Times Are, Uh, Changing

By Lynn Rebuck –

I was on time for church Sunday. It was purely coincidental. It is that rare annual event that happens only on the unique fall morning that we are to set our clocks back one hour to end Daylight Savings Time.

I under-slept Sunday morning and ended up arriving fifteen minutes early for church. At first I was startled by the number of cars pulling into the parking lot. Next I was overwhelmed by the selection of parking spaces available. When I walked into the near-deserted building, I was fascinated by the rows of empty seats.

Mind you, I would adjust my watch to the correct time if I could, but it seems the people who wrote the miniaturized instruction leaflet are the same ones who inscribed the entire Bible on the head of a pin.

Here we are days past the shift in the time-space continuum, and not all of my clocks are adjusted. My kitchen stove claims one time, my car professes another, and my DVD player still innocently blinks midnight.

I am convinced that the old song by the band Chicago, “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” (which you will likely hum for the rest of the day now that I’ve mentioned it), was written just after the switch from Daylight Savings Time.

Yesterday I went watch shopping. The clerk approached me as I gazed at the timepieces in the case. “Can I help you find something?” she asked helpfully.

“Yes, I’d like to get a new watch,” I said.

“What features are you looking for?”

“It has to be accurate,” I replied.

“All of our watches keep time very well,” she said proudly. “Perhaps I can interest you in this one that is waterproof to a depth of ten meters.”

“Do I look like I dive for abalone? I only need one that’s waterproof to the depth of my washing machine,” I replied. My eyes kept searching the hopeful faces in the case.

Finally, I spotted it. “I’ll take that one there,” I said, pointing to a purple-faced watch that had a band larger than a collar for a St. Bernard.

“Which one, this one?” she asked, and then proceeded to tease me by touching every watch surrounding the watch I had selected. (I have found this to be a favorite game of jewelry store salespeople.)

She accidentally brushed the box of my chosen timepiece and I excitedly yelled, “That’s the one!”

“My,” she said, “you really seem to like this watch. It is an excellent choice, as it has a dual alarm, international time zones, a backlight, chronograph, split-lap stopwatch, is waterproof to 50 meters, and can even withstand severe shocks.”

“Severe shocks like being driven by your teenager? Great, I’ll take it.”

“Why did you choose this one?” she asked.

“It has the correct time on it.”

She rang up the sale and I snatched the bag from her hand. As I headed for the door I called back over my shoulder, “See you in the spring!”

Lynn Rebuck is an award-winning humor columnist, comedian, and speaker. She once tried to adjust a sun dial for Daylight Savings Time. Read her humor blog on www.LynnRebuck.com, fan her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter, and email her at LynnRebuck@gmail.com no matter what time it is. © 2010 Lynn Rebuck

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.

Hair Peace

By Rhonda Rhea –

Have you ever gone to a lot of trouble to get the perfect hair look? You gel, tease, mousse, iron, spray—everything just short of taking it to the kiln at the ceramic shop for a good firing. You finally get the exact hair look you’re going for, then you take your hand mirror and back up to the bathroom mirror only to find a frightening hair disturbance in your blind spot. Some call it a hurricane; it’s a giant swirly with a large eye. As a mother of five, I’ve often let my kids wonder if I had eyes in the back of my head, but I honestly never wanted any evidence.

The other day I found a major meteorological occurrence in the hand mirror. It started in the northernmost hair regions and moved slowly but steadily to the south, wreaking hair destruction and devastation all along the path of the storm. No doubt a category five. Maybe we would call that a “hair-icane.” Okay, maybe not. But how in the world can I keep my head when my hair is gusting at break-neck speed? Time to board it up and put the whole mess in a ponytail?

It happens in life, too. Everything is going fine. Clear with only scattered challenges. Then suddenly a storm sneaks up on you from behind. It’s one of those high pressure systems that develops without much warning. Before you know it, blast the storm sirens, you’re in the middle of a giant swirly.

Those kinds of disturbances happen to everyone at some time or another. Thankfully, we have a Savior who gives us peace in the midst of the storm. As we trust Him, He can speak the words “Peace, be still” into every life and into every situation. It may not necessarily evade the hair instabilities, and it won’t necessarily make the storms go away, but it can certainly help us weather out the struggle. Every struggle. His peace is all we need to make it through.

