I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
--Marianne Williamson

Everyone has a lowest point in their life, a time when the burdens are more than we can bear. My dark time was just a few months ago. Everything that I knew my life to be was crashing in around me and I could barely tread water enough to breathe. I nearly drowned, and in part I was losing the will to stay afloat. The weight of my problems had been pulling me down for so long I was losing the strength to hang on. And at the moment when I almost gave into the tide my friends and family rescued me.

I normally refuse the help of others, I prefer to be the one offering assistance, but I was so weak I couldn't push them away. My loved ones rushed into action and nursed my heart and soul back to health while helping me restore and renew my life and my will to live. They helped me piece together what was salvageable and build a foundation for my new life to come. They saved my life and I can't imagine a greater miracle than that. Before my rescue it became difficult for me to believe in anything, especially miracles. Now I have experienced the greatest miracle of all--love. And henceforth I will strive to be grateful for every day that I spend on this earth.

You Can't Make this Shit Up

I've decided to add an ongoing element to my blog. It seems that in life truth is often stranger than fiction, and nothing could be more true in a small town. One of the wonderful and yet bizarre qualities of small towns is that these locals seem to somehow nurture and support the odd characters in our midst. It's a theme in Southern literature, but I have to say that it is universally applicable to all small towns. Therefore I have decided to keep track of these quirky, and sometimes disturbing characters and events as I experience them. Yes, these people and events that are so off the wall that you just can't make this shit up...........

Here is the inaugural oddfellow, I shall call him Slick.

The other day I was running my usual errands, which now include buying pantyhose at Wal-Mart, an entirely frustrating experience to say the least. (And yes, the three dollar pantyhose run like no body's business.) I stood in the express checkout lane with my sugar free truffles, crappy pantyhose and a pack of substandard gum (I can't find Altoids gum ANYWHERE around here.) In a matter of just a few moments it was my turn to be check out and I met Slick. Slick is a chubby teenaged pimply faced kid who probably hadn't washed his hair in a few days and had mustard on his cheek. He dutifully scanned my measly purchase, tossed it in the bag and I swiped my debit card through the card reader. No beep. I swipe again, still no beep. Slick intervenes, "Sometimes the cards get dirty, " he says as he takes the card out of my hand, proceeds to lick the magnetic strip and wipe it on his dirty Wal-Mart vest. Then Slick runs the card through his card reader and PRESTO it beeps, authorizes and he hands me back my contaminated card. In truth, I wanted to say, "It's okay, you keep it," but I was envisioning Slick and his only two friends in the world emptying my bank account buying junk food and internet porn, so I took it back and left in horror. Now one might think that after such an experience I would never return to Wal-Mart in protest, BUT this is a small town and sadly the best place to buy crappy three dollar pantyhose. You just can't make this shit up.