A Bio Done for Me by My Husband

So, they asked me to provide them with a "bio" to put in the National Convention program for ICC, since they've made me an Area Coordinator.  I felt funny writing my own bio (since by definition it should be written by someone else, otherwise it would be an auto-bio, seems to me), so I asked John to write one.  Funny man, here's his first draft:

Lisa McLean was born a poor white child.  She wore funny '60s clothes and learned to drink and drive at an early age.  Her best friends were the Doobie Brothers, and her favorite vocal group was the Cramers.  She spent much time under a cardboard pyramid finding out who she was and what her future would hold.  Boys essentially played no role in her life, and she actually liked it that way.  As time went by, she became even more self-absorbed, a trait picked up from her sisters.  Everything in the world was to revolve around her.  She was a self-declared ROCK and ISLAND, in need of no one or nothing.
This strange life changed greatly one day when she received a letter with candy hearts in it, and she has never been the same ... thank goodness.
This is why she can replace Mrs. Moon at any time.
P.S.  I married this thing ... and I love it more every day!!! ;)

Rated R Seminar

     What would it look like if a Challenger ran a business seminar?  If you know anyone who is just a little pushy, a little intense when he’s trying to get his point across, who gets angry at things that don’t anger other people, those are the trademarks of the Challenger.  My husband is attending a how-to-make-your-business-better seminar here in Dallas, and I’m getting a real kick out of it.  I attended the opening session last night and pegged the leader as a Challenger right away.

     I was surprised first by his asking us if we minded his swearing, which I thought was nice, until he told us that if we did mind it we should see him afterward and he would tell us "too bad, heh," and if we thought he was bad we should wait until we heard tomorrow’s speaker,who is from Canada and uses the F-word so much that it's rubbed off on him.  I asked John today if the Canadian did use the F-word, and he said yes. 

            Open-mouthed and Incredulous Me:  How many times?

            Flat and Wry John:  About thirty.

            Me:  In one morning?

            John:  Yes.

            Me:  NO.

            John:  YES.

     The leader, I’ll call him Dave, said he had one rule:  put away our cell phones because it’s rude to other people and if he catches us texting with one he’ll throw us out.  I was holding mine at the time of this announcement, but I sat frozen lest he saw me, and I wondered what to do about the text I was expecting any minute.  What a Nazi.

     The seminar is about Energy, positive energy in the workplace.  The guest speaker was an Enthusiast and as sweet and inspiring as he could be.  I was ready to resist his overtures to happiness but I found that I couldn’t.  He had me waving my arms, saying woo-hoo, and high-fiving my neighbor.  But this Challenger-leader ... he wanted so badly for us to be energetic that he used tactics.  He started off the whole seminar with a guy in a bear suit dancing to Macho Man.  The bear moved among us.  Dave commanded us to stand, to clap, and to dance with the bear if he happened upon us, which he did and I did.

     Here’s the lesson:  be who you were created to be.  The Enthusiast was created to make us happy and he did... the Challenger was not and he did not.  Dave had an incredible work history, and as he gave us his story I realized that he had a lot to offer about how to operate a business.  Dave was not created to energize us, though try he would.  I could tell we were “sucking the life” out of him by our subdued mood, and this peeved him.  “Good grief, give a guy a break,” he said when we didn’t laugh hard enough at a joke.  “You left your grumpy lives back home, remember?”

     I had not planned to attend this morning’s session but did go to get a cup of coffee.  As I got close to the meeting room, I could hear the music.  John met me.  “Look in there,” he said.  I peered into the room and saw, up in the front of the smallish meeting room, three women bobbing half-heartedly and clapping to the music.  One is Dave’s wife, John informed me.  She also wears the bear suit.  How glad I was that I was not attending the meetings today!

     Later, John found me sitting out on the patio reading.  “I have a present for you,” he said, and tossed me a plastic travel mug.  Every so often, at the seminar, they play the Plinko board.  A ping-pong ball is drawn from a batch, put through the pegs on the board, and someone wins a prize.  John had been dreading his name being called, and sure enough, “John McLean!”  He says he doesn’t know what came over him but as he went to draw his Plinko ball, he surprised Dave by giving him a mighty chest-bump and yelling, “I want the mug for my wife!”  The energy level soared in the room when the ball landed on the mug, and when Dave asked if he was excited to be there, John waved his arms and yelled Woo-hoo!  I noticed a bitterness in John as he told me this story.  This is the effect of a Challenger Energizer, I think.

