Embarrassing Story #1

Having just bragged to my sister about adding the subscription link to my blog, I cut our conversation short so I could practice more computer wizardry by sending out one mass email to everyone in my address book to let them know. Within seconds of hitting Send, I realized that somehow I had sent out 6 of the same email to every person.

I called my sister back, laughing so hard I couldn’t get it out at first. We then laughed together, as we often do. We love to collect and share the funny stories of our days, phoning each other for the sheer joy of laughing together.

But this was very embarrassing. It is. Having cleverly confessed in my email to feeling self-promoting, (so they wouldn’t think it first), I then blew it by barraging their email boxes with 6 annoying messages. I felt a little better when my sister told me that she once hit the Reply All key, sending her lunch order for a Reuben from Bogie’s Deli to the entire faculty at Collierville High.

This reminded me of another embarrassing story, and, desiring a little levity in the midst of my sack-cloth and ashes week, I’ve decided to post it here instead of dealing with the second sin of the sisters of Sodom (previous post), though I’m working on that one.

It was 1982. Newly married, we had just moved to a NATO base in Germany. We had a couch, a bed, a few dishes and cooking utensils, and a beat-up dinette on loan from the Army, so our apartment was cold and depressing, as was the weather. A few visits to the base had revealed to me the hierarchy inherent in the military. The Air Force had word processors, the Navy had IBM Selectrics, but the Army was still using manual typewriters.

So, when we were invited to attend a planning meeting for Vacation Bible School volunteers at an Air Force officer’s home, I was just becoming aware of rank and position, things of little consequence to me until marrying an Army Lieutenant.

They lived “on the economy”, which meant they could take their money and choose. The apartment was decorated with new Scandinavian furniture, artwork, Belgian rugs, fresh flowers. The formal dining table was set for six, the candles were lit. Even the aroma of the food made me think of success, permanence, home, things I felt keenly bereft of.

The other guests were in the Navy. The wife was incredibly beautiful; tall, elegant, but naturally so, with long, perfectly straight, sun-kissed hair. Her husband, a pilot, was just as stunning. I had an awful haircut that made me look like a cross between the little sister on Happy Days and Janet on Three's Company. Pat was wearing some crummy tennis shoes with grass stains I’d somehow failed to intercept.

At either end of the table, during the meal, the hosts dazzled us with their college fraternity and sorority stories. Like spectators at a tennis match, we turned our heads to the right, left, right, left, as they virtually monopolized the entire evening, obviously thinking they were master hosts and conversationalists.

It was the wife’s turn. She was to my right. I can’t remember the story; in fact, none of them were memorable; only what happened next. As she was talking, I saw her eyes fix on my husband, then widen, as her mouth dropped. I turned to look at Pat and saw that his entire chin was covered in broccoli cheese casserole.

He had dropped his napkin on the floor. Wanting to maintain the appearance of being interested in yet another story, he had reached down to retrieve the napkin without taking his eyes off her, but had unknowingly dipped his chin in his plate. We all laughed heartily, including the hosts, for which I was grateful.

I was also grateful when it was time to go home to our grim apartment, to sit close on the green Army-issue sofa and reconstruct the evening. As newlyweds just getting our feet wet in things societal, we experienced Solidaritat. We hashed out together what it means to be hospitable, how to treat guests, how not to dominate conversations, what it is to feel inferior, how to work past that. We decided we probably wouldn’t be invited back.

We weren’t.

Arrogant, Overfed, and Unconcerned

As long as you think Sodom and Gomorrah was incinerated because of certain sexual proclivities you don’t happen to be guilty of, you can safely skim past that story, believing it has nothing to do with you. Until the day your pastor tells you straight out that the judgment wasn’t about sexual immorality, and you read in Ezekiel 16:

The guilt of Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but they didn’t grasp the hand of the needy.

No sailing past these words in your self-righteous Hovercraft. Well, you could, as I did. For a while. Especially the first one. Arrogance. That’s the Pharisees, right? Or the people building the Tower of Babel. King Nebuchadnezzar. Pharoah. There’s nothing of them in me.

Then I read a chapter in "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" by Alan Gurganus in which the pride of the South is reduced to ashes in Sherman’s wake. The lady dressed in white silk, her charm, her Latin, her music, her European antiques, her china and silver, her garden parties, her charity work. All is burned, even herself, as she stands too close, in denial that she in all her glory would come to such an end. Only the slaves escape.

