Mamalade

The garbage truck has finally picked up the rubbish from the footpaths – all except for the washing machines, stoves and fridges, which are still dotted along the streets like sentinels, waiting for the next truck.

The junk was still on the footpath when we had our World Vision meeting this week. When one of our members arrived, she ran up the road and gleefully returned with an armful of small boards.

“Just what I need for bookshelves!” she said.

Although we’ve already had a couple of Street Stalls, it was our first meeting for the year. Everyone seemed happy to be back. There was a lot of chattering and joking, but we still managed to get through the business part of the meeting. I shared some information I’d found on the World Vision website about the Congo volcano and what World Vision is doing to help.

Frances phoned just as we closed the meeting.

“I have to take Hayley to the doctor,” she said. “She’s come out in a rash.”

“That’ll be the antibiotics,” I said. ‘I’ll come round and stay with Miles.” Hayley has had a cough and now it seems, she’s allergic to penicillin.

Baby Hayley was crying when I arrived. I held her while Frances got herself some lunch. She stopped crying when I walked around with her, but she soon grew too heavy and I sat down. She started to howl again.

“You little monkey!” I told her. “You’re getting spoilt, aren’t you!!

Hayley paused in the middle of a yell and gave me a radiant smile, then her face puckered and she howled again.

“Boy, she can change in an instant!” I said to Frances. (Hayley is six weeks old now. She smiles quite a lot, and tries to make cooing noises when Frances talks to her.)

After Frances left with Hayley, Miles tucked his teddy bear up under his T- shirt.

“I’m going to have a baby,” he announced.

He soon ‘gave birth’ and told me, “I have to stay in hospital for a few days. You can be my little boy and visit me.”

I had to pantomime showering and dressing for the visit. “You can dry yourself – you’re a big boy now,” he told me.

“Hello Mummy,” I said, arriving at the ‘hospital.’ “Is that my little sister?”

“Yes,” said Miles. “Her name’s Hayley. Now you say to me, When are you coming home?”

“When are you coming home, Mummy?”

“I have to stay a few days,” said Miles. “I’m very tired after having a baby.”

“But I miss you, Mummy!”

“You have Daddy to look after you,” he said firmly.

“Daddy misses you too, Mummy!”

“No he doesn’t. Daddy looks after himself.”

“Do you miss us, Mummy?”

“No, I’m happy!”

We played the game until after Frances returned with Hayley and I had to hurry home to get ready for our Toastmasters meeting.

“You can’t go, Meemar,” wailed Miles. “I’ll miss you!”

I’ve been staying with Mum and Dad for a few days. Mum hasn’t been well. She’s had a nasty bug which turned into a lung infection. It will be a while before she’s feeling herself again.

junk

Clean-up week

“Did you get a notice about clean-up week?” asked my neighbour.

“Yeah, it’s the highlight of my year!”

“Bet my pile will be bigger than yours!”

“You’re on!”

Yes, it’s the Council’s Annual Kerbside Collection week. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get rid of the junk that’s been taking up space in the shed because it’s too big to fit in the wheelie bin.

Joel came and helped me to drag out the old washing machine, a video recorder, car seat, television set, stereo, folding cot, a rusty pram and five old suitcases.

One of the neighbours came over and swooped on the stereo. “Can I have this?”

“Sure,” I said, “but it doesn’t work”

That didn’t seem to bother her. Her kids came and dragged it home. Then one of them opened the top suitcase and discovered it was full of old-fashioned hats that I’d saved from our Jumble Sales. The entire family and their friends went home, each wearing a hat.

The piles of junk have been on the footpaths all over the suburb for over a week now. I must say, the quality of the junk is very poor this year. It makes you wonder where and why people have been harbouring such dreadful stuff. Of course, most of it has been well picked over. It’s fun to see which items disappear overnight.

One year we put out a lot of stuff from under Mum and Dad’s house. It was mostly things we couldn’t sell at the Jumble Sales. Each time we went back under the house to get more, the item we’d just put out would disappear. The following week, the man down the road had a Garage Sale…

Kindy kid

Miles started Kindy this week. He’s going two days a week. He showed me the painting he had done the first day. “You tell me what it is,” he said.

“Well,” I said cautiously, “I love these big squiggles – and that’s very clever, the way you mixed the green and blue…”

“Yes,” he said proudly, “it’s a wave!”

