A Beautiful Way To Bounce

TODAY'S BIG STORY:  My daughter, Katie, starts her new employment as a Corporate Communications Specialist today!  With a bachelor's degree in Communication and an emphasis in Public Relations, she describes this position as her "dream job."  I still remember the first big story I wrote about her ~ Katie's Lazy Daisy ~ when she was five-years-old.  Twenty years have passed since I tucked that story away in The Tomorrow Trunk.  So unbelievable!  Also, after years of apartment life, she moved into her first home this past weekend.

On Thursday of last week, Katie called me in a panic!  The human resources department had not received verification of her employment as a flight attendant.  According to Katie, the airlines had outsourced employment verification, and the company was not responding to her potential employer's requests.  Katie stressed that she could not start her new job without that information! She said the HR representative just needed W2 forms for proof of employment. Katie asked me if I would look in her big keepsake box and try to find her airlines folder.  After a few minutes of digging, I found the W2 forms and other employment documentation which I immediately faxed to Katie and she faxed to HR.  She called me about an hour later to inform me that she had been given a start date of October 15th for orientation and October 16th as her first day in her own designated corner of the corporate world.

I slowly began the process of packing everything back into the box when I found a letter I had written to her in 2006.  She was nineteen years old at the time and had just started working as a flight attendant in Memphis.  For some reason, she had saved two printed copies, so I kept one copy for me.  I sat on the floor beside her big keepsake box and started reading:

Katie,

I am reading a book by Kay Redfield Jamison called Exuberance: The Passion for Life.  I picked it up simply because I have read a lot of her books.  As I was reading it, I realized that I was reading about you.  You were created to be exuberant.  You are a Tigger.  You just want life to be a series of bounces ~ each one higher than the last. That's why you have had to work so hard at overcoming all of the unfortunate situations that happened to you last year.  You are not a moper like Eyeore or a worrier like Rabbit or timid like Piglet.  You are exuberant ~ over the top ~ sometimes, a little too much for everyone around you!  I think Aimee is your Pooh.  She recognizes your need to be a little "off the chart", and she really tries to protect those characteristics of your personality.

I also checked out a couple of the Pooh books and read about Tigger.  In one particular story, Eyeore is talking about Tigger's bouncing, after it surprises him and causes him to slip off into the pond.  "I don't mind Tigger being in the Forest, because it is a large Forest, and there is plenty of room to bounce in it.  But I don't see why he should come into my little corner of it and bounce there.  It isn't as if there was anything wonderful about my little corner.  Of course, for people who like cold, wet, ugly bits, it is something rather special, otherwise, it's just a corner, and if anybody feels bouncy, they don't belong there."

Rabbit feels sorry for Eyeore and decides that Tigger really is too bouncy.  "It is time we taught him a lesson.  There is too much of him, that's what it comes to."
Piglet defends Tigger.  "He just is bouncy...that's who he is and he can't help it."
But Rabbit convinces Piglet that his plan is for Tigger's own good.  "That's what we are trying to do is think of a way to get the bounces out of Tigger."

So (you probably should just read the book), Rabbit concocts a plan for Piglet, Pooh, and Rabbit to take Tigger to a place he has never been before, to lose him, and then find him again the next morning.  Rabbit assures Pooh and Piglet that he will be a different Tigger altogether.  "He will be a Humble Tigger, a Sad Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-so-glad-to-see-you-Tigger. He will be deflated, unbounced, newly appreciative, and cut down to size:  IF WE CAN MAKE TIGGER FEEL SMALL AND SAD FOR JUST FIVE MINUTES, WE SHALL HAVE DONE A GOOD DEED.  HE IS FAR TOO FULL OF HIMSELF."

But, instead of Tigger losing his way in the Forest, it is Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet who get lost.  Not realizing that they had meant to play a trick on him, Tigger bounces to Rabbit's rescue.  The rest of the story goes like this:  Tigger was tearing around the Forest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit.  And at last, a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him.  The Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the midst towards the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a Friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce.  "Oh-Tigger-I-am-so-glad-to-see-you," cried Rabbit.

In the end of the story, after things calm down, Piglet says, "Tigger is all right really."
"Of course he is," said Christopher Robin.
"Everybody is really," said Pooh.  "That's what I think."

Katie, you were born to bounce!  You are exuberant.  That is not the same thing as happy or joyful; it is a different emotion that is born in certain people.  That is why, all of your life, you have hated the boring or routine.  You keep calling it "being original"; however, it is more than that.  Exuberance is excessive, extreme, abundant...and annoying at times, especially to the small, sad, and sorry.  According to the book, you are the kind of person who gallops at full speed for two hundred miles, and then stops and says, "Where am I?"

