Trust Issues

One year, when I was in Elementary School, there was a poster contest for a carnival in town. It was a thing the city was putting on, so they had the kids in each school make posters to promote it, and each school chose a winner for best poster. If you won, you would get free tickets to the carnival, yada yada yada. So I went home and drew up a poster. It was Donald Duck, telling the kids to go to the carnival because it was going to be so much fun. Yada yada yada. And it turned out pretty good. I won the contest.

So the posters go up on the wall of the school, in the big hallway near the office, and they did some little ceremony with me. I can’t quite remember the details, but the principal shook my hand and such. Which was all cool. But then this one lady, she was a teacher or a secretary or something, I honesty don’t remember why she was there, but she turned to me and asked me a question. She said: “The picture is really great, but why did you spell the words all wrong.”

I was a little dumbfounded because what I had done was obvious. Or, at least, it should have been. Donald Duck has his peculiar way of speaking. A kind of scratchy duckese. So I had spelled whatever it was I had him saying on the poster phonetically to reflect that. No one had questioned this, all the way to the victory circle. And that’s what I told the woman. “I just tried to spell it like it would sound if Donald Duck said it.” It was, let me say it again: obvious. But the woman seemed surprised. She said, “Oh.” Then she looked at the poster for a second and looked at me and said, “Well. I think it would have been better if you had spelled the words correctly.” She said the word “correctly” as if it was a word I would have a hard time understanding. I remember that the principal gave her a look, but he didn’t say anything. After all, she was a grown up like him. He just gave me a pat on the head and sent me back to class.

Now. I mention all this because, in a small way, it was a life changing moment. For the first time in my life I looked at an adult and thought to myself: This is a stupid person. I wasn’t thinking mean about it. I didn’t look down on her. I just realized that she didn’t get something that was simple. Something I understood, and I was just a kid.

Seriously. I thought about it all that day, and again and again over the years. Grown ups CAN be stupid. Grown ups CAN be wrong. Some grown ups MIGHT not know more than kids, let alone other grown ups.

Can you see how this could change one’s world view? Can you see how this one little incident could undermine a kids trust in the adult world?

I’d like to say that the adults of the world have regained my trust. You know, in general.

I’d really like to.


Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011

Hoax

When I was a child, I was sitting in my Grandfather’s living room. He lived in the city of Detroit, where he had come to find work many years before. All of my memories of my grandfather are from after he retired. We would visit my grandparents at their house in Detroit constantly. I would watch my grandpa drink Maalox right out of the bottle, constantly sipping it all day long, to keep his stomach in check.

This same grandfather, so the story goes, was once asked to play banjo and fiddle (that’s “violin” for you arteests) for the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee, but he refused because it didn’t pay enough to support his large family. But he still pulled out his fiddle and banjo on occasion and played a little something for us kids, which I absolutely loved. But it was hard to get him to do it. He’d say, “My author-rye-tiss is given me trouble,” and that was the end of it.

So. I was sitting with Grandpa, watching TV, and a commercial came on for the brand new Disney World in Florida. I was transfixed. I wanted to head out there immediately and take up permanent residence. But when the commercial was over, Grandpa turned to me to say something, which he didn’t do very often. He just didn’t talk much. But he turned to me and said, “I don’t believe it! It’s a bunch a nonsense! Cain’t be no such thing as that Disney World! They’s a bunch of liars!”

For a moment I was startled, shaken up by the idea that I had somehow been duped by “The Powers That Be.” For a moment I took the word of my grandpa that Disney World wasn’t there and we were all being cruelly misguided by someone higher up than us. Considering that my life’s goal at that moment was to get to the fabled Land of Disney, this was quite disturbing.

But then I settled down and realized, for the first time, that my grandpa was just wrong.

I was not foolhardy enough to try and correct him. But years later I tried to make sense of what he said, and what I think is that Disney World was just too much for him. He had been born in 1899. He had been through the Great Depression. The world he grew up in was just so far removed from the images on the TV of Disney World that he simply could not even imagine a place like that existing. All of the colors and rides and music. All of those smiling people. It was just too much. So he dismissed it.

It seems to me that a lot of us do this with a lot of things. Some people dismiss joy and peace because it’s too far from their experience. Some people dismiss love and hope and forgiveness for the same reason. But just because we can’t imagine something doesn’t mean it’s not possible or true.

I have been to Disney World. It’s really there. Honest. And it’s amazing.

I just wish my grandfather could have seen it.

Ephesians 3:20-21
Peace to you.

And yes, that really is a guy from Kiss singing "When You Wish Upon A Star."


© LW Publishing 2010

Would You Believe...

Have you ever found yourself believing something, absolutely sure about it, only to find that you simply misunderstood or were given bad information? Or you just “figured” something was true, only to find out that you were wrong? It is so easy for this to happen, especially if you basically trust people like I do.

When I was 6 years old, I remember my mom bringing my little brother home from the hospital. It was a big hubbub. I think, looking back, that some family members were amazed my mom didn’t lose this baby. My sister had died just three months before and it was very traumatic, obviously. So the new baby was a bit of light in the darkness.

Mom had gotten home while I was out playing, so I didn’t see her come in. Several relatives were over to see the baby, there were a lot of cars parked out front. I went in the house and they were all talking – I was not on their radar – but, finally, someone said, “Would you like to see your little brother?” I went down the hall to the bedroom at the back of the house where mom was ensconced on the bed with the baby in her arms. He was very little and, even though he was awake, his eyes were scrunched up tight. Mom let me put my finger in his palm, which he grabbed tight. That is always the coolest thing when a baby does that. Then mom gave me a reassuring hug and I was ushered out of the room by I don’t know who. That baby now has a blog which you can see here.

I went back into the living room where some of my aunts and uncles were sitting. One of my uncles said something like, “So whadya think?” What I thought was that I wanted the baby to look at me, which he didn’t do. So I asked, “Why doesn’t he open his eyes.” That’s when one of my uncles said, “When they’re first born they can’t open their eyes. Just like dogs and cats can’t open their eyes when they’re born. The light would blind them if they opened their eyes.” My six year old self didn’t take that as a joke because no one laughed. So that’s how, until I was 9 or 10 years old, I believed new born babies could not open their eyes at birth because their eyes were too sensitive and they would be blinded by the light.

Over the years I have listened to people and ended up believing for a time that...
1. When human beings died they became angels.
2. Monsters were in my closet.
3. All people are basically good.
4. Money was handed out at the bank based on some mysterious merit system.
5. I was born with certain natural abilities that would allow me to do certain things without really having to work at it.
6. As long as I was dedicated and worked hard, I would succeed.
7. Broccoli was created genetically in a lab by combining cauliflower and cabbage, and this was done by the Broccoli family, who later went on to produce the James Bond movies of the 60's and 70's, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. (Stop laughing at me.)
8. A friend would always be a friend.


See . . . I’m basically a trusting person. It gets me into all kinds of trouble.




1 Thessalonians 5:21
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2010