“Ah yes, I can see that’s a wave!” I was on safe ground now. It’s like being asked to guess a person’s age – I’m always afraid I’ll say the wrong thing!

When Frances told him he was going to Kindy again the next day, he protested, “But I’ve already been!”

Speech No. 2 in “The Entertaining Speaker” Manual

Date presented: February, 2002

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The objectives of this speech were: 

• To draw entertaining material from sources other than your own personal experience.
• Adapt your material to suit your type, your own personality and the audience.

Time 5 to 7 minutes.

Time 5 to 7 minutes.

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WYZIWYG
What’s WYZIWYG? Well, it’s computer jargon. It’s an acronym for “What You See is What You Get.” 

But I’m not going to talk about computers. I’m going to tell you about my friends, Chastity and Egbert and why I need to check the water level in my car radiator.

Now Chastity and Egbert have been engaged for the past ten years. They both believe that they really want to be married. But Chastity insists that Egbert is not ready. She says he needs to get his act together and pull his socks up. In other words, she doesn’t think he is good enough yet. Egbert is not a self-made man. Chastity takes total credit for all his achievements.

Poor Egbert is totally demoralised. Far from pulling his socks up, he’s not even allowed to choose his own socks!

I was topping up the water in my radiator the first time Chastity burst in to tell me it was all over. I comforted her with tea and tissues. The following week I was surprised to see them strolling down the street arm in arm, making fresh wedding plans.

It happened again, three months later. The engagement was called off. There were screams and tears, but they were back together the following week. That week I noticed the water in my radiator was getting low. I really need to remember to check it at regular intervals.

And so it has continued for ten years. About every three months, they have a big row and the engagement is broken off. Then Egbert pleads until Chastity takes him back and restarts trying to make him over.

And each time, Chastity comes running to me for sympathy. “You can’t change him,” I tell her. “You’ll have to accept him as he is. What you see is what you get! ”

What I can’t make her understand is, it’s the way she sees him that is making him the way he is. She sees him as an ineffective person who fails at everything he does. Egbert is simply fulfilling her expectations. That’s WYZIWYG!

Someone once said, “An ideal wife is a woman who has an ideal husband.” That means that if the wife treats her husband as if he is her ideal, then he will develop into that image she has of him – and because she treats him as her ideal, then she is the ideal wife for him – and vice versa.

If you show that you really love and believe in a person, that person will usually live up to your expectations.

Like in a story I read once – it was about a man in a village who bought a wife. He chose a girl who was very plain. He easily could have bought her for one cow, but he insisted on paying three cows for her.

At first the villagers laughed at him for being so stupid, but when they saw the girl gradually transform into a confident loving wife, they realised that she was quite attractive after all and agreed that he had made a wise choice.

Of course, it was her newly found self esteem that made her blossom – when she felt she was worth three cows.

When the man was asked years later why he had paid three cows when he could have got her for one, he replied, “I wanted a three cow wife!”

See? That’s WYZIWYG! The way you view another person makes all the difference.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Enchanted Cottage?” It’s an old black and white film, about a young couple who get married. She is a very plain girl and he has a disfiguring scar.

They think that their cottage must be enchanted because on their wedding night, they each discover that they are really attractive. They enjoy a wonderful relationship, secure in the knowledge that they have become beautiful. They are shocked when they eventually discover, that outsiders still see them as plain and ugly.

The truth is, it was their love for one another that made them each see themselves as the other saw them. They believed in the image they saw of themselves in their lover’s eyes. Because they believed they were beautiful, they acted as if they really were. And that gave them the confidence to really be beautiful people.

WYZIWYG works with children, too.

The best schoolteacher I ever had believed in the potential of each student. He accepted us as for what we were, but he also showed that he expected us to do our best. And we didn’t disappoint him. He saw the best in us and that was what he got. He taught us to believe in ourselves.

If only Chastity could accept Egbert for who he is. What if, instead of trying to improve him, she could believe the best of him? What if she even trusted him to choose his own socks?

But it’s not to be. Chastity came to my house again today with another tale of woe. It seems the engagement is off again.

That reminds me. I never did get my car radiator fixed. It must be three months since I checked the water level.

 

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COMMENTS 

My evaluator was very kind, but she said it didnt flow as well as a speech should. I agree. I had trouble writing this one and ended up borrowing pieces from another speech I had started writing which was also going nowhere.