So don’t be surprised when a swirly struggle hits. No need to have blind spots, spiritually speaking. Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you” (NIV). You can keep your head if your mind is fixed on Jesus and your heart is fully relying on and trusting in Him.

Let His peace rule and your day will feel so much sunnier. In every atmospheric condition.

And in every shampoo and condition too.

Rhonda Rhea is a radio personality, conference speaker, humor columnist and author of seven books, including High Heels in High Places and her newest book, Whatsoever Things Are Lovely: Must-Have Accessories for God’s Perfect Peace. You can find out more at www.RhondaRhea.org.

Die Laughing Anyone?

By Kathi Macias –

Seriously. This is no laughing matter! Well, okay, maybe it is—but only because I chose to make it so. I could just as easily have chosen to cry and whine and…wait, come to think of it, that’s exactly what I was doing before I decided to laugh. Let me explain.

It started when my husband went out of town for ten days. (Figures!) The TV in our room went out, but I figured, so what? There’s one in the family room, and who needs a TV anyway? Apparently my mom does because hers went out the next day, and she was not a happy camper. It was one thing to ignore my non-working set, but quite another to ignore hers—particularly when I was about to leave for Philadelphia to teach at a writers’ conference for several days.

I did some scrambling and found a wonderful old gentleman in the senior park where we live (“old” as in older than the rest of us who live in the park!) who graciously offered to replace Mom’s TV with an extra set from the clubhouse until we could get her a new one. I must admit I was a bit concerned when he was wrestling one set off her TV stand and lifting the other one up onto it, but he made it. What a relief! At least the main fire was put out, and the rest could smolder until I returned from the conference.

Or so I thought. The very next day Mom and I were waiting in our car in the drive-through lane at a fast-food restaurant when my foot slipped off the brake (don’t even ask why I didn’t have the car in park!) and I rolled (very slowly, I might add!) into the car in front of me. The bump was scarcely noticeable, and I was certain there was no damage. The driver of the other car didn’t agree. Admittedly, if I’d had a magnifying glass, I might have been able to see the quarter-inch dent he claimed was in his back bumper, but I didn’t have one so I had to take his word for it. He said his people would contact my people about the damage. Wonderful.

One more day until I flew off to Philly. What else could go wrong? I was about to find out.

I had to call a radio station to do an interview that final morning before leaving, and as I always do before calling in, I turned off call-waiting—nothing more annoying that beeping noises when you’re on the radio! The interview went off without a hitch. Then I noticed something odd. Each time my phone rang, it cut off midway through the first ring and didn’t ring again. After it happened several times, I called the phone company and told them something was wrong and they needed to send out a technician right away. Of course, they couldn’t do that until the next day. Great. Now no one could call in, though I was able to call out.

Midway through the afternoon my cell phone rang, and it was a friend of mine from Nashville. “I’ve been trying to call you all day,” he said, “but I keep getting some radio station in Texas.”

Uh oh. I was beginning to suspect a connection between the phone problem and my morning radio interview. I called the station and discovered they’d been getting calls for me all day. They suggested the possibility that instead of punching *70 to turn off call-waiting before my interview I might have pushed *72, which then forwards all my incoming calls to the station.

Sure enough, that was it! I turned off call-forwarding and called the phone company to cancel the technician and to apologize for my error. The customer service rep laughed and said, “I understand completely. I have days like that all the time. We might as well laugh about it, right?”

Right. I mean, seriously, she was right. But I had to grab myself by the nape of the neck and shake the whining and complaining right out of me before I could get that smile to work. It wasn’t long, though, before I found myself right in the middle of the truth of Proverbs 17:22: “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.”

We can choose a merry heart—or dry bones. It took me awhile to get there, but I opted for the merry heart, and the rest of the day went much better. (You don’t even want to know about my trip to Philly and how my five-hour flight turned into an 18-hour nightmare! But I was still laughing when I finally landed at two in the morning…!)

Kathi Macias (www.kathimacias.com; http://kathieasywritermacias.blogspot.com) is an occasional radio host (www.blogspotradio.com/communicatethevision) and an award-winning author of more than 30 books. She and her husband, Al, live in Homeland, CA, where they spend their spare time riding Al’s Harley—hence, Kathi’s road name of “Easy Writer.”

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