Texting Lessons

Before sending Abby off to college, Doug and I broke down and bought her a cell phone. A room full of other things, too, mind you, but the cell phone was a pretty big deal. Doug and I have resisted getting our children cell phones. We just don’t think it’s necessary. Our children have a million reasons why they “need” their own phones, but they have yet to convince us. But then one of them said this: “I’m going away to college.” Yeah, that convinced us. But it’s only worked for Abby so far.

As we added Abby to our cell phone plan, we also added unlimited texting. We knew that would be an important feature for Abby. So, suddenly, I have this new communication tool at my disposal.

Kate is already a pro at texting. When I first got my phone a few years ago Kate thought we had unlimited texting as part of our plan. (Doesn’t everybody?) But no. We didn’t even have limited texting or text-your-ten-best-friends texting. What we didn’t know was that when I gave Kate permission to use my phone for what I assumed was a phone conversation, she was texting her friends. We didn’t discover this until the bill came at the end of the first month. At least that bill made the regular monthly charges seem really, really low. Really.

So anyway, Kate is trying to teach me how to text. I have a rather dated phone and it doesn’t have a full keyboard. The letters are grouped together under the number keys. The number “2” has the letters “a,b,” and “c.” You’re probably familiar with it. Even rotary phones had letters with the numbers.

There is a snazzy feature on my phone where the phone figures out the word I want when I type in a certain combination of keys. I don’t have to painstakingly type in every letter. Kate had turned on this feature (and used it) before giving me a lesson in how to use it.

One day, shortly after getting Abby her phone, I decided to send her a text message as she headed off to go shopping. I was going to write, “Hi. Have fun.”

To start the word, “Hi,” I hit the “4” button where the “h” is. My smart little phone spit out the word “Hi.”

Sweet! I thought. This will be really easy.

The phone automatically put in a space and waited for the next instruction. I started typing the word “have.”

“H-a-” so far so good. But then it spit out a “t” giving me “hat.” It automatically gave me a space and moved on to the next word. I hit “clear” and tried again. “H-a-” and again with the “t”. By this time it was beeping and flashing and I decided, “Okay, I’ll go with ‘hat.’ ”

“Hat fun” is almost “have fun.” Abby’s a smart girl. She’ll figure it out.

On to the next word. I hit the “3” key three times trying to get to the “f.” But the phone thought I was asking for three letters from the “3” key. So it selected “fee—“ which led it naturally to the word “feet.” Again, I cleared out the word and tried again. Hitting “3-3-3” gave me “feet.”

I began to giggle.

Then, sitting alone in my parked car, I started to laugh. I hit send.

“Hi. Hat feet.”

Abby deftly replied, “Hat feet?”

Laughing harder, I abandoned texting and called Abby.

“Hello?” she answered.

By that time I was laughing uncontrollably, tears rolling down my face.

“Mom?”

Then Abby started to laugh, too.

I still don’t text well or often. But one thing is certain—I now have a whole new way to hat feet.

You Can Trust Your Car*

Our teenage daughters, Abby and Kate, have spent the last year learning to drive. They completed a formal drivers education course taught by Mr. Matthews, a friend of ours in the drivers ed business. The course included the usual book learnin’ and four driving sessions where Mr. Matthews took them on residential roads, city streets, and the freeway.

Before teenagers can receive a driver's license in Colorado, they are required to complete a certain number of driving hours under adult supervision in both daytime and nighttime. The state also limits the number of passengers teens can carry for the first several months. If Colorado didn’t set these rules, Doug and I would have. I’ve heard too many stories about cars full of teenagers crashing and . . . Yes, we’d already decided our children wouldn’t drive cars full of friends.

It’s quite different from when I learned to drive. I took a week of classes, a few loops around town with my teacher, and I was licensed to drive. My sister Ellen gave me another course in driving my father’s Datsun (it was a stick shift) but there were no limits on passengers and such. I soon had my first speeding ticket, issued while I was driving a few of my friends around. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since, I might add.

Anyway, because the girls had to have 50 hours each of supervised driving hours, it fell on Doug and me to ride shot gun and advise. Doug did a lot more of this than I did. He’d take the girls out driving for hours at a time, just so they could get their time in. I may have done that once or twice. I reluctantly let the girls drive when we were going to church or to the store. I wasn’t eager to submit my personal well-being, my family’s well-being, and, yes, my vehicle’s well-being to a novice driver.

