The setting of the movie, Miss Congeniality, is a beauty pageant. One of the contestants is asked by the emcee, “What would be your perfect date?” She answered, “I think April 28. It’s not too hot and not too cold. You can get by with just a light jacket.”

Isn’t it the truth? How many times are we all using the same language but the communication just isn’t there. We might as well speak in different tongues.

Once, before copy machines did everything, I told a volunteer assigned to help me that I needed the three stacks of papers stapled. Okay, I left out a word . . . I should have said “collated and stapled” because I got just what I asked for in a very short time. It didn’t take her long to do exactly what I said: staple each stack.

This week, as I was in the middle of a cutting/sorting job, making a game for a workshop, two co-workers stopped by to help me. I appreciated their offer. I really did. But what a mess!

The idea was to put pieces of card stock printed with different scenarios or life conditions into a zip-lock bag.  A set consisted of 3 large green pieces, 9 medium yellow, and 30 small blue. Did I mention different.

First, the Math Specialist had to know the purpose of the game. She needed to know before she could sort cards and put them in a bag.  After we got that cleared up, the guy started stacking his pile into matching cards, so when the assembly line got to him, he could pick up one at a time to make a set.

Really, I appreciated them. It was almost quitting time and they didn’t want me to have to work over. And it took me only a little bit longer to do it with their help than it would have working alone.

Seriously, though, I want to communicate THANKS to them for being such good sports and for making WDMESC such a fun place to work.

A few years ago I blogged about falling down the up escalator. (Here) I pointed out that the first question spectators ask (after “Are you all right?”) is “Did you faint? Dizzy? Do you want to go to the ER?”

My answer to all these questions has always been ‘No.” I don’t fall often but when I do it’s always because I am not paying attention to my feet. Like once when I got up out of my chair to take my empty cup back to the kitchen. I had kicked off my shoes and as I stood on one foot, cup in hand, trying to slip my other foot into my shoe, I lost my balance and crashed like a felled tree.  Nothing hurt seriously, I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and started again.

More recently, to follow the coffee angle, I was at work taking a cup back to my office when the toe of my shoe caught on the concrete floor and I stumbled. Have you had that happen — usually on a carpet? Why is that?  If anyone figured out why that occurs, it will be the biggest discovery since the split atom. But I digress.

When my toe caught, the rest of my foot stopped moving but I continued down the hall … at least as far as the length of my body. Kerplunk. The cup of coffee in my hand became a tsunami of brown liquid splashing across the floor. Fortunately the only injury was a bruised knee for me and threatened cardiac arrest for a couple of co-workers.

An incident last December was the result of my poor depth perception (blogged about here). We were in dress rehearsal of  It’s a Wonderful Life at Center on the Square in Searcy. The script called for my character, Mother Bailey, to quickly follow son Harry up three steps and exit through the door at the top. I had done that perfectly at several rehearsals, but that particular night as I came to the first step I simply did not raise my foot high enough, tripped and fell up the stairs. Every person on stage gasped and froze in place. Even though no audience was present, I stayed in character and “Mother Bailey” said, “Well, help me up.”

Like hitting the “un-pause” button, everyone jumped to life and rushed to do my bidding. When I tried to straighten up I was standing on the hem of my dress, making the recovery less than smooth. We finished the scene without further ado, because after all, the show must go on.

“While he was still young enough to carry the nickname ‘Little Boy’ he could hear the harmony in a tune. In his early teens, now simply called ‘Boy’ by his parents and sisters, Monroe learned to sight-read music using he 7-scale shape note system. Shape notes, taught in the singing schools of the day, used a series of triangles, circles, trapezoids and squares to represent the root ‘do’ of the scale and all the other tones. Monroe was an excellent sight-reader. If he didn’t know the song, he could quickly learn it … if it were transcribed into shapes.

(After he married Anna) music became a recreational pastime for Monroe and throughout the following years the Alderson house was the gathering place for amateur musicians. Monroe may have stopped performing in public, but he never stopped entertaining.”

from An Ordinary Day