be in a stroller. We were on the third or fourth floor and were standing by the doors of one of the clear glass elevators that give eager shoppers fast, easy access to all eight mall floors, waiting for them to open so we could board the elevator. Several other people were standing there with us for the same reason. I can still see it, like in slow motion: the elevator doors opened; Audrey, standing closest to them, went through them and onto the elevator; the elevator doors closed. Just like that! No sooner had her feet touched the floor of the elevator itself, than the doors snapped shut and the clear cylindrical car shot upwards!

I remember being so stunned, I couldn't even speak. For me, that's pretty stunned. I looked around and realized that several people had seen what had happened and knew the predicament I was in. One lady stepped right up. "Let me take your two other children to the ground level," she suggested. "Right there is a security guard who will help you." She pointed to a uniformed guard standing at a nearby railing. I gratefully complied, running to him and telling him what had happened. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips and began speaking, pausing only to ask me questions about Audrey's age, size, appearance, and clothing. In the open mall I could see the lady standing on the ground floor, at the base of an escalator, holding a sobbing Stephanie's hand and watching over Erica in her umbrella stroller. I hastened down to join them and wait.

A few minutes later it was all over. Stephanie pointed, drying her tears. I looked up and there was Audrey coming down the escalator, grasping the hand of a security guard. If she was afraid she didn't show it. She told me that when she stepped onto the elevator and turned around to face the doors, they had already closed and she was alone ... she thought. Then she looked up and there was a man -- the only other person in the elevator -- looking sternly down at her. She didn't move, react, or say anything. The car went up a few floors, stopped, and the doors opened. Audrey walked out of the elevator and into the first store she saw, approached the counter, and told a saleslady: "I lost my mommy." The saleslady called security, and a few moments later we were reunited. Caught a break there ... and once again all was well. May it ever be so.

Comments

[Sue O]

I lost my Jonnie at the zoo once, same situation, he was about four and I had three kids and a stroller. No kind security guards to help though. We finally found him, spellbound by the penguins, he didn't even know we were gone.

[Jennifer]

Sue O ... awwwww ... spellbound by the penguins! That's precious. God used his unique creation to protect your little boy.