Regarding People

Keep It Simple. Eat A Banana.

/ Ally Bean / 12 Comments

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I awakened this morning with a charley horse in my right calf.  Not the smoothest way to start the day.  But one that got me thinking about a woman who I used to know who had some fascinating ideas about the nature of reality.

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This woman who I’ll call K, was one of the nicest, calmest, most supportive human beings I’ve ever met.  She was a mother of 4, wife of a physician, lived in a charming older home that she filled with pets, overstuffed furniture & amazing meals.

K, who was born in the late 1940s and influenced by the 1960s hippie movement, was a nurturing person who grooved on Dr. Wayne Dyer and healing crystals.  And it was from this perspective that she viewed reality.

For instance, one of K’s beliefs was that when a person awoke with a pain in his or her body, the pain was a result of the sleeper’s body being used by some celestial force in a different plane of existence during the night.  This made sense to her and she shared this idea with anyone who’d listen to her.

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Now I cannot conclusively say that K’s idea is totally wrong.  Who knows, eh?  But I can tell you, my gentle readers, that my father was a small town doctor who had slightly different take on charley horses in the middle of the night.

His simple, straight-to-the-point explanation of why a person had a charley horse was that said person wasn’t eating enough magnesium potassium.  And to remedy this situation he’d just say: “Eat a banana.“

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And so it is as I sit here this morning typing this story that I find myself eating a banana– and reflecting upon the wonderful people who I’ve known in my life.  Some a little more based in my idea of reality, than others.

That Place Where Genealogy & A Forgiving Spirit Meet

/ Ally Bean / 14 Comments

“It is a duty to forgive everyone that is indebted to us, under pain of the Divine condemnation… for an unforgiving spirit cannot possibly be a happy one.”

~ The Reverend William H. Sutherland, Ohio frontier circuit preacher | DDiv | my great-grandfather

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Good thought, eh?  I stumbled upon it when I was doing some random genealogical research.

[Amazing what a person can find online.]

The quote you see above comes from Charles C. Cole’s Lion of the Forest: James B. Finley, Frontier Reformer, a biography about Finley.  Like Finley, my great-grandfather was a frontier circuit preacher who travelled via horse or on foot to spread the word of God.  It was a difficult life and the pay was nominal.  Most men did the job for a few years and then moved onto something less strenuous, less religious.

However, my great-grandfather toughed it out and eventually went on to earn an advanced degree in theology.  Throughout his subsequent career as a reverend he rose within the ranks of the Methodist Episcopal Church* to become an elder of some sort.  [More research needed.]  But before he became someone of note within the church, he ruffled a few feathers out there on the circuit.

[Specifically, the feathers of Finley.]

As I understand it, Finley and my great-grandfather did not agree on what constituted Christian forgiveness.  Finley believed that a Christian could not forgive someone unless that someone had first repented.

My great-grandfather took a more progressive view and said that forgiveness was not dependent upon someone else repenting, but was an action that a good Christian took as a matter of course.  The responsibility to forgive was the appropriate behavior of the forgiver, regardless of what the person requiring forgiveness did– or did not do.

[You still with me here?]

I like learning that my great-grandfather, who is affectionately known within this house as The Old Coot, was not as coot-ish as I imagined him to be.  My take-away from this is that he had a good heart, and apparently the sense to know what to worry about and what to let go of.

Rather modern thinking, for an old-time religious fellow.  I’m impressed.

* In 1844 there was a schism within the U.S.A. Methodist church resulting in the denomination dividing into two factions: the Methodist Episcopal Church condemned slavery;  the Southern Methodist Church allowed slavery.  This schism foreshadowed the Civil War by about 20 years.

I Love You, But You’re A Fruit Loop

/ Ally Bean / 20 Comments

This made me laugh at myself.  File it under: Make No Assumptions.  Ever.

# # #

Sometime last year I met a woman at a business function and we talked about social media.  She knew that her job responsibilities were changing and that soon she’d be expected to contribute to her company’s blog and Twitter account.

She also knew that I had a blog so I gave her my blog’s card thinking that she might want to see what I do and how I do it.  She seemed appreciative.

Or at least that is the way I chose to interpret her actions.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I happened to run into this woman again.  She mentioned my blog and I thought: How wonderful!  Someone who I met in real life is reading my sweet little bloggy. 

But my assumption about this woman’s behavior could not have been any farther from the truth. 

She happily admitted that she’d never read my blog.  Then she went on to tell me that she could make my blog popular because she knew how to do that now.

According to her, what I wrote was not important because a blog’s popularity had nothing to do with content– and everything to do with salesmanship.  Specifically, her salesmanship.

And with that she babbled onto another topic of conversation, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she’d insulted me.

This left me wondering: who is the fruit loop here?  Is it her for being unaware and self-absorbed?  Or [more likely] is it me for even listening to her to begin with?

All I know for sure is that there’s another fruit loop to add to the bowl.  😉

Let’s Talk About Cowinkydinks

/ Ally Bean / 19 Comments

So here’s how it all happened.

I went to the grocery to pick up a few things for dinner.  Me with a list, even.  Rather clued into what was going on around me.

As I was walking into the lobby of the store I thought that I recognized another woman walking into the store.  I wasn’t sure at first, but I thought that this woman was my R.A. during my sophomore year of college.

At a small liberal arts university nowhere near here.  About eleventy hundred years ago.

# # #

As she was grabbing for a shopping cart and turned toward me, I realized that she was, indeed, my R.A. in college, who I hadn’t seen in decades.  So I exclaimed her name.  Loudly.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem fazed by some crazy woman, moi, shouting at her.  And in fact we began to talk.  After a few minutes of re-connecting in the lobby of the grocery, she suggested we meet for lunch.

Which we did and had a great time of it.  We even plan to get together again next month to continue the conversation.

# # #

This would be the end of the story if it weren’t for the weirdest coincidence that happened later in the day.  While at lunch my former R.A. told me that she had grown up in a town that I’d never heard of before, a small town in the next state over.

That evening Z-D came home from work and told me that he had to get up early to drive to a meeting somewhere he had never been to before.

Where was he going?  To a little town in the next state over where my R.A. had grown up.

Now what are the odds of that?