GOING BANANAS

Sorry, I have nothing insightful or enter- taining this week (as if I ever do). It’s been one of those mornings that I would have been better off staying in bed.  Friday is laundry day (as it has been for 12 years now changing a longer tradition of Monday laundry that went back to at least my grandmother’s day.) For two weeks we have been unable to use the big laundry room because they were redecorating. That meant using the crummy little laundry where the driers don’t work, at least they haven’t in the 12 years I’ve lived here.  For two weeks I played dryer roulette, lost, and had to hang my clothes all over the apartment to dry. Those days are over, I thought. New laundry room open today. I must say it looks nice with a new tile floor and fresh paint. The washers and driers, however, are the same old, beat-up equipment that has been there since Noah’s grandmother did laundry.
    
Washing went all right, but as I was taking things out, I heard a clunk from a pair of trousers. Trousers shouldn’t clunk. I discovered the cause: my cell phone was in the pocket. AUUUGGHHH!!!!! Since this was not the Lloyd Bridges model (extra points if you are old enough to understand that reference), it was deader than a door nail. (Which reminds me of Dicken’s remark in A Christmas Carol where he wonders why door nails and not coffin nails are the deadest piece of iron mongerry.) Well, I knew I’d have to replace it–the phone not the door nail.

I went online to check my phone account to see about a new phone, but I couldn’t connect. I was informed my account was already connected. How could this be, I wondered. A quick phone call to the church which produced a busy signal revealed the problem. Somehow I was still connected to the Internet at the church. But I knew I had signed off before I left the day before. I couldn’t call anyone at the church to tell them to check the computer, which meant I’d have to go down there to do it myself as soon as the clothes were dry.

Back to the laundry room to unload the dry clothes, only they were still wet, warm, but wet. Evidently the heating part of the drier worked, but not the part that tumbles the clothes. So for the third week in a row my apartment looks like Molly the Washerwoman runs a business here. Then it was down to the church where I discovered that the computer had frozen in the process of signing out and turning off. Now, most of the time when I am online the computer loses connection all by itself several times a session, but not this time.  I shut the blamed thing off and went back home.

I tried for sometime to figure out how to order a new phone online, but was stymied. If I signed into my account, I couldn’t order a phone, only accessories. If I used the online store, I couldn’t associate the new phone with my account. I gave up and went to the phone kiosk at the mall. A very nice young man found me a phone that would suit my needs and he made it work with my old account and phone number.  Not only that, but the phone was on sale. It has more features than my old phone and cost less. I brought it home and have begun trying to work through the instruction manual which is about as long as War and Peace and as hard to decipher as ancient Sumerian. I guess I’ll have to resort to my usual method of having a nine-year-old show me how to work the thing.

What disturbs me most about all this is that I was disturbed by all this. In the big scheme of things drowned cell phone, wet laundry, and stubborn computers are not very important. In a world filled with natural disasters, wars, and economic collapse, I let myself become discombobulated over nothing. Where is my sense of perspective?   How can I profess myself to be a Christian, yet allow such tiny blips to trouble me? What will I do when something serious happens?  

I think I need to study the Psalms some more, listen to them, pray them As the Psalmist says: Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope in God” (Psalm 42:5).

I must go now; it is difficult for me to type with this bandage in the way. I decided to do some more work on my model building to relax and stuck an X-ACTO knife in my thumb.

My the Lord God bless you on your journey over little hills and high mountains, down gentle valleys and deep chasms–helping you to understand the difference–and may he greet you on your arrival.

Wayne




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