The Things Kids Do...

Okay, so I have the funniest/most awful thing that one of the kids that attends a camp I work at did. In order for it to make sense, you need a little background. Brace yourselves, because it's awful, yet slightly humorous--in a childlike innocence way, because the girl who did this is only nine. 

Every Wednesday at camp we make prayer cards for people off the church's prayer list. Normally, they're only allowed to write on one side of the postcard because we have to write the address on the back. This week all the campers made them for the same guy--a guy that went to school with all of us and was in our friend group. He is/was(?) in the Army but was severely injured about a three months ago when he stepped on an IED, losing his left arm and right leg. The kids were allowed to write on both sides because we were going to mail them in a big envelope. 

So, we told all the kids this and said they needed to write things like "Thank you for your service", "Keep your head up" (my boss's idea), etc and not "Get Well Soon" because he isn't really sick, per se, or things like "I'm sorry" because we want to keep his morale up and be supportive and nice. 

So this one little girl named, draws a pretty picture of a flag and writes on the front of the post card "Thank you for keeping me and my family safe." And we're all thinking, how sweet! Because seriously, the rest of the kids didn't listen and just wrote things like "Thank You" and her's really felt heartfelt, you know? 

Then we flipped it over...

On the back she had drawn two stick figures. One had a head, body, two arms, and two legs. The other had a head and body, but was missing an arm and a leg. Above the pictures she wrote "Me" with an arrow pointing to the normal stick figure and a "You" with an arrow pointing to the...er...other stick figure. Underneath she wrote "I feel sorry for you!" 

*facepalm*

You can't send that to a guy who just lost an arm and a leg!!!! 

Needless to say, we asked her to redo it, and she didn't really understand why, lol. I think by "I feel sorry for you" she meant, "I feel bad for you" and meant to be sweet and sincere, but still we were all like "Whoa! Can't send that to him."

A very important lesson was learned: ALWAYS screen the prayer cards before sending them. 

We kept the card, heehee, because in all honesty, as awful as it is--it was still sort of funny. In that awful way. Showed it to the preacher and who was SO appalled, lol. 

Water and Tomatoes

I dreamed about water last night.

The details are a little fuzzy and blurry, but I remember I was somewhere with two of my friends who are also my roommates. We were on a large body of water—it may have been a lake, it could have been the ocean. We were riding in a motorboat and decided we wanted to get out and swim like the rest of the people around us.

So, we did. We jumped out and I remembered being scared of what was going to happen. This is strange, because I’ve never been afraid of the water. I’m like a fish. I love water and swimming and marine life. My parents started teaching me from a young age not to be frightened of the ocean for example, but instead to have a healthy respect for it and its power.

But, I digress. It was a strange, unfamiliar feeling and that’s all you need to know. Back to my dream.

Nothing bad happened after we jumped out. We swam for a bit and bobbed in the waves that were created from other boats. Then, someone suggested that we move to another area, a deeper area. We swam to this deeper area and I remember moving through the water, but then, all of a sudden I was jumping in again and the water had gone from being like fifteen feet deep to being less than five.

I woke up just as I felt my legs buckle underneath me and as I heard a huge cracking noise.

Nothing was out of sorts in real life. My covers weren’t mussed and I didn’t even wake up freaked out. Just a little perplexed, thinking “Whoa, that was a weird dream.”

I’m not sure what it means or what it could signify. I’m not planning any trips to particularly large bodies of water and I don’t live near any either. But, I'll certainly be cognizant and extra aware for the next few weeks. The last thing I want is for me or anyone close to me to have broken legs. 

Like I said before, I don't know what the heck prompted this strange water dream. But--I did eat tomato based vegetable soup last night before I went to bed though. Historically, tomatoes make me dream weird, off-the-wall things--like that I'm cliff-diving or flying through the air on my own. And my soup was pretty watery (and by "pretty" I mean "extremely" watery. I'm still perfecting the finer points of cooking) sooo maybe that's where all this came from?

:) 

Horoscope Horror

Oh gah. Oh gah. Just had one of the top ten most mortifying moments of my entire life. 

So, I am sitting in my class room, waiting for the class to start and reading the Red & Black. This is an independent student run newspaper in Athens. You might have heard of the "Red & Dead" stink a few weeks ago, when the entire editorial staff walked out and they gained national recognition, but maybe not. 

Anyways, I think the horoscope sections are just ridiculously funny so I flipped back there and was scanning through them. The relatively cute guy next to me sort of laughs at me. I look up, smile (probably awkwardly, because let's face it, I'm anything but smooth), and shrug. :)

So he asks, "What's your sign?"

"I'm a Cancer," I say, and I'm thinking "Hey, he's chitchatting with me. Heehee. Continue conversation Dixie. You got this." So then I add, "Not to be confused with the phrase 'I have cancer' which has happened before," roll my eyes and laugh.


Semi-Cute Guy chuckles lightly and simply says "Same!" 


So I'm like thinking "Aw, he's a July baby too". So I say, "No way! That's cool!" 


This time he out and out laughs. Like really enjoying his own little private joke. I don't know what to do, so I chuckle a little nervously, right? Right. Then he adds on "Not same in the you mean." 

What??

Then he continues: "I actually did have cancer." 


Oh God. Please just let the ground swallow me up. RIGHT NOW!  

What the Sam heck do you say to that? To a person you hardly know sitting next to you in class?!

So I stumbled through something akin to "Oh gah. I'm sorry. I have a bad case of foot in mouth disease." Yes. I actually said that. 


Semi-Cute Guy laughs again and is like "No worries. It was a few years ago, had a couple surgeries and it's gone now." and then he goes on to talk about how there's this really funny video of him right after one of the surgeries when he was on pain drugs, etc.

Needless to say my ears were BRIGHT red. They're still burning just thinking about it. SO incredibly mortified. 

Moral of this story? I'm not exactly sure...except maybe I shouldn't try to be witty, because it's obviously not working for me. 

Bright side of this story? Well, besides my bright red face, perhaps it was the fact that the guy was cool about it. And it made for a really good story.

:)