by Kathy Brasby | Jul 10, 2013 | Stories
In the days before I had much money, I got myself a poor person’s cruise control on my car. In those days, I drove a 5-speed VW Rabbit and so I sweet-talked my brother, the mechanic, into installing a throttle lock.
What the system consisted of was a gadget attached to the gas pedal and another line attached somehow to the brake. When you engaged the system, the gas pedal was locked into place. Pressing the brake released the lock.
This sounds like the sort of thing a person whose brain has not fully developed yet might try out. And that was the case.
Because the area where I generally drove was flat, the system worked adequately. I’d reach the right speed, lock in the throttle, and relax. My speed would shift with any ups and downs in the road but not much.
I was now in league with those fancy-schmancy cruise controls.
So one day my sister and I took off for Denver in my Rabbit. I don’t remember why she was driving but I do remember that we had a good-sized hill to clear on the route.
When I drove, I kicked off my throttle lock when I got to the hill.
My sister didn’t.
So up the hill we climbed. Gravity being what it is, our speed dropped. And dropped.
Cars passed us. Lots of cars passed us.
We chugged our way to the top like the little engine that could.
And then we started down. We zoomed down the hill, flying past cars that had passed us like we were tortoises. Now we were the hare.
“Those people think I’m crazy!” my sister wailed.
Perhaps they did. But we got so far ahead of that pack we didn’t see any of them all the way to Denver. So it really didn’t matter.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 8, 2013 | Hope
The secretary and I were the only two women working in this shop. There’s something about rubbing elbows with a bunch of guys that can give you bad dreams.
Let me explain.
The secretary was deathly afraid of mice. This was not a good thing to reveal to a bunch of guys but there it was.
I wasn’t overly fond of mice myself but determined not to admit to it. But the guys still tested me. I was in charge of checking in shipments – large and small – at our business and so one day found a small plastic bag on my desk. This wasn’t really unusual and I flipped the bag to check the shipping tag.
A dead mouse was stapled inside the bag.
I dropped the gift and looked up to see our service manager and parts manager peering around the corner watching. The service manager threw his hands in the air.
“It wasn’t my idea!”
And the parts manager put his hands up, too. “I didn’t put that bag on your desk.”
I decided to ignore Tweedledee and Tweedledum that day.
They didn’t harass me again – not enough hysteria to suit them, I’m sure – but one day our secretary came back from lunch to find a brown lunch bag on her desk. Stapled shut and wiggling.
She ran screaming to the break room, sure they had trapped a live mouse for her.
After shaking her hands and sobbing forever, she still refused to enter her office. So the service manager retrieved the bag from her office and brought it out, where he sliced off the top and set the trapped frog free.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum spent the afternoon freshening up the secretary’s desk before she’d return to work. Boss’s orders.
Something good did come out of it, though. Whenever the two guys got the idea to go in search of mice, they remembered four hours of scrubbing a desk and sat down until that idea passed.
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 4, 2013 | Stories
Jeff Goins has a great blog post on the Revolutionary Power of Words. Appropriate for Americans on Independence Day!
by Kathy Brasby | Jul 1, 2013 | Stories
In the movie Up, a dog with teeth bared moving in for the win could be distracted by the call, “Squirrel!” The dog’s head instantly rotated in search of the new prey.
That problem isn’t just with dogs. My sister and I have been struggling with the same issue.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
I recently had a couple of errands to run before visiting my mother, who is currently living in a nursing home. From the bank, I headed downtown for errand #2 – picking up a part from an appliance store. One block before I arrived at the store, I instead turned right onto Main Street and drove back across town to the nursing home.
Two hours later, I realized I hadn’t snagged the part I needed.
Squirrel!
A few days ago, my teenage son and I headed out on a day-long trip. Before we walked out of the house, I reminded him, “You ought to take a water bottle with you.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said and filled a stainless steel bottle pulled from the cupboard.
Then we got into the car and I buckled in. “Oh,” I said. “I forgot my water bottle.”
I got out of the car, headed back toward the house, and he rolled down his window. “Would you grab mine while you’re in there?”
Squirrel!
My sister is working with an essential oil that is supposed to help with distractedness. I’m calling it squirrel oil and, if it helps her, I may mainline the stuff.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 28, 2013 | Hope
A woman killing a military hero makes for an unexpected story and Jael’s grisly slaying in the book of Judges contains an striking motif that uses vivid images to make the story spring to life.
The account of Jael and Sisera takes place within the story of Deborah, a judge of Israel who led a great victory over the army of Jabin, king of Canaan, lead by Sisera.
Sisera’s army is routed in spite of its superiority and Sisera flees on foot, with Barak, the Israelite general, in pursuit. Sisera flees to the tent of Jael, assuming to find sanctuary because of the peace between Jabin and Jael’s husband, Heber.
A nurturing, maternal motif forms in the story. Jael is first seen in her tent and comes out to invite Sisera in. Twice she calls him to “turn aside” and tells him to have no fear. The tent, as the woman’s domain, can be seen as a womb. In inviting Sisera to enter, there is a sense of protection as a baby in a womb.
That imagery continues as she covers Sisera with a rug as a mother might cover a baby. He asks her for a drink of water like a child might ask its mother. Jael, however, gives Sisera milk – more than he asked for and more comforting – and then covers him again, evoking further images of a mother and baby.
Sisera asks Jael to stand guard at the door of the tent and tell any men, “There is no man within.” From Sisera’s point of view, he has commanded her to protect him by lying, confident in his military authority. But Sisera has figuratively regressed from manhood to childhood in blindly trusting Jael; there really is no man within the tent.
Sisera sleeps like a baby, for although he has the leader of the opposition chasing him, he is able to trust Jael enough to sleep.
She takes up the hammer and tent peg – tools of a woman in that culture because they were the ones who moved the tents– and goes quietly to him like a mother tiptoeing to her child’s bedside to check his breathing while he sleeps.
However, the story violently twists and Jael drives the peg into Sisera’s head, killing him.
Jael is a hero to her people and yet the imagery makes us squeamish. We grapple with the motif twisted. How could a mother betray her baby? Why did Sisera relinquish his trust and his life to this woman?
Striking use of imagery makes Jael’s story a powerful one with many questions to be explored.