Dear Millie,
I thought the exact same thing about the arrows on the garage sale signs! I was curious to find out how Abe would make it work, because I wasn’t making sense of it at all!
It reminds me of the one time in 1st grade I got a “U” on my math worksheet. I still get hives just remembering. There were two columns with numbers in each. The directions said, “Use the greater-than sign.” I knew some of those numbers on the right were greater than the ones on the left, but the directions said I had to use the greater-than sign! Do I do the math correctly, or do I follow the directions? The choice was harrowing. I carefully drew the greater-than sign between the sets of numbers all the way down the middle of the columns. The next set of columns with numbers asked me to use the less-than sign. WHAT. Some of the numbers on the left were greater than the ones on the right! Was this a practice in following directions or actual math?? I remember a kid named Jacob telling me that I’d gotten a “U” on my worksheet and I thought he was kidding because I’d followed the directions and I’d surely earned nothing less than an “E” on that assignment. I still remember my cheeks burning when I saw my graded worksheet.
I think a lot of issues I experience as an adult stem from that very experience, which leads me to last night, where I found myself talking some friends into joining me at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.
One of the friends loves soda. A chain of convenience stores you’ll see in the Midwest have their fountain sodas labeled by “buddy” size or something like that. Anyway, this friend always has a soda buddy with her, and the other friend had gotten her a shirt for her birthday teasing her about that:
Ha!
The friend who bought the shirt loves tacos. I mean, LOVES tacos. She would/could eat them every single meal of every single day. She sends me taco memes often and when I saw this shirt at Target, I immediately thought of her:
SO, my friends were awesome and agreed to go with me to OA, except the soda-lover thought I was asking if she wanted to go to an Order of the Arrow meeting, so she may have felt a little weirded out when we got there.
I was feeling antsy about going and meeting new people and talking about how I *might* have an issue (I don’t really! I’ve totally got it under control. I just choose to stuff myself silly at all times). As I was trying to think about how to act, what I would say, and how I could break the ice, I was thinking my friends could wear their shirts. Then I wished I had a shirt. What could I bring that would make me cool? I came up with the perfect solution to any new situation. No joke:
What?
Love you,
Grace