It was a little easier for me when Doug was in the front seat with one of the newbees. I knew he was able to reach over and correct steering or rescue us from a bad lane change.

It reminded me a little of the Christian life. As I travel along, I may think I’m the one in control, the one making all the decisions. But I’m not. God is the trustworthy one. His wisdom guides, His hand directs.

A couple weeks ago Kate and Abby became bona fide licensed drivers. Now they can drive on their own without Mom or Dad. But even so, they’re still under God’s watchful eye. I’ll have to learn to trust God in a whole new way.



*Did you hear the men’s chorus singing, “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star. The big, bright Texaco star”? I know lots of old commercial jingles. I’ll have to write about that another time.

The Eagle Has Landed

"One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

I clearly recall hearing those words on July 20, 1969, the day man first walked on the moon.

I got to skip church to watch the moon landing. And we never skipped church. I felt a little guilty but this was the moon landing. I wasn't going to miss it. I remember my mother and one of my sisters went to church and got back home before the astronauts actually walked on the moon. I remember seeing my mother and sister walk past the basement window and thinking how ironic it was that they went to church AND got to see man walk on the moon. Though I'm sure "ironic" was not in my vocabulary when I was ten. While I can picture myself in the family room watching the moon landing, it's the skipping church part that remains most vivid in my mind. That says something about my family, I guess. Moon landing, skipping church, equally monumental.

I remember my father telling me that when he was in high school his science teacher told his class that man would walk on the moon in their lifetime. "We all thought he was crazy," Dad said. Wonder if that teacher was still alive in 1969. I hope so.

Like most Americans during those years I was enamored with space. I had a poster in my bedroom of "The Earth Rising," a now famous image of the "half earth" suspended in a black sky above the surface of the moon. The space program gave us all something to be proud of in a time when our country was greatly divided over a great many things.

Tonight I watched a documentary about the moon landing. It brought up some things I didn't realize as a child. Nixon was president. He spoke to the astronauts by phone by way of the Houston Space Center. Why don't I remember that? Five other Apollo missions landed on the moon, the last one in 1972. I knew there were other missions to the moon but I couldn't have told you there were that many. The Six Flags amusement parks ought to capitalize on that somehow.

The documentary also talked about the importance of Apollo missions 1 - 10. Each one tested an important part of the moon landing, with Apollo 10 hovering above the surface of the moon without actually landing.

As I watched the documentary I noticed I was smiling. I was reliving the excitement of those space travel years. I smiled realizing I remembered the day man walked on the moon. I shared that experience with "my fellow Americans." And I was proud.

Chef Eric

 The other day, my son, Eric, made sausage gravy for dinner. This excited me on several levels.

 1) Eric is 13.

I didn’t know how to make gravy until after I was married. I’m amazed that Eric can make gravy—and good gravy at that—at age 13.

 2) Eric loves to cook.

He’s always enjoyed cooking. As a kid he loved watching the popular and charismatic chef Emeril Lagasse on television. Eric isn’t afraid to experiment and try new things. I’m tied to recipes and seldom deviate. He’s going to be a much better cook than I am.

He helped make hamburgers on the grill recently. They needed a little extra cooking time in the microwave, but otherwise turned out really good.

“Did you put something extra in the meat?” someone asked?

“Did you grill them differently?”

“No, all I did was shape them into patties,” he said. 

He must have magic hands if he just has to pat the meat for it to turn out just right!           

3) Eric is part of our family support network.

When I was offered the option to work full-time after working part-time for a few years, I asked my family what they thought about it. One of my concerns was getting dinner on the table every night. I could join the ranks of those who cook once a week—or once a month—and prepare enough food for a week—or a month. But I’m not that organized. Nor do I want to be. My family offered to share the cooking chores. Each of us (Doug, the three kids, and I) agreed to cook one weeknight and clean up one weeknight. Doug and I work together on weekends.

We set the schedule around each person’s availability. We each had regular activities like music lessons or small group meetings that we needed to accommodate. Plus, short-term activities like play practice required a little flex in the schedule. Now, Abby is heading off to college so we’ll have to shift things around more.

I can’t say we all do our chores without grumbling, but we do get it done. And we’ve learned to cook and clean and cooperate. Talk about life skills!

 4) I love sausage gravy.

‘nuf said.

