I have been listening to kids’ books in my car. It makes driving around town oh so much more daring-suspenseful-surprising-intriguing! I’m questioning the grammatical stability of that last sentence, but I’ve recently heard others like it, so it must be okay.
Two of the freshly listened to audio books have been from The Series of Unfortunate Events (bks 9 & 10) by Lemony Snicket. These books are witty and cleverly written, but the whole premise behind them is that nothing ever goes right (or ends right) in the books. The three orphans, who are the main characters in the series, continually escape the evil Count Olaf by using their inventive skills, book knowledge and sharp teeth. Nevertheless, I believe I will take a sabbatical from the books- I’m just a little put off with the fact that one the orphans had her sweetheart swept away by a flooded stream… that just seems so depressing. Depressing, but I should have guessed; nothing ever goes right for those orphans.
I think Lemony Snicket’s books get something right, though. It is an underlying principle in the book series that ingenuity comes out of cataclysmic situations, and I think that’s not skewing things too much. It IS probably during the most difficult seasons in our lives that good things are produced, and perhaps even marvelous things, such as prolific literature, invention, art, and sometimes… sometimes even joy. I can think of quite a few occasions where things seemed pretty dismal in my life, but where I also experienced joy at the same time. Weird. Paradoxical isn’t it? Here are the top three personal examples that come to mind as I type this paragraph.
Story #1: When I was in Bogota, Colombia I sunburned so badly that I looked like a lobster. The package deal with this sunburn included heat stroke and a blistered scalp. When things started to heal a day or two later, my skin started peeling like mad. I was a little embarrassed about this, considering that I was in a country where a person’s presentation and appearance heavily mattered, but the job of combing all the dead skin from my hair seemed gargantuan. My friend Jess pulled me aside and painstakingly combed through my hair getting rid of the disgusting dead skin. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for her, probably right up there with looking through hair for lice, but she took the time to do it, and even lightened the situation by cracking jokes and making me laugh. It made me happy that I had a friend like her.
Story #2: When I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, I remember sitting on the couch, watching the movie Hot Fuzz and eating a strawberry blizzard, both kindly supplied to me by my parents. Despite looking like a chipmunk and feeling like I had just come out on the unlucky end of a bar fight, I felt very loved and taken care of.
Story #3 A week after I had knee surgery, I fell on a freshly mopped floor at a Forensics and Debate national tournament. I was sick to my stomach- having felt something rip during the fall I was pretty sure I had undone everything the doctors had meticulously accomplished with the surgery. In the ER, while awaiting an X-Ray, I remember giggling with my debate coach, Marla, as the guy in the compartment next door related to a friend how he accidently chopped off part of his finger with a lawnmower. It doesn’t sound very funny right now, but maybe you had to have been there. We also took turns drawing pictures and commenting on the wall charts while we waited. It was a physically painful time, but probably one of the best bonding times I had with that coach.
How about you? What’s your story?
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