She had no idea of the vanity that all her servants secretly made fun of. She was blind. Until it was all burned up and, “for the first time, she began to live her life from the inside out.” Reduced to crawling on the ground, digging for roots from the slaves’ garden, all that had made her beautiful and superior was gone. But the slaves had known all along it was a sham.

The slaves’ cutting assessment of her and her incredible self-delusion made me nervous. I could see a bit of myself in her, a pride in my love for books, for knowledge and beauty, for my way of life. All that she had was given to her; it was unearned, but she, like most in the privileged class, saw it as a sign of God’s blessing, favor. Could I be blind, too?

God has graciously used the Ezekiel passage, the above-mentioned book, two other books, my pastor’s sermons from Hosea, and life itself to wake me up recently. My thoughts aren’t well-organized yet, but bear with me. More later.

RESERVIERT!

Reserviert. Reserved. Already taken. Purchased in advance. Go away. Not for you. Calligraphied on white place cards at fancy dinners, choice seats roped off at church, in theatres. Every single parking space on the campus where I work. The words are music only to the intended honorees. The rest of us mutter, shuffle off to the periphery, squeeze into economy class.

Junior high girls form tight circles; each spot is reserved. There are no place cards, but everybody knows. The right to be here is fragile, so the girls stand there, glancing about, always checking to make sure they don’t get nudged out. They dare not relax their stance, open up the circle to even acknowledge an outsider. To do so is to risk the unthinkable; to have to stand alone.
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It was 1982. Carol Lee and I were traveling in Europe, making our way south from Germany; destination Italy. We had met two other American girls in Munich who were also going to Italy, and who, like us, had been warned:

“Be careful when you go through Italy on the train. You know those Italians. They gas people and steal their wallets and suitcases while they’re sleeping.”

This threat was confirmed by almost every American female traveler we met. We in turn joyfully passed this information on to attractive male travelers. “Beware of the Gassers” became our slogan, causing us to dissolve in laughter.

By the time we were to board the midnight train to Milan, we were at a fever-pitch of excitement, having exhausted ourselves trying to see and do everything. The station was packed, but we four girls vowed solidarity against the gassers.

Squeezing through hundreds of red-eyed Eurail Pass holders, we were ecstatic to find an empty car. We were home free! We gallantly offered one remaining seat to an attractive American male, welcoming him into our circle and telling him about the gassers. He agreed to keep watch.

Suitcases stored overhead, seats reclined, snug, smug, and secure in our English-only car, we congratulated ourselves for finding this empty car. We pitied the latecomers still scrambling to find seats. We dared the Italians to come.

We were finalizing our plans to watch out for swarthy Italians when we were rudely interrupted by a barking German train official. “Aus! Das ist reserviert!” He pointed to the sign on the door.

Silly, stupid Americans we were. We grabbed our bags, rushed out, avoiding the sneers of the reserve ticket holders, to try and find seats anywhere. We lost the cute American. We lost the other two girls. But at least, Carol Lee and I stayed together. Grateful for that, bordering on hysteria from the embarrassment and the dash to find seats, we plopped down, talking non-stop, giggling about gassers, the cute American we’d lost, the Nazi who’d thrown us out, what idiots we were.

We did all this carrying-on in the presence of the two other occupants of the car. A shabbily dressed middle-aged Turk who sat hugging a big paper sack on his lap would steal glances at us shyly. In our vanity we enjoyed his discomfort. The other passenger was a very handsome Scandinavian. We forgot about the cute American.

In our youthful arrogance, we kept up the gasser banter, giggling at everything, secure in our assumption that the two other passengers couldn’t understand a word we were saying, couldn’t understand our giggles about the strange Turk and the gorgeous Swede.

Then he spoke. The gorgeous one. The good-looking blonde one that Carol Lee had eyed me about from the minute we sat down.

In perfect English he chided us, “I don’t think you need to worry about the gassers tonight. The Italians just won the World Cup in soccer, and they’re too busy celebrating to gas anybody.”

I’ve never been so artfully and thoroughly put in my place as on that midnight train to Milan.

It’s a funny, fond memory, evoked by a single word – RESERVED.

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Jesus said to his best friends just a few days before he died, “You can’t come with me, but I’m going to prepare a place for you.” And then he adds this gut-wrenchingly human back-door kind of statement, “If it weren’t so, I would have told you.”

A place for you. Reserved. Permanent.

If it weren’t so, He would have told us.