How Walgreens Saved Christmas

'Twas the night before Christmas and through the house there arouse, suddenly, a ruckus...

Christmas Eve started out semi-normal this year. And by semi-normal I mean my mom was running around putting finishing touches on everything, my dad was cutting wood so we wouldn't have to do it on Christmas Day, and friends were dropping in periodically (because that's how my parents friends are). 

Nothing of real interest happened. We called my brother who was in D.C. and chitchatted with him for a little while, Dad went to the farm with my nephew, they came home and he took E home, Mom and I just kinda hung out. 

So then around nine, Dad decided that we should make homemade candy. Okay, sounds great! So, we get the dough made up and prepared, and I say, "Do we have chocolate chips?" 

You don't have to be a genius to see where this is going...

Now, it's Christmas Eve and at this point it's ten, so obviously there aren't any stores open. But, we called around town anyways. Ingles, Publix (actually, come to think, I don't know that we did call Publix, but we'll say they were closed anyways), Walmart . . . all the big places were closed. 

So then someone suggested Walgreens. 

And lo! Walgreens was open! So Mom ran over to Walgreens, grabbed the chocolate chips, and the homemade Reese's process continued. And Dad was in a good mood again--which is what we wanted all along. Hah. 

So, the candy turned out good. Mom was also able to get a Coke for her ham that she'd forgotten, and then Christmas Eve proceeded like normal. Well, normal for us. Hah. 

Thanks Walgreens! And Merry Christmas! 

Old Friends

Tonight reminded me just how much I miss some of my friends back home and how much I need to cherish some of those old and familiar relationships. This feeling was spurred because tonight I talked to one of my best and oldest friends for the first time in about three or four months. I know that you're probably thinking, "You haven't talked to one of your best friends in that long? What the heck?" But see, Hannah (on the left, and that's a super old picture, by the way) and I have a unique relationship. She's one of those people that I can just pick up with right wherever we left off.

Anyways, I was on Facebook tonight and turned my chat on for the first time in probably three or four months. But for some reason I did turn it on tonight and all of a sudden I got a little chat message from Hannah (yay, technology!). 

And for the next three hours we just talked about everything under the moon and caught up with what's been going on in each other's lives. After a few months we both had a lot to share--some of it good, some bad, some happy, and some really sad--but just being able to go back to that. . .that familiar, not having to explain anything or any sort of history to someone and not having to worry about judgement or anything. . . it was just really nice and comforting and I kind of feel peaceful about everything right now. 

One thing I also love about Hannah is that she's one of those people who I can talk to about faith and my walk with God without feeling like it's not good enough or inadequate and stuff like that, you know? I mean, she's never hoity-toity about things. And she realizes how fragile things are too, so if you say something that she doesn't agree with, she'll tell you how she feels, but she manages to do it in such a humble and innocent a way that you don't feel like you're being corrected or told off. It's amazing really. And I'm not just talking about when she talks about religion, she's able to do this with any subject. 

Anyways, just talking to her made me realize how much I cherish our friendship. I ended up having to run abruptly, but we ended with the promise to talk more often because we've both really missed that. It's Christmas break now, so we're going to get together and just have a catch-up day soon. I'm really excited. 

Smile!

Itzhak Perlman performed today at the Performing Arts Center where I work. For those of you who don’t know, he’s just a world-renown violinist, no big deal.

People were running around like absolute chickens with their heads cut off.

Imagine those girls that you see in old video reel of The Beatles concerts—the ones that are reaching towards the stage and screaming and practically crying—that’s basically how all of our patrons and our students today were acting. It was actually quite humorous.

Mr. Perlman was gracious enough to allow sixty lucky music students at UGA sit on stage. In order to get these students on the stage, there was an elaborate scheme and routine they had to follow, but I digress. Before the students were able to enter on to the stage they had to pick up their ticket, show their student ID, and check everything they had on their person at the coat check. This is where I was.

The students were allowed onto the stage early and their coat check was just sort of chilling in the lobby. We couldn’t move the coat check rack across the lobby with the other 1000 people who weren’t students still waiting to go inside, so I was regaled to sit in a chair by the elevators with the students coats and wallets and phones to keep them safe until the performance started and we could move them across the lobby and into the box office.

So for the next forty-five minutes or so, I sat there and mainly played on my phone (thank goodness for technology, right?). Occasionally, a frazzled and lost student wondering how to get backstage or a grumpy old man looking for the bathroom would interrupt my Angry Birds rampage and I’d direct them in the right direction, but for the most part, it was pretty slow.

Then, this older woman—probably in her seventies—and her husband walked by, laughing about something and I heard the word “elevator”. Since I was sitting by the elevator I kind of grinned at her, she smiled back, and I went back to Angry Birds.

Then suddenly, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I looked up and the elevator woman was standing beside me with this huge grin on her face. “Thank you,” she says.

I smile, what on earth is she thanking me for? I wonder.

“Thank you,” she repeats. “for your big, friendly smile. I just love it when people smile and are friendly to strangers, and they so very rarely are anymore. So thank you.” And with that she patted my shoulder in that old woman way, hopped on the elevator with her husband, off to enjoy the dulcet tones of Itzhak Perlman (the aforementioned tones were dulcet and breathtaking and beautiful; I may have snuck in for a few minutes of listening when I got off work).

That woman’s words really got me thinking. I’m a happy and friendly person; I don’t think twice about smiling at strangers (and maybe that’s simply a by-product of being raised in the South?). But she’s right! People don’t simply smile at strangers anymore. As soon as our conversation was over I texted a friend who lives in a different region of the country and told him about it. He immediately laughed and replied with “If you’d done that here, the old lady would have been Russian and asked what you were so happy about.” which made me laugh, but also kind of made me sad.

I don’t know . . . it just got me thinking . . . it shouldn’t be such a shocking thing to be on the receiving end of a smile. But it is. And it’s a strange society we live in. I think I really (inadvertently) made that woman’s day today, simply by smiling at her.

But what she doesn’t know is that she also made mine by talking and smiling back.