Tag Archives: rubber ball

Deck Chair

Deck chair: (n) a folding chair, usually with arms and a full-length leg rest, commonly used for lounging on decks

  • Cheap rate.
  • Cheap room.
  • Cheap pool.
  • Cheap chair.

That would surmise my experience with motels as I traveled across the country.

So I remember quite well one sunny Wednesday afternoon, when I arrived at the swimming pool of our motel, and noticed that they only offered the white, plastic resin chairs that one would find aplenty at Wal-Mart.

They are really quite remarkable, considering how cheaply they’re made. Looking at them, it’s hard to imagine they would hold anyone of any weight—but they do.

Coming to the pool, I discovered a small crowd of humanity. There was a brief stoppage of time as I became the new stranger, figuring out the gate and getting inside. There was an additional length of time while several of the occupants gawked at me because of my large size.

I was used to this. You can’t walk around being obese and think someone’s not going to notice it. Maybe you wish they would ignore your status or be more merciful, but people see what they want to see and have already judged what they think about it.

The problem that arose on this day was that apparently it occurred to those in the pool that I was going to have to go over and sit down in one of the plastic deck chairs.

They were right.

I wasn’t going to stand around.

And to a small degree, it became an issue of pride.

So I chose to take it on with gusto.

I strolled over, placed my towel on the table, stepped toward one of the chairs, attempted to aim my butt to land in the center, and sat down—only to have the chair give way, with four legs going in four different directions.

I landed flat on my butt, with a broken chair beneath me.

The gathered audience could not help themselves. They laughed.

There was one person who moved toward me to see if I was okay—but overall, I provided the levity for the afternoon.

But you see, it’s always about what happens next.

It’s not about getting in the chair.

It’s not about falling.

It’s about whether you absorb the humiliation or bounce off it like a rubber ball against a wall.

I wiggled my legs, waggled my butt, and rose to my feet as well as I could. Once upright, I turned to those in the pool, did a quick bow and pretended to tap dance. This brought more laughter.

I then picked up the chair with its dangling legs and spoke to the gathered.

“You might want to stay away from this chair–it seems to have a bad leg.”

They all laughed.

This time, they felt like they were allowed to laugh—because I set up the pins and rolled the ball in their direction. After doing my little routine, I quickly made my way down the steps, into the pool, splashing as the folks giggled.

The rest of the day, there was no soul who didn’t smile and nod at me every time I swam by. I don’t think they admired my obesity, nor condoned it, for that matter.

But they had enough human juice in them to realize that the only thing we can do as people on our way to becoming better, is keep a good attitude about it.

 

Circular

Circular: (n) a letter or advertisement that is distributed to a large number of people.

“Shrink to think.”

If you want to get your brain functioning in the realm of creativity instead of repetition, this is better achieved by shrinking what you’re
 doing down to its simplest forms.

There is no evil in technology.

There is no sinister nature to the Internet.

But sometimes if life is not simplified, the complication confuses us into believing that we are not responsible for our actions, but instead, victims of a mass plot.

When I was younger, much younger than today, I sat and read circulars. They were little reports, newspapers or flyers put out by people who wanted to communicate what they were doing, how they were doing it and even the way in which they wished others to become involved.

Usually laid out with a typewriter, they were poor quality–carelessly paragraphed and overworded.

But reading them demanded that I do something I did not want to do: stop.

The main reason we don’t start is because we can’t stop. We spend most of our time skidding into the next project with no idea about whether our passions will sustain it.

Please don’t mistake me for some old codger who yearns for the “good ole’ days.” There was so much bad that it deserves to be quarantined for all time.

But there was the introduction of pieces of paper called circulars, which made you stop long enough to think about what somebody else was doing instead of browsing the Internet, bouncing off subjects like a rubber ball.

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Chimney

Chimney: (n) the part of a chimney that extends above the roof; a chimney stack.

I grew up living in a brick home.

Dead center in the middle of our roof was a huge chimney. It was probably about one-third the size of the house. I don’t know why they made such a large chimney–the fireplace was tiny.

But affixed to the chimney, on the front, was a large letter “S.” Now, this had nothing to do with our name, so as young children we speculated on what the “S” stood for. We never actually came up with anything that made sense, but it filled some time.

What also occupied our interest was using our sloped roof as the bouncing area for a ballgame, where we tried to get the ball to bounce as near to the chimney as
 possible without getting lodged behind it.

It was great fun–until the ball got lodged.

The chimney was so large that we couldn’t reach the ball with a long stick, and so, after three weeks there were six of our rubber balls stuck behind the chimney.

Every time I complained to my parents about the situation, they gave me a lecture on how foolish the game was in the first place and how if we didn’t throw the ball on the roof, it wouldn’t get lost behind the chimney. You see, to an adult mind, this logic made sense. But when you’re a kid, to eliminate fun just because it’s sensible is sheer torture.

So one day when my parents were away, we tok the youngest, smallest kid in our community. We called him “Toot.”

I’m not sure why. Maybe because it sounded small.

I stood on the bottom. Someone smaller than me climbed up on my shoulders, and finally, Toot scaled all the way up both of us, as we groaned in pain each time his foot stepped on our skin.

He got onto the shoulders of the fellow above me, and tried to jump over to the roof. He was able to get there–hanging by his fingertips.

We were scared to death.

We quickly tried to push him up on the roof as Toot struggled to pull himself up by grabbing shingles, which fell off the roof and onto the ground below.

Eventually, Toot, by some miracle, got his knee up on the roof, climbed up, raced over to the chimney, and threw down our six balls--and two frisbees which apparently had been thrown up there generations before.

We were so delighted that we forgot that Toot had no way to get down. He wouldn’t be able to get down the way he got up. So Toot sat on our roof waiting for my parents to return–because they had taken our ladder with them to do some work out on our farm.

When they arrived and saw Toot sitting on the roof like a little leprechaun, they were quite angry.

They quickly put up the ladder, retrieved Toot, and then began their lecture. They screamed, yelled, yammered and yakked for a good fifteen minutes. My friends wanted to leave, but my parents decided to be the disciplinarians for the neighborhood.

Afterwards, my mother turned to me and asked, “So what do you think about this?”

I thought for a long moment.

I probably should have thought a little longer–because without really being thoughtful enough, I replied, “Toot got our balls down.”

Needless to say, playing with balls was not permitted for me for several weeks.

 

 

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