Tag Archives: mother-in-law

Antidote

dictionary with letter AAntidote: (n) a medicine taken or given to counteract a specific poison.

Sometimes I do dorky things just to make sure that people don’t believe I have become divine overnight through a particularly good sleep cycle.

Actually, it is my penchant in life to attempt new things, which always opens the door to the possibility of playing the fool.

I went with my wife and children to Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, where my mother-in-law had retired.

She did not like me.

I don’t know whether it was something actually problematic between us, or if she felt the need to act out the typical plotline for a sitcom between son-in-law and mother-in-law.

She had a house on the beach. So one morning I took the children out to enjoy the ocean, only to discover that the entire landscape was covered with dead jellyfish. Unwilling to be deterred from our sea-time pleasure, and since the jellyfish were up on the shore and not in the water, I let the kids splash around while I sat, carefully watching them,

Meanwhile, more dead and dying jellyfish were washing onto the shore. I didn’t think much about it, until one of them brushed up against me, and with his last aspiration, stung me on the leg.

It didn’t hurt. Kind of a magnified bee sting. But in no time at all, the wound began to swell and I was sick.

It was a strange sense of ill will. I knew I was in trouble.

I made my way up to the house with the kids and told my wife and mother-in-law what had happened. Being a great veteran of the region and the sea, my mother-in-law grabbed some Adolph’s meat tenderizer and spread it on my wound, telling me “that always works.”

It didn’t. I was getting sicker and sicker. My mother-in-law told my wife that I was just being a wimp.

So I finally had to bypass old mom and asked my wife to call the local doctor. He arrived about fifteen minutes later with his satchel, saw the sting and reached in and pulled out one vial of what had to be several hundred of antidote.

He explained that some people are just allergic to jellyfish. By this time I was quite frightened. He calmed me down, gave me an injection, and in a matter of about an hour, I was just fine.

It amazed me that something so small could make you that sick, and that something even smaller could make you better.

I was grateful for the antidote.

But unfortunately, my mother-in-law still thought I was a wimp.

 

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Ancillary

dictionary with letter A

Ancillary: (adj) providing necessary support to primary activities or operation of an organization, institution or system.

It’s a two-step process. At least, I think so.

This thing we call life–or the pursuit of it–affords a dual purpose:

  1. Find out what’s really important.
  2. Get behind the importance.

I’m tempted, like the next guy or lady, to be distracted by temporary terrors and fleeting fads. Matter of fact, I suppose to some degree there’s a certain amount of excitement in chasing your own tail.

But in the long run, or even in the short run, the most fulfilling way to live a human life is to be supportive of important things.

They are few. Isn’t that good? If there were too many important things, we could quickly become overwhelmed.

I remember when my mother-in-law died, her attorney explained that it would be our responsibility to make sure that final expenses and bills were paid. So feeling the need to come across as officious, I asked him to send us these expenditures quickly.

He laughed and said, “There’s really no hurry. After all, your mother-in-law’s not worried about her credit rating.”

Absolutely.

So even though money, status, clothing, food, family, houses, cars and possessions are always jockeying for our full focus, they really are not important.

They are needed–just not the kind of ideas and goals that should encompass our thinking.

So it really boils down to two things. Well, actually three:

  • God
  • Me
  • People.

And I am warned in the Good Book that I should take care of “me” first. Otherwise, I will be constantly nervous about covering my own behind.

And then, miraculously, God and people sort of merge into one project. Because truthfully, whatever I feel about people and how I treat them is the same thing I feel about God.

The Golden Rule is the most sensible concept ever devised. It tells me to find out what I want, then to assume that others also have wants and needs–and to be equally as sensitive to theirs as I am to mine.

It is the only way to be ancillary to the needs of our planet. After all, whether global warming or climate change is exaggerated or not, it certainly won’t hurt me to address kindness in the direction of God’s creation.

Whether there is crime in the world and immorality is insignificant to me finding my peace of mind and spreading that as a gift to others.

I will tell you as a friend, if you continue to chase the whim of our society, you will end up ignoring what is truly important, and therefore pass your time with trivial details, never being supportive of greatness.

Find out what’s important, and then suddenly everything you do … gains importance.

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