 

 

Goodbye, Michael Jackson

 Michael Jackson’s death made me sad. Not so much because I was a fan. I liked some of the earlier music by the Jackson Five, but I didn’t follow Michael’s solo career so much. I heard a man say that Michael Jackson’s music was the sound track of his life. That does not describe me. I was touched more by the deaths of John Denver and Karen Carpenter than I was Michael Jackson. Their music did weave itself into the fabric of my teenage years.

            I was saddened by Michael’s death for different reasons. In a strange way I was sad because he and I were the same age. He was just two weeks older than I. So, somehow, that made it more personal. Someone my age died.

            But I wasn’t saddened only by the tragedy of this early death; I was saddened by the tragedy of his life. It appears he had a domineering father that robbed him of his childhood. I’m sure Michael genuinely enjoyed performing, and it sounds like he wanted to be famous. But from my humble perspective I think he should have spent a little more time riding bikes. That’s what I did when I was 11. Michael Jackson was on The Ed Sullivan Show.

            I also think his numerous cosmetic surgeries reveal an inner sadness. The day he died, Kate and I were watching some of the retrospectives on TV.

            “He was a cute kid,” Kate said. “Why did he get so much plastic surgery?"

            “Because he wasn’t happy with himself,” I told her. I don’t mean to imply that all plastic surgery is wrong. I’ve seen cases where surgery corrected some disfigurement or altered an unappealing attribute and the results were worthwhile. But was there anything wrong with Michael Jackson’s face? I don’t know what he saw when he looked in the mirror, but it wasn’t what the rest of the world saw. The cute 10-year-old boy singing his heart out on The Ed Sullivan Show turned into an addicted, disfigured, and bizarre man. 

And that’s just sad.

---------------------------

P.S. The Sunday after Michael Jackson died I read these words in our church hymnal:

I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause;


I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause;


I’d rather have Jesus than worldwide fame,


I’d rather be true to His holy name.

Than to be a king of a vast domain


Or be held in sin’s dread sway,


I’d rather have Jesus than anything


This world affords today.



by Rhea F. Miller, 1922.

Lucky me

I won a drawing today. I attended a luncheon with a group of people I’d never luncheoned with before and I won a book in a random drawing.

It happens to me all the time. A few months ago I won a painting in a drawing at work. Last fall I won concert tickets by being the ninth caller to a radio show. I won $1,000 once by calling a different station when they played the song of the day. Which just happened to be “Windy,” the song my third grade class sang for a school program.

I thought it was so cool. All the other classes were singing “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music but our class was singing a song by The Association. Our teacher bought the 78 and we played it over and over again on our little classroom record player until we had all the words transcribed. We didn’t have the option of finding the lyrics on the Internet.

Yeah, my third grade teacher was cool. I wish I remembered her name. Aiken Elementary School, Ontario, Oregon, 1967. She had a blonde beehive and wore pink lipstick and miniskirts. She’s the teacher I credit with igniting my love for writing. Actually, it started with poetry. My teacher thought one of the poems I wrote was good, and I was a changed person.

I can remember sitting in my bedroom closet with a flashlight—probably looking for a place to be alone—and writing a dictionary of rhyming words. When somebody as cool as my third grade teacher says you’re good at something it’s pretty inspiring.

My sister Jenny tells a story that once when she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, “I don’t know, but I want to write poetry in my spare time.”

So anyway, I won a book today. It happens to me all the time.

Soley Because Thou Art My God

We sang a new song in choir tonight. Actually, it's an old song, but new to our group. The words are based on a 17th century poem, “My Eternal King.” As I sang the words I had a feeling I'd heard them before, but I was moved by them afresh.

My Eternal King

Poem (anonymous)
from 17th Century Latin
Translated by Rev. Edward Caswall

My God, I love Thee;
not because I hope for heav’n thereby,
Nor yet because who love Thee not
Must die eternally.

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me
Upon the cross embrace;
For me didst bear the nails, the nails and spear,
And manifold disgrace.

Why, then why, O blessed Jesus Christ,
Should I not love Thee well?
Not for the hope of winning heav’n,
Or of escaping hell;

Not with the hope of gaining aught,
Not seeking a reward;
But as Thyself hast loved me,
O ever-loving Lord!

E’en so I love Thee, and will love,
And in Thy praise will sing;
Solely because Thou art my God,
And my Eternal King.