     So, John skipped the evening sessions and we watched a movie in our room that was rated R for language, which means the F-word, and John said it didn't bother him at all, that he'd heard it all day and had become accustomed to it.  Woo hoo! 

Gospel in a Pacer

I understood the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time as I sat in a Pacer, just like this one, 30 years ago.  

I'd been trying so hard to be good, and most people thought I was doing pretty well.  I began to say my pretty new rosary and also to go to church in the middle of the week.  Only strange people like Methodists and Baptists and very holy Catholics did that.  I had a hunger for goodness but couldn't seem to find it ... until the day in the Pacer.  I was 21 years old.  My sisters told me of One who was good.  They said that all I had to do was to believe it and appropriate His goodness for myself.  It's called Faith.  How awesome, I thought, what a relief! No more working, just resting in the goodness of Another.  Who would have dreamed up such an idea?  Praise be to God, that Mysterious Being whom none can comprehend unless He opens the eyes, as He did mine that day in the Pacer.


Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light.
My chains fell off, my heart was free!  
I rose,went forth, and followed Thee!
~ Charles Wesley


(I got the image from http://sfcitizen.com/blog/2008/06/17/san-francisco-hipsters-descend-upon-the-amc-pacer-classic-car/ )

Where is Charcoal?

     It's just so sad.  We take him to the vet and have him fixed, then he disappears.  The first clue as to why: Dad accuses me of washing his socks in bad detergent, and he has every one of us smell his shoes and how the socks have even made his shoes stink.  I sniff and say, "That's cat."  No matter what he says, I know it's cat pee.  He's never left his shoes outside, he says, but he did walk around the trash can and grill.  NEXT thing, we see a strange, big-headed cat on the back porch eyeing Smokey, who's up on the table.  "Get the gun!" we cry.  We get the gun, but he runs under the steps and under the house, and Dad rues the day because he left the swinging hatch open and he hasn't done that in years.  So now we know that this cat, now ensconced under our house, has probably run off our Charcoal.  
     NEXT thing, we come home from church and the WHOLE house smells like cat pee.  Fresh cat pee, really nasty.  We figure he's been under the house all morning, making his mark.  So we get the gun ready and wait all afternoon for him to come out and he doesn't.  They set up a trap with food in it, and they catch Smokey.  They try again and get the nasty cat, hooray!  Dad shoots it and takes the trap and dead cat away from the house.  Next day, the house is odor-free and we realize that it wasn't pee under the house that was stinking us out, it was his body.  Aaaaaa!  We gross out and the story is over.  Now to find Charcoal.  Maddie and Katie are about to go out looking for him deep in the woods.  *sniff*

~from an email to Jessie

Jail: I Get to Teach

            Seven brown faces.  Seven sets of serious eyes.  They gaze at me as I speak to them.  They’re not content for me to read the passage aloud but must find it for themselves in their own Bibles.  Their prison-issue Bibles are paperback because a hardback placed in a pillow case makes a formidable weapon, something we were taught at the orientation meeting two months ago.  They like to read aloud, so we take turns.  Pens make good weapons, too, so the pens they use are small flexible things, and they write in their Bibles often.  Any verse I reference they write down.  Any passage we read they underline. 

            “Y’all need to pray for me – I had five spirits on me last night.”  I forget that I’m in Mental Health until someone says something like that.  “Psalm 37!  Fret not ...!” a woman calls from the small, opened hatch in her door.  She’s sitting on the floor of her cell listening, so we all turn to Psalm 37 and I read it loudly, explaining it as we go.  The woman with no clothes on peers at us from her cell window; her face is pure desolation.  Later, as we disassemble, I catch her eye and wave.  Her face crumples further and she tells me, as I get close to the window to hear, that she doesn’t want to go to Hell.  She's crying.  I encourage her not to lose hope, but I have trouble communicating through the thick glass, so I write a long note and leave it on her trunk next to her door.  The guard says she’ll get out later and will be able to read it.  I look back as I leave and see her pressing her face on the glass to try to read it, so I run back and turn it so she can see it better.  Maybe she’ll be there next Tuesday at the table with her clothes on.  I can’t wait for Tuesday.

