“I didn’t do it!!!!” My voice sounded very small in my own ears, so probably none of the other shoppers heard my words.

I had innocently entered my favorite Trader Joe’s store, pushed my carrt to the right and was strolling past the buckets of fresh bouqets headed for the breads. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bucket on a top shelf, filled with stately, 3 foot long gladiolas, begin to tip toward me. I yelled, tried to reach it, but failed. The tall bucket spewed a gallon of water down my legs and formed a growing pool around my feet.

The shoppers around me were in a state of suspended animation- just momentarily, until I began slopping out of the puddle in my flip-flops and drenched pants. I didn’t say anymore, but my brain was yelling “Really! I didn’t touch it!! That bucket literally attacked me! Didn’t you see what happened?? Its all a big mistake!”

The kind TJ employee who arrived with a mop, assured me that it was alright.  I shouldn’t give it a second thought.  But I did.  And a third and fourth, partly because my pants were dragging a watery trail behind me, but mostly because I wasn’t apologizing, thank you very much!

Still frustrated, I finished shopping, put my bags in the car, wrung out my pant legs as well as I could, and headed thru the insanely busy parking lot toward the exit.  I had just started into the exit lane when someone suddenly stopped and a traffic jam developed out in the street.  Hemmed in, front and back, I couldn’t move inches in any direction.  When the jam finally broke up, and we all resumed our exit, a man drove up beside me, rolled down his window and yelled, “Next time leave room!!!”

Now, if I had accidentally spilled that precarious bucket, and had thoughtlessly pulled out and blocked traffic, I would have graciously apologized and smiled, kicking myself a little for being careless.  But, doggone it!  I didn’t do it!!!   It wasn’t me, people!!!!  Read my lips!  I’m I-N-N-O-C-E-N-T!!!!!

A couple of my most painful memories involve the same issue.  In highschool I had a math teacher who made learning fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed figuring out difficult problems, and let him know how much I liked it.  Then one day the principal called me into his office and said that my teacher felt I was too “cocky.”  To this day, that word turns my stomach, because I am the only one who knows that the accusation was false.

Worse than that, was the time when my best friend and I, at age thirteen, had the wonderful privilege of spending a week on a 35-foot yacht belonging to my aunt and uncle. They took us many places aboard the yacht, but during the week they both worked, and we were docked in Tacoma, right off Point Defiance Park.  We had a wonderful time exploring the park while they were gone each day.  One day we returned to the yacht to find both of them very distressed.

“You girls were told not to touch the steering wheels.  Now the cable is broken and needs to be replaced.”  We insisted that we hadn’t touched either wheel, on the lower or upper deck.  Someone had come aboard, taken the cover off the wheel on the upper deck and turned the wheel in one direction while someone else turned the lower deck wheel in the opposite direction until the cable snapped.  It wasn’t us.  But they never believed us.  For years I struggled with that, with no way to resolve it.

I know that Jesus said we are blessed if we are falsely accused for His sake.  But what about the times that make absolutely no sense, and just leave us fuming??    What is that thing in us that has such a need for justification?  And such a reaction to injustice?   Except, of course when we actually are at fault!

Maybe I need to begin to catch myself and respond this way: ” Well, I didn’t do it this time, but it surely does happen that I am careless, or thoughtless, or just plain disobedient.  So I guess I can bite the bullet here and let it be a lesson for the future.”  Or, “No, I didn’t do this, but you should see what I DID do last week!”

Yep.. that’s what I’ll do, all right.  Mmm-hmmm.  You betcha.  Just watch me.  No, don’t.

WHY do they do it?  Almost every item of clothing contains a label of some kind–and they are NOT kind to my sensitive skin.  Garment makers must lie awake at night inventing the most obnoxious ways to attach their blasted badges.

I can hear them.  “Let’s see now.  We can use stiff, scratchy material and cut it so the corners are really sharp.  Put a big, black one on that sheer, white blouse.   Oh, and we can use prickly, metallic thread for added irritation.  Also, you know that there are quite a few people allergic to silk, so let’s make labels out of those tiny scraps left over from silk clothing. That way, even if they avoid buying a silk garment they will still get the itch.  Of course,  when we must use a soft material, we can always sew the label directly into a major seam so that it is virtually unremovable without dismantling the garment.  And we know that most people will be far too impatient to do that carefully, so they will always end up with holes in that brand new piece of clothing!  That way, even if they are infuriated with us, they can’t bring the item back because it is mutilated and they did it themselves!!!  Ha!  We are so good at this!!”

