The Wicked Witch

 

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine

enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” Psalm 8:2

 

I am certainly convinced that God has a sense of humor.  There are several examples I can cite that would prove this point.  The two places I have said I never wanted to live, we have spent extended period times at. And in the last several years, while traveling huge amounts of miles my son has developed carsickness that always pops up at just the right time, if you know what I mean.

 

But perhaps the biggest source of frustration for me is that I am terrible with names, I always have been, and it is not getting any better.  Of course we meet people all over the country and it is hard to keep them all straight.  I am always seeing people that we have spent time with, or talked with after church or what have you, and I often am clueless as to their names.  At 38 perhaps we could call it old age, but the reality is I have struggled with this since I was in my mid 20’s.  I remember one time at a church in PA I mentioned a church deacon several times by name in the course of a message.  After church someone asked me who I was talking about I pointed the man out and they said oh, that’s ____________ I wasn’t even close to having the name right.

 

In looking for ways to overcome that we discovered that everyone looks like someone else and many folks look like cartoon characters or TV folks.  We have ran across folks that look like Jon Arbuckle (from the Garfield comic strip), George Jetson, Jill Taylor and many others.

 

If you are a parent, I am sure you know that your children pick up all sorts of things from you even the things that you don’t want them to.  I would imagine that when you consider we spent about 5 years putting 250,000 miles on a Buick Regal, the vast majority of which was done with all 5 of us in the car.  For much of that time it was virtually impossible for Carmen and I to have a private conversation.  One night we found out that our children had picked up on our practice of identifying people without us even knowing.

 

When my son was all of 4 or 5 years old we were in a small mountain church on a Wednesday night, part way through the service the pastor announced that his wife would take the young kids out and tell them a Bible story. They went off and we proceeded with the service.  After the service was completed we were packing up our display and the pastor pulled me aside at which time I was quickly aware that he was quite upset about something.  He informed me that my son had piped up in the middle of story time and said to his wife “hey, you look just like the wicked witch from the Wizard of OZ”    He proceeded to tell me  how rude and insensitive this was and how upset his wife was by all of this.  I asked him to point her out so I could apologize, and I assured him I would take it up with my son privately.  When I walked across the church to apologize to her I had to do a double take when she turned around and I quickly realized that my son had hit the old proverbial nail right on the head. I mean she was the spitting image. If she had of been green it would have been the total package and I wouldn’t have been able to apologize with a straight face.

 

Lesson Learned:  Be Careful what you say around your kids because they will certainly embarrass you at some point.