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