Thoughts of a Twitterless Thinker 10-23-09

Most adult women know the sensation of being groomed by other women.

Not grooming in the sense of having another woman pick lice out of your hair and then crush the lice between her teeth in the manner of a female monkey. No, grooming in the sense of having another woman walk up behind you and kindly push the care tag back inside the neck of your shirt.

Or having a woman pick a stray thread off your wool coat or release the strand of hair that got tangled up in your hoop earring. Or even silently mouthing, “You have lipstick on your teeth.”

Yeah, women groom each other like that.

So last Sunday in church when I felt someone fussing with my hair from behind, I assumed I probably had a curl that had gone awry and was boinging out ridiculously from my head. I ignored it until I felt the gentle tugging again.

I turned around to see which woman was courteously grooming me.

It was a man! What in the world?

“Sorry, I’m just trying to catch that spider that’s in your hair.”

AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!

Can I say that again?

AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!

I was totally amazed at my self control, sitting frozen while every cell in my body wanted to leap out of that chair and yell to all present, “There’s a spider in my hair! AAAAGGGGHHH!”

After a few agonizing seconds I heard one of the most joyous phrases in human language:

“Got it.”

I wonder if he does lice checks too?

Kids tell it like it is.

Earlier this week, the 6th grade science teacher asked if I would watch her three-year-old daughter, Ella, while she taught class for an hour. As it was my lunch break, I agreed.

I had never spent any time alone with Ella, and I found her delightful. I read several books to her, and found a child’s picture dictionary to be especially entertaining. She enjoyed naming each picture as I pointed to it.

When we reached the “H” section, I pointed to a picture of the heads of three children and tried to get her to say “hair.” Repeated attempts failed and I got the bright idea of pointing to my own hair instead. I grasped a hank of my hair, and asked, “Ella, what is this?”

“Tangles?”

Indeed. Maybe that’s why SPIDERS like to live there.

One of my students brought his Buzz Word game to school last week, asking if we could play it in class. Since I teach literature and the game contains a lot of well-known phrases the kids should know, I agreed. Later, another class wanted to play also.

We had such a good experience with the first class, I told the next class they could play too. I had to explain the rules though.

“You pick a card. Each card has a word at the top, say for example, the word UP.
You tell your teammates the word is UP, and then they have to provide answers based on clues that you give them, but each answer must have the work UP in it. For example if the clue says sometimes you’re in a good mood and sometimes you’re in a bad mood, we would say you HAVE YOUR UPS AND DOWNS. Get it?”

They all said they got it. It was time to pick the first card. I reached into the card box, which contained four hundred possible words, and guess which word I picked out?
You guessed it---UP! I kid you not. What are the odds of that? Something like 1 in 400 I’ll bet.

One of my newest simple pleasures: Opening up Facebook to see a notification that says I have one new friend request. There’s always that moment of anticipation while I click and wonder who waits behind the door. (Kind of like when you never knew who was going to walk through Dean Martin’s door on his TV show.)


You all know how much I love surprises, right? My son brought in the mail the other day, and along with the ads was a big brown envelope addressed to me. I opened it, and inside were two amazing card making magazines! The especially keen thing was that they came with pretty papers, templates, stickers, adhesives and embellishments. And even better? They were from the UK, so I had never seen these two magazines before. The gifts were a surprise from one of Foreign Quang’s UK readers. Since I haven’t asked her permission yet, I will acknowledge her anonymously. Thank you so much, my dear friend! My week went so much better because of you. You helped me ignore the first nasty message that I got from a commenter this week.

Dear Son is off on a mountain biking trip this weekend without the old folks. Well, without his own old folks, that is. Scout leaders will be there. I’ve been really grateful to the Scouting program because Weston is learning to be a Mountain Man. He does manly things like dig his own potty hole, pitch his own tent, learn how to use knives with more than one function, and raccoon-proof his food. He loves it. I would teach him how to do those types of things but I DON’T CAMP.

Computer Geek camps and has tried to get me to camp too. I’ve never really seen the purpose in camping. Camping means that I must be willing to make my life extremely miserable for at least one night. Really, why would any sane person say, “I will sleep on the ground guaranteeing sore muscles and a headache the next day; I will wrap my arms around a skinny tree so that I can go to the bathroom without soiling my clothes; I will agree to cook around a campfire then try to clean the pans without running water; I will look forward to washing the smoke smell out of all clothing I took with me---even clothes that I did not wear; and furthermore, I will agree to pretend like purposely making my life harder for the duration of the trip is actually fun. And trying to put contacts in without a mirror, curling my hair, putting makeup on, and actually BATHING? I won’t even go there. So, have a good time, Son!

Confession time: I fell in love with a Miley Cyrus song this week. I’ve been singing it in my mind ever since I saw it on my cousin’s Facebook page the other day. My nomination for cool video of the week is a way cool kid doing sign language to the song. It just makes me so darn HAPPY. And now I want to learn sign language so I can rock like that!

So I’m watching Super Nanny tonight and it’s way interesting because the father refuses to acknowledge his daughter when he gets home from work. Doesn’t speak, doesn’t hug her, doesn’t even seem to see her. Super Nanny takes father and daughter for a ride in a cable car and stops the car in mid-air until they work out their issues. They end up hugging in a touching moment. Then it’s dad’s turn to work on his relationship with mom. Things seem very strained and he seems unwilling to change. I’m on the edge of my seat.

What happened next? I will never know because the next thing I knew I was awakened by some man in a yellow suit jacket on Ugly Betty.

Edge of my seat------ZONK. Edge of my seat-----ZONK. How do these things happen?

It’s called OLD AGE, people. It’s called I TURN FIFTY IN TWO MONTHS.

Anybody know how Super Nanny ended?