Going to Jail

     Worse than tornados or rotting teeth, my worse fears have revolved around prisons, and now, I find myself deep in the belly of a prison every other Tuesday night.  Well, it's technically a jail, I think.  My friend Jemima uses the word surreal a lot as we walk down the stark hallway.  It's a LONG hallway.  Corridor would be a good word for it.  Sterile.  From this corridor we open a door and descend down a concrete stairwell that reads Mental Health.  We wait at one locked door, ringing a buzzer that sounds deep within.  Click, it opens.  After that door closes and clicks behind us, we walk two steps and wait at another door, ringing a buzzer. Click, open, close, click, two steps and another buzzer.  Cameras watch us.  This door opens into the pod. 

     It almost reminds me of a nice house in California, sleek and modern, metal, minimalistic.  There's a staircase that goes up from the middle of the foyer to a balcony above which looks down on us.  Windowed doors open onto the balcony.  

     Jemima calls my attention to the total lack of natural light.  I notice that it's just a little chilly.

     This is the mental health pod.  We move some very heavy tables together and sit around them on lightweight plastic chairs.  Everything is manila- or gray-colored.  Five women in red sit with me, Jemima, and Mrs. Laura, another "minister," for so our badges read.  I sit and look around, for there are women who are not at the tables with us.  They stand at the windows of their cells and watch us.  Two of them have no clothes on but cover themselves with sheets.  

     This is my third Tuesday to come.  The chaplain says that anyone who will keep themselves to the Word of God (pronounced werdagawd) may come and address his prisoners, so Jemima opens to Acts 17 and explains to the listening women what it says about the God of the Universe.  She's brought papers with words of songs, so she and I sing.  The women hum along, and we sound like hyenas on the savannah. I have trouble staying on key.

     We're done, so we put the tables and chairs back in place, we hug the women and watch them each retire to their cells.  Sunshine and Kristina share a cell.  After everyone's in place, we press the buzzer and wait for the click.  Back out in the open air, it's dark and it has rained. Jemima and I comment on freedom and fresh air.  We will lie on our pillows that night, glad and sad, looking forward to the next Tuesday.

The Help

      Having a maid was normal.  The first maid I remember was Liz, and she was black, of course.  I think she was a babysitter as well as a house-cleaner, for my memories of her don't include my mother's presence.  She was the one to whom Lori and I ran when we'd gotten into an ant pile by mistake.  The ant pile was heaped up all around the base of the mailbox.  I don't remember seeing it until after we'd stepped in it.  All I remember is shock, looking down at my feet and seeing fire-ants swarming all over them, then  panic, as Lori and I ran screaming to the front door, feet on fire.  It amuses me to remember that we stamped and stomped on the cement walkway screaming, "Ants!  Ants!  Ants!"  We did this until Liz came out.  She got the ants off us, brought us inside, and put alcohol on our feet.  Forever after that I thought alcohol the only treatment for ant bite, until I married a doctor.  I asked John, my husband, what alcohol does for feet with ant bites, and he said, "Irritates them."

      Liz scandalized us by washing our hair with a washcloth.  I can't tell you how weird that felt.  She also made us peanut butter sandwiches with cane syrup instead of the usual apple jelly.   I can't tell you how weird that tasted.  The only other thing I remember about Liz is her spanking us with a green Lincoln Log stick, the kind used for roofing, when we were misbehaving during naptime.  Actually, she spanked my two sisters, for I had heard her coming and pretended sleep.  Lori and Jamie were still jumping on the bed when Liz walked in.

       My friends wouldn't believe me when I told them we had a white maid, Mrs. Babin.  She was an older woman and cleaned like the White Tornado.  She was very sweet and even babysat us when my grandmother died.  I was ten and very sad.

      Felinez was our maid when I was older.  She came once a week, and it confused me that we had to clean the house the day the maid came, but we had to strip our beds and straighten our rooms.  We'd go to school and come home to a house smelling of Pledge and Top Job.  Mom gave our unwanted items to Felinez and one time broke Lori's heart by giving away the large orange ceramic ashtray that had always been on the living room coffee table. How can a mother remember every promise she makes, especially regarding tacky, flame-painted ashtrays?  Felinez was fat and jolly and would kick shoes down the hallway to put them away.

     I was raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and lots of people hired maids.  It's funny to think about, now.  Was this a Southern thing?  Did Yankees have maids back in the sixties and seventies?  I'm going to have to rent the movie and see if I relate.