Only two things challenge exuberance ~ rules or boundaries and exhaustion.  Sometimes the exuberant person just wears himself out; that is why when you aren't bouncing, you're sleeping. And most likely, a person with exuberance gets put into a place where exuberance is not acceptable.  If he stays in that place long enough, he loses his bounce.  You have just moved from a small town where bouncing is not allowed and where any allowable exuberance is confined or judged.  Maybe there are just too many Eyeores in that place who like it that way.  What you have to do is keep looking until you find a Large Forest with lots of room.

Don't lose your bounce, Kates! Be careful of Rabbits, and Piglets, and Eyeores.  These are the ones who 'want to get the bounces out.'  Not only have I conformed to those individuals, I have been one.  But, I assure you, the thing I miss most about you when you are not here is your bounce ~ that's the wonderful thing about Tiggers.

MOM

So today, Katie enters a Large Forest.  She may feel a little lost for the first few days, but she is a Friendly Katie.  She is a Grand Katie and a Large and Helpful Katie. She is a Katie who bounces in just the beautiful way a Katie ought to bounce.  And when she returns to my little corner, that's the Katie I'll be Oh-so-glad-to-see.

Dianne ; )

No Backsies

TODAY'S BIG STORY:  A free makeover is not FREE!  Neither is a complimentary facial or a no-obligation invitation.  I learned that lesson well this week ~ to the tune of 114 dollars ~ money I had been saving to buy a Keurig® Single Cup Coffee Maker!  I am such a Frances...sigh.

One of my all-time favorite children's books is A Bargain for Frances by Russell Hoban.  I love all of the Frances books, but this one is a real teacher.  The book jacket reads as follows:  Frances is going to Thelma's house for a tea party.  "Be careful," says Mother.  "When you go to play with Thelma, you always get the worst of it."

Haha!  Thelma!  Don't we all have at least one Thelma in our lives!  Thelma is the friend who is always talking us into buying something that we don't need, trying to sell us something that we don't want, or "encouraging" us to do something that we know is going to cost us in the end.  A great review of this book is written by Barry King:  We have all, at one time or another, had to deal with difficult and userous persons whose mendacity and opportunism have left us out-of-water, bewildered by the changing dynamics of what was ostensibly a mutually-beneficial social engagement, but has somehow turned into a one-way relationship.

WOW!  Couldn't have said it better myself, Barry!  And yet, the reader is fully aware that this not  Frances' first rodeo with Thelma, based on her mother's precautionary tone.  Where was my own mom last night when I needed her?  She would have said, "Now, isn't this the friend who talked you into buying the incomplete, chipped set of Pfaltzgraff® china at her garage sale?  Isn't this the friend who called to remind you of her work's charity bake sale that ended at lunch ~ the very same friend who, after you rushed to get there before the sale was over and bought one cake and two pies, had taken the day off?  Do you think it's a good decision to accept her offering of a free Mary Kay® makeover?"

Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.  I feel just like Frances, who settled for the ugly plastic tea set, while her friend, Thelma, used Frances' money to buy "a real china tea set, with pictures on it in blue."  In the story, Frances is saving her money for  a tea set that "has trees and birds and a Chinese house and a fence and a boat and people walking on a bridge." Oh...how I just love that sentence in the book!  Thelma is quick to remind Frances "why that tea set is no good."  She convinces Frances to buy her plastic tea set with pretty red flowers, then Thelma uses the money  Frances saved to buy the real china tea set Frances wanted.  Big sigh...

But, as Thelma warned Frances, there are "no backsies!"  Once the deal is done, there is no undoing the dupable deed.  No matter how long I lay in my bed, stared at the ceiling, and affirmed in the depths of my soul that I will never, ever do something like this again ~ most likely, if I am a true Frances, I will.  Somehow, the short end of the friend stick always arrives at the party just before I do.

Why?  Well...I won't spoil the end of the story, but I will tell you that, in spite of everything, good friends matter to some badgers more than money or makeup or coffee brewing systems or real china sets. Even when they leave us with bumps on our head and all wet,  Frances sums up the situation perfectly with one question, "Do you want to be careful or do you want to be friends?"

Sometimes we simply prefer another round at the tea party rather than no tea party at all.  The "no backsies" of losing a friendship is far more costly than the "no backsies" of buying something I really didn't want. So...

While I cleanse, tone and moisturize my face, a much wiser female (than Frances and I) is enjoying a real china tea cup accurately filled with one of the 200 exotic, fragrant varieties of Keurig® Single Cup gourmet coffee.

Backsies one, backsies two,
Backsies are no fun to do.
Careful once, careful twice,
Being careful isn't nice.

Being friends is better.
                 ~~Excerpt from A Bargain For Frances

Dianne ; )