Maybe I’ve finally gone off the deep end.  After 72 years of squirming under aggravating labels, to call this obsession a pet peeve would be like calling Noah’s flood a puddle.  Its now progressed past the point of blinding rage to a dogged determination on my part.  When the new garment is halfway out of the bag I’ve grabbed my scissors, razor blade, seam ripper, ice-pick, chainsaw- whatever it takes to get rid of those ____ tags.

I wont bother to try to list the other items with labels stuck, glued and taped to them.  I can’t even begin to estimate how many hundreds of purchases I’ve permanently messed up with alcohol, goo-gone, turpentine or such, just trying to remove the stuff.  And we wont even bring up the subject of packaging, except to say that I have been known to nearly slice my hand in half trying to retrieve some tiny item buried in plastic that is tough enough to repel a blow-torch.

Funny. As I’ve finally vented my rather intense aversion, an even more disturbing thought emerges thru the cloud of frustration.  How often am I guilty of slapping a label on another person, group or culture, and how much more painful, damaging and difficult to remove is that?  Hmmm.

Well, mother-in-law, your Hoe finally broke a couple of days ago.  How many years did you use that amazing tool??  Your son says at least twenty years you scratched away the weeds with that thing.  You have been gone for another twenty-six years.  And since we now live in “your” house, that means that I’ve been using The Hoe for about six years longer than you did!  That was one good Hoe.

Every time time I used The Hoe I thought about you, diligently pushing it back and forth among your astounding varieties of dahlia plants, making sure that no encroaching weed was detracting from their beauty.  Then on to the veggies, rows of them, all of them determined to shelter still more sneaky, green intruders.  Any grandchild who spent a summer night at your house woke to the scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch of Grandma’s Hoe, as you worked in the garden while the sun was still in the tree-tops.

Then came the day that you tried to ignore a terrible head-ache and went out to hoe the garden in spite of it.  You were almost finished when the headache became unbearable, and you made your way across the driveway with The Hoe to lean on the old, grey Plymouth for support.  When you fell, the dog barked urgently until Grandpa came to investigate.  You never regained consciousness on this earth.

I’m not superstitious, but I have to admit that it has crossed my mind more than once in the last twenty-six years, that maybe The Hoe would claim two Grannies!  I know that you worried about a lot of things, and I am sorry that you had to deal with Fear for so many years. I allowed you to pass some of that along to me, and I remember what it was like to be immobilized by it.

But I’m glad that you are free now, and if you can see us, you are probably amazed that your son didn’t die by the time he was forty (or earlier) as you feared.  Instead, he’s been sitting on “your” steep roof for a month and a half, working away, artificial heart-valve, pace-maker, blood-thinner and all.  He’s already enjoyed at least thirty-three bonus years!

Today I bought a new Hoe.  I’ll hang the old one on the wall in the garden house to remind myself that I did outlive The Hoe!   But I don’t think I have much chance of wearing out that new one!

The Bucket

I have a very old bucket in my garden-  so old that it truly could be classified as an antique. It is decorative, and appears quite intact.  There is a plant growing in it.  But if you look more closely, or pick it up, you will discover that the bottom is all rusted out.  The plant is growing directly in the garden and the bucket comes right up without disturbing anything.  Just like it was never there.

Sometimes I feel like that bucket.  Been around a long time.  I’m amazingly intact, (good genes) and unless you see me before I paint on my missing eyebrow,  my looks  probably wont scare you!   However, evidences of rust do show up now and then.  And once in a while when I take time to feel sorry for myself, I think that if I disappeared, nobody would notice.

Come on, now.  Doesn’t anyone else ever have thoughts like that??  LIke “Its been forever since I last posted on this blog.  Life has been good at pulling the rug out.  Do I still have anything worth saying?  Did I ever?”

So, instead of trying to scrape the bottom of my bucket for words of wisdom that somebody else MIGHT want to read, I’m asking God to open my eyes and ears to some of the ways He speaks.  I have a feeling that there are myriad things He is saying constantly in the world around  me, that I miss by being too busy to notice.

Tell you what-  I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open, and let you know what happens.  Hmm.  I guess it was a rusty, old bucket that started all this, wasn’t it??