Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider, who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

We have all heard that nursery rhyme before…well that ladies and gentlemen was Happy Dance a few weeks ago. 

I had just left work and was at the first stop light before my turn to get on the interstate to go home.  I was jamming out to one of my favorite songs and then that’s when I saw it! This green little creature was slowly falling down from the roof of my car and then it hovered right next to the steering wheel.  I screamed, I waved my arms, I did what most girls do, I tried to get away.  But the thing is, I was in my car, I was buckled in (PSA announcement from Happy Dance, “Always wear your seatbelts!”), and there was nowhere for me to run. 

I took my lunch pale up and brought it up to try and hit the spider out my window, that I was quickly trying to open.  The little bugger climbed up his stringy backside mess to the roof, and then the light turned green and I had to turn onto the interstate.  The whole time I was thinking, it won’t bother me, it will stay right up there.  That’s when it came down again.  Mind you I’m driving, on the interstate, in crazy traffic.  Also I don’t like to kill anything, not even spiders, I always ask Bebe or someone near by to kill it for me.  I feel bad, it might have a family or something, and my killing it might cause huge issues for them financially (just go with it people!). 

I finally decide to take off my shoe and try and hit it.  I hit it with my shoe, and it falls to the floor.  I put my shoe back on and start stomping at the ground (I have no idea where it hit).  I call Kat up and tell her about it and ask her to keep my mind off of it and to see if she thought the spider forgave me for killing it, because I felt bad.  The whole time I felt like it was on my legs, or biting me out of revenge.  I have no idea if it was killed by my shoe or not.  The next morning on my way to work I remembered the whole incident and kept my eye out for it. 

I haven’t seen it since, I think it is lurking under my driver side seat, growing, and waiting for the right time to come out and try to step on me.  Just wait, you’ll hear about it on the front page of a newspaper or the internet, “Woman on way to work killed in car accident after huge spider tried to squish her to death”

Flutterby experience

I have this horrible fear of killing things.  Like if I see a rabbit, I swear my car so I don’t hit it.  I won’t kill a bug because it makes me sad, instead I will call someone else to kill it, all the while yelling at the bug to run, flee, leave, but usually they don’t hear my plea and they get killed by Bebe or my mom or a friend.  So this experience is about me not killing things. 

Kat and I were in high school and I was in my old blue hatchback car that liked to eat people.  We were in the country, cruising around, on a gravel road.  The road was really curvy and, since I was a teenager, I didn’t feel the need to slow down much while on the gravel.  The time of year was after all the rolley polley caterpillars had baked in their cocoons enough to emerge and become beautiful butterflies.  I had just started going around a curve when all of a sudden a butterfly came out of no where and I was on the verge of hitting it with my car, so I swerved to miss it.  Kat starts to scream and I move the car back to going straight and she asks me if I have lost my mind.  So I told her, while making “the sad face” that it I couldn’t kill it, it might have had a family.  She told me it was just a butterfly, but I told her that if I killed it, then it’s babies would be without a father (because you know the butterfly had to have been male right?) and it would be all my fault, and what if he was the breadwinner and if he didn’t come home tonight they would all die! I would be in charge of multiple deaths, not just one.  She looked at me with the face of not believing what she was hearing and laughed.  This image is her rendition of the, what we now call, the flutterby! 

Now whenever I hit things people tell me the animal or bug was suicidal and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.  That has seemed to stop most of my swerving around the road, but still it makes me very sad…what if they had a family!

Christmas in July?

So there is this thing where apparently people can’t go too long without some Christmas in their lives, and so Christmas in July comes around.  And even though I love Christmas and the Holiday spirit I don’t feel like we need Christmas in July to feel the love of Christ and to share his love with the world.

But one year in July, in my small town, Kat and I were walking around (it’s what you do when you are from a small town and have no gas money), and decided Christmas was what everyone needed.  It was a hot day, the sun was beating down on us, and really we probably should have just watched a movie but instead we wanted to go out into the world (or just out of our parents houses) and see what there was to see.  Well in my town you have some stop signs, some yield signs, some animals, trees, a courthouse, a few businesses, and people who know you, everywhere. 

