Dying with Laughter

By Emily Parke Chase –

Beauty shops would curl up and face permanent ruin if they depended on customers like me for profits. I cut my own hair. I wear no make-up. My fingernails are short and stubby. My most recent experience (fifteen years ago?) with having my hair done professionally resulted in a wild tornado of hair that rivaled anything a half-hour ride in my clothes drier could produce. I arrived home from the beauty parlor fifteen minutes before my children got off the school bus. Afraid that they might mistake me for a raving maniac, I jumped in the shower and had safely returned to my suburban cookie-baking-mom alter ego by the time they walked in the door.

You can thus imagine my surprise when my friend Charise approached me about leading a Bible study for a group of her beautician friends all of whom worked in local salons. Charise sells shampoos, dyes, and other supplies to beauty salons all over our area. She also shares her faith openly and had personally led several of these women to faith in Christ. “Would you be willing to disciple them?”

The first time I walked into the room with these women, I felt I stood out like a cowlick on bald head. Their tresses were styled and gelled. Each cuticle was neatly tucked away and every eyebrow plucked. Each lip was carefully outlined and glossed. The only element out of place was me.

The first lesson was on grace: They accepted me.

At the end of that initial class, I gave the women an assignment to complete at home.

“Homework?” Charise gasped. The women looked at each other in consternation.

My expectation that they would do the assignment shocked them as much as their manicures awed me, but over the next months we began to relax and enjoy our times together. We studied scripture. We laughed as they shared stories from their salons. And we prayed for each other.

One day we were meeting in the home of Debbie. The shrill ring of a phone interrupted our study, and Debbie excused herself to answer the call in the kitchen. A few minutes later she burst into the room. “Praise the Lord!” she shouted to everyone. “I’ve got five corpses!”

The other women exploded with excitement and crowded near to congratulate her.

I sat back in astonishment. What was going on? Were my friends part of some secret Aztec cult that sacrificed beating hearts on an altar? What kind of group rejoices over five corpses?

Charise looked over at me and observed my confusion. Smothering her laughter and recovering her breath, she explained that fixing the hair, nails and make-up of a person who had died brought in extra income. A corpse could be prepped at the stylist’s convenience, after normal business hours, even at midnight. And the best part? These clients never complained about how long the beautician took or if she pulled a hair or two too tight. Five corpses was a windfall for my friend.

Me? I still cut my own hair. I still don’t use lipstick or foundation. So when I die, don’t allow someone to paint me like Madonna. My new friends would die with laughter.

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty disappears, but a woman who honors the Lord should be praised” (Proverbs 31:30 GNB).

(See Emily for yourself! Visit the author at www.emilychase.com.)

Milking the Bull

By Emily Parke Chase –

“Does that chicken lay eggs?”

Pushing back the brim of my bonnet, I look up at the tourist and then glance at the hen coaxing her young brood across the barnyard before I answer, “You think she just lays chicks?”

“Can you tell me where Herb’s garden is?” another visitor asks.

Pointing to a garden full of parsley, basil and oregano, I sigh and reply, “You’ll find Herb over there.”

A husband and wife point at a team of oxen. “Look! They have a male and a female!”

Do modern biology classes never mention that an ox is a castrated steer? That means no females.

As a seasonal guide at a reconstructed historical village, I have grown accustomed to tourists who ask unusual questions. Many of our guests, growing up in cities, have no idea that milk comes from anything other than a carton or that the cotton in their tee shirts once grew on puffy plants. Only at a place like Williamsburg, Plimoth Plantation, or Old Sturbridge Village will you find a crowd of adults focusing their cameras on a costumed worker unloading a pile of manure from an ox cart. Where are those light meters and flashbulbs when I’m turning over my compost pile in my back yard?

Other visitors to our village are experts in their fields. A few specialize in guns, some in early American pottery. Their questions are welcome and get accurate answers, but I discover that guides on tour from other historical villages take diabolical delight in testing my knowledge. They ask for obscure details about wallpaper designs or flower arranging, not because they care but because they want to see if they can catch me in ignorance. Here comes one of those visiting guides with a question. “Excuse me, miss. That desk over there across the room…can you tell me if it was made in eastern or western Massachusetts?”

I scratch my head and furrow my brow before answering. “It all depends on your perspective. If you are standing on the New York border, then it was made in eastern Massachusetts. But if you are standing on the tip of Cape Cod, it was made in western Massachusetts.”

“Ah, thank you.” The guide nods solemnly and moves on to harass the next staff person.

When tourists are not in sight, we staff members create our own entertainment. My friend “Betsy” is working upstairs in a museum area that few people visit. Bored, she writes a note, “Help! I’m being held prisoner in the lighting exhibit.” She rolls the note into a scroll and pushes it through a knothole in the pine floor. She has most sincere regrets when it falls to the head table in the formal dining room below, in front of one of the members of the board of trustees. From then on, Betsy decides to let tourists—only tourists—provide the fodder for her wit.

The next day a man wearing an MIT sweatshirt approaches. After watching our farmer use the ox to plow a field, he asks, “Does that ox give milk? Does it taste like cow’s milk?”

Hard to tell. You see, I only milk the bull.

“If any among you thinks that he is wise by this world’s standards, he should become a fool in order to be really wise. For what this world considers to be wisdom is nonsense in God’s sight” (1 Corinthians 3:18, 19, Good News Bible).

Want to schedule the author as a speaker? Interested in learning more about her books, including Why Say No When My Hormones Say Go? Visit her at emilychase.com.

Command Performance

By Emily Parke Chase –

Having dogs was a big part of my childhood. Tara, our sheepdog, for example, followed our family to church one Sunday, jumped in the sanctuary window and then trotted down the aisle searching for my father who was also the pastor of the church. Read more

The 5-Minute Rule

By  Emily Parke Chase –

My husband, with a professional math journal propped on his lap, falls sound asleep in the recliner after dinner. When he awakes two hours later, I am finishing my work in the kitchen and heading to bed myself. We climb into bed and read for a few minutes before turning off the light. Read more

Sorry, Wrong Number

By Emily Parke Chase –

“Not again!”

The error message blinks on my screen like an avenging warrior.  For the third day in a row, I am unable to connect to our internet service provider. Read more

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