Where do I begin? How about falling through a chair at the Rodeo Ball? I was not intoxicated, just simply leaning over and in to be polite because it was too loud to hear and too dark to read lips. Spoiler alert, as their name indicates, “collapsable chairs” collapse. Who Knew? The bruises and pain a week after serve as a reminder that I am not a spring chicken, and just in case they didn’t…me asking a man to “let me see that doggy” in his shoulder bag before he revealed it was a loaf of bread, did. However, I am still healthy and capable enough to blow bubbles with my gum while exercising. I discovered this week that if you keep talking while doing so, your voice gets trapped in the bubble and vibrates against your lips in the kind of way that makes you squirm. A lot like when someone talks lightly along your collarbone, under your ear, or behind your neck. Not that this happens often, but when it does, it sends me over the edge with chills and this face of questioning if I liked it or hated it. I think I like it?

I pulled up to a stoplight yesterday. I was facing southwest and the sun was setting. A car was about to pull out of a driveway and I thought to myself that I should not block their chance to exit, therefore I changed lanes. I was digging around in my purse looking for my chapstick to apply to my nose. Yes, my nose is like a reptilian right now due to a severe allergy attack I survived over the last few days. I will apply anything to it at this point just to be able to look at people and let them take me seriously, not that anyone does, myself included. I like to say, “I am not serious until I am.” And I fully expect you to know the difference. Anyway, back to the stoplight. As a result of changing lanes for the exiting car, I was now in between multiple cars. I felt someone staring at me, you also might know this feeling. The undeniable piercing of someones soul just staring at yours. I looked up and around to see where it was coming from. Earlier I noted my position in Bossy because I was blind as fuck. The sun was also piercing through me and as I was rubbing chapstick all over my nose and up my nose, I find my soul seer. This man was smiling ear to ear, no teeth showing, but mouth slightly open, and just sharing the same glow I was sitting in. He was likely in his late seventies, maybe early eighties. I smiled back at him, took my chapstick hand and waved like a goofy little child, he waved back the same and I drove off thinking, I bet that was Jesus! It was pretty cool to just share that moment with a stranger. I felt like he needed it, and I always do. I was thankful I changed lanes to make someones life a little easier, it certainly paid off for me and my soulmate who drove off after making my sunset one I will never forget.

I always say that it could be Jesus! (“What If God was One of Us” by Joan Osborne really hit me back in the 90’s) Especially when I get giggly in situations where it is not good to be giggly. This is my specialty. Get me in trouble, put me in front of someone that is mad, hurt, or in any category you were raised to know better to laugh at…I am going to laugh. It is just how I cope with not crying…I think. Recently, when my mom and sons and I were visiting my grandma, we were put in one of these situations. All four of us share this laughing problem. I guess I get to blame it on my mom now, but being an adult-ish, I have to take responsibility and control of it and so I did. A man came outside in a wheelchair. He is non-verbal and presents himself as non-mobile and mostly not capable of doing much at all. He wheeled over using his feet to pull himself, parked right in front of me, and was just staring at us interacting with my grandmother. I knew it was going to be an issue for the four of us for him to just sit right in front of us and stare. And it was. My mom kept telling me to take care of it, to talk to him, to handle it. So I tried, I smiled at him and said “hello” softly. There was nothing I could do that anyone in our party was going to respond in any other way but laughing and pinching themselves. So that happened and then something else happened. As I said out loud to everyone “this man could be Jesus, this is someones son, he needs to be loved too…” I also prayed to God to help me get my shit together and to forgive me and then this man stood up. I thought it was a miracle. We all were speechless and shocked as he then gained the speed of a child who put something in their mouth they were not supposed to as he scurried over to the bush and took a shit. He was not Jesus. But it could have been. 

This is my point, although it may not be Jesus, it certainly is nice to treat people like they are. I needed the same grace when falling through the chair and when talking in my dog voice to a loaf of bread. I also would accept anyone and everyone laughing in either moment. In fact, I prefer it.