Being Civil

I was at work when a guy came in to make a copy. When he was at the register, I told him it was eight cents. I held out my hand for the change he was sifting through. He looked up, dropped one nickel into my hand. After a moment of hesitation he dropped the other one into my hand. I gave him two cents change, dropping the first penny into his outstretched hand. When I dropped the other one, however, it bounced off his hand and onto the counter. I grabbed the receipt and handed it to him, but he still held out his hand, and I realized he still hadn't picked up the other penny. I picked up the penny and put it in his hand and he said, "It's called learning to be civil." After he walked out the door, I thought to myself, What a jerk. But then I began to think about it. Although he didn't have to be rude about it, I realized that a little reminder to be polite can't really hurt a person. I mean, remembering to hold a door open for someone, giving someone a compliment, those are things that make a difference. You might not even remember helping that person but later you might find out that it made all the difference for that person having a good day or a bad day. It's like that commercial where a man helps an older lady off a bus, and someone else sees it and then does something nice for someone else and someone else sees that and does something kind for someone else and so on and so forth- it can start a chain reaction. So even though it was a small comment and two small minutes out of my day, that comment made a difference. Don't just be civil, but be kind and mean it because it could really turn someone's day around.

When I'm a Mom

Over the weekend I visited Lake Powell with my family and my mom's friends. On Sunday, my mom's friend drove the boat on the lake while her husband rode on waterskis off the back. The wind was getting really bad because of a storm that was coming, and my mom's friend wasn't that experienced in driving the boat, especially in such a strong wind.

Her husband insisted on skiing in the places where there were more rocks, and their cliff faces towered hundreds of feet above us. His wife was really nervous about driving with so many obstacles around her but she drove anyway. As her husband fell off the waterskis and we turned the boat around to go back and get him, the engine shut off.

We all looked around for a minute before realizing that the rope connected to the skiis was caught in the propellor. So we shut off the engine and untangled the rope. As we finished and started up the boat again, however, a sudden gust of wind blew and my mom's friend couldn't turn the wheel hard enough to get us away from a rock that jutted up out of the lake about five hundred feet into the sky. The front of the boat headed straight for the rock face, and everyone started screaming.

I, being at the front of the boat along with my mom's friend's four-year-old little girl, grabbed her as quickly as I could and headed to the middle of the boat. She clutched to me as tightly as she could as her mom took hold of the wheel and cranked it as hard as she could, missing the rock by mere inches.

Everyone started swearing and gasping in relief as we headed away from the boulder, leaving my mom's friend's husband to swim to the boat to avoid any more mishaps.

As everyone was calming down, I held the little girl as close as I could to me. No one seemed to notice how upset or frightened she was just yet. Tears were gathering in her eyes and I sat back down at the front of the boat, holding her on my lap. I put her head against my chest and whispered in her ear that everything was okay and that I loved her very much. She said softly that she loved me too, and I asked her if there were any songs she'd like me to sing. She nodded yes, but didn't volunteer one, so I began to sing "You Are My Sunshine" very softly in her ear, stroking her hair and holding her very close. After I was done singing it twice, I looked at her and saw that she looked very calm, and not one tear had fallen.

I can't even describe to you the fulfillment I felt in calming that little girl down and holding her close to me. I sang that song for a while after that, and even on the bumpy boat ride back to the shore, she almost fell asleep on my lap while listening to me hum it.

On the way back, I pointed out the different rocks and told her that they looked like cheese because of all the holes in them. She giggled and smiled and it was as if the incident of almost crashing had never happened.

Someday I want to be a mom. Even if I don't get the dream job I've always wanted or get to live where I really want, I want to be able to be called 'Mom' by my own child and take care of him/her because of how much love and joy I feel when I do it. How I am making a difference by being the best mom I can be.

As sappy and maternal as this all sounds, this is what I want to be. I want to be the fun, quirky, comforting, and caring mom. And once I find the perfect guy, I will make it my goal to be the best mom ever when I have kids.

Vampires

I watched an anime series the other night about vampires. It was about a girl whose family consisted of vampires. She, on the other hand, has a disorder where she has massive nosebleeds, and she injects the blood into her victims before she has the bleedouts. Her blood multiplies and she is constantly embarrassed because of her disorder. She meets a human boy who, for some strange reason, causes her blood to multiply twice as fast as it usually does. They end up becoming friends, but she has many nosebleeds in front of him. Eventually, she starts liking this boy, but she cannot tell him her secret or her family will kill him. It is an interesting story and it led to me thinking about a reversal in roles where there is a couple, one of them hunting vampires for a living and the other being a vampire.