While walking we would talk and joke.  But that day it felt like there needed to be something much bigger involved then just talking and joking…there needed to be singing!  So that is exactly what we did.  We held hands, skipped, and sang songs.  NOT just any songs…we sang Christmas songs.  Baby it’s Cold Outside, Jingle Bells, Oh Holy Night, We Three Kings, Emanuel, oh yes we went there! 

We had a lot of people sing along with us as we passed by, other that requested tunes once they heard us belting it out.  It was caroling in the scorching sun and it was a lot of fun!  The best part was when we went by a house that had roofers on top of it.  They yelled down “Jingle Bell Rock” and we quickly went to that song and waved and went by.  We could hear the roofers whistling it after we had passed. 

It was a great feeling of bringing back that spirit of love and joy to those around us when on the really hot day, they probably needed it most.  Plus the people who we did pass either gave us really weird looks, which was just funny, or joined in and enjoyed it.  So either way our day was made, or the peoples were.  Plus we got to skip around town…and once you get to high school skipping is something that not a lot of people do, so we totally brought it back that day. 

It is one of those things that will always bring a smile to my face when I think back on it.  It was so random and such a perfect day.  So now in July…even though I don’t buy into the whole tv stations and radio stations Christmas in July thing…I have my own private Christmas music listening/singing party…or Kat is there too, and we sing at least one song and smile.  And now whenever I hear those songs it brings back memories of skipping down one of the main roads in town taking requests and caroling in July.

How a worry wart deals with things…

Hello name is Happy Dance and I’m a…no I just can’t say it…well I probably should…but what if it’s not something someone wants to hear and I hurt them because they to are just like me and…a worrier. 

That first line would be my introduction at a Worry Wart Meeting (not AA but WW).  I worry about everything…and probably the best way to describe my worrying would be to tell you about a time back in high school when I was with my friend Kat. 

Kat and I have an interesting relationship.  We met in church playing tic-tac-toe during the sermon.  We were two very different people and somehow that made it all work.   By looking you would see this: a tall blonde girl and a shorter brunette girl.  One girl would be wearing some neon colors or something very girly…the other girl would be wearing black with some rock band logo on the front of some of the t-shirts.  We make for an odd pair of best friends.  But again, I think that is what makes us work…we bring out the best (or in the scenario below, the worst) in each other.

The story begins with Kat and me getting in my car and going to a nearby town.  Remember my home town is VERY small, so the nearest town that has anything other then a gas station is 15 minutes away, so that is where we were going.  My car, at the time, is so small that it “eats” people.  They get stuck, bang their head, or they just can’t seem to fit their whole bodies inside without some time and maybe a stick of butter to help them slide in.  So after getting in the car that “eats” people we were on our way.  She was suppose to be going over to my house, but instead we decided that we were going to fast food joint in the near by town to see some of our friends that worked there. 

At the fast food restaurant we started to talk to some of our friends and they just happened to get a rush of people in at the same time, so Kat and I decided to leave.  In the process of leaving one of our friends asked us if we wanted something to drink and gave us two sodas to go.  He slide the drinks from his side of the counter to our side.  I told them we couldn’t take it, and Kat elbowed me in the stomach (she was really good at that) and told me to take it. 

This is when it all went down!  I FREAKED OUT! We couldn’t take the drinks because we hadn’t bought the drinks, we were stealing!  Kat told me to calm down and think about it, the friend had given us the drinks, therefore it’s not on us, it’s on them.  That sentence apparently didn’t make any sense in my small little mind, filled to the brim with worry, and I kept on freaking out….what if the police come after us, I can’t go to jail, who is going to bail us out, and why would we go to jail over two sodas! 

I turned around to return the drink, and she pulled on my arm and turned me around.  She again told me to calm down and to take a drink.  So I did…then she pointed and laughed.  “You can’t return it now, you already drank out of it”  This in turn made me freak out again…I JUST STOLE POP!  I took another drink…AND I LIKE IT!  I looked at her on the drive home and told her we were going to hell for this. She laughed and told me to drink my pop. 

The moral of the story, no matter what the situation, and for that matter how kind someone else is being, a worrier will always worry about it. 

The next moral of the story…she still laughs at me to this day about the whole soda “stealing” thing…and I still think that if a cop had seen us, we’d probably have been fined or cuffed and taken to jail.  I should have just kept my mouth shut!