by Freida Marie Crump
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Greetin’s from the Ridge.
I have a dead spot in my brain. It mostly has to do with numbers and although Herb would claim that it extends to directions, names, gross motor functions, and general common sense, I have pretty much narrowed it down to digits.
You give me a number and I can mess it up, rearrange it, or simply forget it. When I order something over the phone and they ask my phone number, I’ll insert a meaningful silence. I tell the operator that I’m debating with myself on the privacy issue but the fact is, I’m trying to remember my own phone number.
Just last week I ordered tickets, gave the number I wanted and the date. The lady on the other end politely replied, “Mrs. Crump, there is no Friday September 18th…at least not in this year. Could you possibly mean Friday the 19th or Thursday the 18th?”
(a meaningful pause, then. . . )
“Uh… yes…Thursday the 18th.”
“We have no performance that night, Mrs. Crump. That’s why it’s called the Weekend Follies.”
“Oh. I knew that. Could I call you back?”
An innocent friend of mine once put me in charge of ordering the invitations to her daughter’s wedding shower. I checked and double checked the date…June 3, June 3, June 3. I had Herb check it for me. Somebody else’s money was at stake and I wasn’t going to blow this one. The invitations came just as I’d ordered…June 3rd…of the wrong year.
Two days ago I was working on a schedule for the annual church bazaar. Our committee had voted to add fifteen minutes to the usual one-hour setup time. I sent out the notices saying that we would now have a full 90 minutes for setup. 60 plus 15 equals 90. I was the only one who understood the math.
A part of my brain is missing.
And this is why I can’t see why we’re so quick to jump on the political butt of President Bush when he said that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. After all, it was only the State of the Union speech and he had a lot of things on his mind…or missing from it.
Of course, being in Washington, he can’t be accused of lying. Colin Powell set it all straight when he said, “Subsequently, when we looked at it more thoroughly…we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example any more.” See? Just a dead part of somebody’s brain. When they asked Powell why the administration hadn’t corrected their error but the Secretary himself had dropped the reference from a report he gave to the U.N. a week later, he said again that it wasn’t appropriate to use it at that time.
Gosh. When I think of all the flubs I’ve made…and believe me, I’ve admitted to them…in Coonridge they know you too well to try to get away with outright lying…I’m just plumb flummoxed to think I didn’t know the right excuse. “Uh…excuse me…the date for those tickets to the Weekend Follies was…uh…inappropriate.”
“Okay Louise, I know that I spent $254 of your hard-earned money on wedding shower invitations that’ll now have the guest arriving a year late. But believe me, I didn’t actually make a mistake. It was just inappropriate. I relied on the British for my intelligence.”
“My phone number? I’m sorry, but it would be inappropriate for me to give it to you at this time.
I know this because Colin Powell said so and the CIA Director said it was his mistake.”
Bush Inc. has been known to play a little fast and loose with the facts this year but they can be forgiven for trying to quickly make sense of a fast-changing world. Like when the official report on Global Warming stated that the 1990s showed a definite warming trend in the earth’s atmosphere, the administration chose to leave this out of their statements on the environment. I don’t blame them. They probably had so much new information on how Iraq bought space heaters from Africa that they just didn’t have enough appropriate time to say it all.
My grandma used to tell us that in the one room schoolhouse they’d have civics lessons. The students were to read about the lives of the Presidents and try to emulate them…Washington’s honesty, Lincoln’s ideals, Roosevelt’s courage. Maybe schools have come up with a better method but I can’t ever remember hearing the current string of Presidents being held up as moral lighthouses. Maybe like me, their bulbs are just a little dim.
You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.