This one is for all the English who can't remember to call it a covering. I'm not offended. I'm cool with bonnet. It's just all about context, as you know.

This one is for the Mennonites and Amish.
My apologies for Rosie's hemd von mann. Sie war um hart schafe. Die Rosie ist bistle veltlich gah.
And I couldn't persuade her to tone down her make-up and quit tweezing her eyebrows.



Translation:
hemd von mann--man's shirt
Sie war um hart schafe--She was working hard. (Many things can often be excused if there is a practical reason for it or if it was necessary on the account of hard work.)
Die Rosie ist bistle veltlich gah.--Rosie went a little worldy.

sleep deprived humor

Okay, so, it’s crunch time at work as we are gearing up for the next quarter. Since, I generally get really goofy when I am sleep deprived and everything is funny, I thought I’d share something I found really funny. This would be great YouTube material. Someone who is unemployed would have to be the actor though...cause otherwise it would be great getting fired material too.

Reasons to give when caught sleeping at work.

1. They told me at the blood bank this might happen.

2. This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in that time management course you sent me to.

3. Whew! Guess I left the top off the Wite-Out. You probably got here just in time!

4. I wasn’t sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm.

5. I was testing my keyboard for drool resistance.

6. I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work – related stess. Do you discriminate toward people who practice Yoga?

7. Dang! Why did you interrupt me? I had almost figured out a solution to our biggest problem. Did you know that the dude who invented the sewing machine, fell asleep from exhaustion when trying to figure out where to put the hole in the needle. He had a dream and in it he encountered the solution.

8. The coffee machine is broken…

9. Someone must have put decaf in the wrong pot…

10. …in Jesus’ name, Amen.

a bouquet is not a football

There is a true story about my sisters that I love to tell, because it is so funny. Now, I fear the story has become a parable of my own life and the joke is on me.

The first of my brothers got married in 1998. We all went to the wedding out in North Dakota. My family was quite a bit younger back then. Most of my sisters were still in the boys have cooties stage of life. Now, half of them have boyfriends. But back then they somewhat scorned the wedding merrymaking and made every attempt possible to insert boisterous competitive activity. We all still wore the traditional Beachy dresses back then, with basketball shorts underneath in preparation for the highly probable upset in a scuffle with our cousins. For the last time ever, did we all wear matching pink dresses together. It was the consensus among us that this was cruel and unusual torture—and it was for a family of tomboys. Everywhere we went during that weekend necessitated a football or a soccer ball or a basketball—the groom’s dinner, the rehearsal, the wedding itself. After much prank playing during the reception lunch and the opening of gifts, came the bouquet toss. I didn’t understand it but my sisters, competitively and boisterously positioned themselves like football players for the catch. Don’t they know what this means—I thought to myself. The bride tossed the bouquet over her shoulder and sure enough my sisters are diving and jumping and grabbing for it. One of them catches it and carries it like a trophy, whooping and hollering. Then my uncles and cousins chime in, “Do you know what that means?” la la la laa la. Suddenly, the bouquet becomes a despised object and a weapon to bat at the offensive messengers.

Recently, I too have been caught fighting to catch the bouquet and I had no idea, as to the symbolic meaning of it. Suffice it to say that there are certain flying projectiles one does not attempt to catch no matter what the internal competitive urge demands.

when to kiss and when to refrain...

So, I kiss Latinos on the cheek and embrace them and touch them when I am with them, without a second thought. I kiss and shake hands with the Greek Orthodox folks I encounter. I link arms with my Vietnamese friend as we walk down the street. I expect a Latino man to lend me his arm in various situations. Hugging, kissing and touching gets people all involved in each others’ personal space and can be a bit weird, when one suddenly lands in the situation, when coming from a background where the personal boundary bubble is much larger in circumference.

Sometimes I still run into things that make me internally uncomfortable within the plethora of subcultures I find all around me. Early on, I learned to shut off my “freak-out” mechanism when I ran into those uncomfortable/puzzling social situations, so that I had time to gather context and understanding on how to respond or participate. I sometimes wonder if I’ve even done permanent damage to my “freak-out” mechanism. So, someday, as I get grabbed from behind and pulled into a van, I’ll be looking for a larger context to this sort of behavior/situation—later, my face will be plastered on missing persons’ billboards. My sister has voiced something of the same sentiment, “nothing, surprises me anymore,” she’s told me.

To put a bit of order to boundary expectations, I’ve been developing, if you will, a sort of sliding boundary scale based on what I observe as normative in various contexts. Not to say that I’ve got it down perfect—not at all. For instance, there was once a time when I misjudged a married man to be Latino—his name sounded Latino. So, I greeted him with more expression and touching than your white mainstream greeting. Later, I was shocked to notice he was checking me out. Then, I figured out that he was African, not Latino. Ooops!

But it is as I have been thinking about these odd socio-cultural things that have challenged and stretched my Amish-Mennonite core, I’ve also been thinking about what might challenge or even rattle those who are not from my upbringing. And I’ve landed on the perfect Amish Mennonite tradition which I practiced all the time in my community: the Holy Kiss. Like a perfect Protestant there is always scriptural mandate for everything that is done in daily life. Paul hereby commands us in I Cor 16:20, Rom 16:16 etc. “to greet one another with a holy kiss.” And…well, that is what we did. Brothers in the church greeted other brothers in the church and sisters greeted other sisters in the church—yup, that meant kissing another person right on the smacker. And yes, one could hear the smacking. And yes, I did it often. It happened at every meeting and it was a sign of obedience to the scriptures, pious dedication, love of your brother/sister. The youth occasionally balked and whispered derogatory things about the tastelessness of this weird tradition. But the more mature were sincere in appreciating their sign of affection for their brother or sister in Christ.Given the overload of unfamiliar situations I have thus far had to weather, reprocess and adjust to over the years. I think I would secretly gloat if ever I had the opportunity to observe a non-Mennonite being suddenly greeted with the holy kiss or even to have them unexpectedly observe the practice.

beachy humor?!!

I think I might have confused some of my readers by claiming Amish Mennonites have a creative sense of humor. A friend pointed out a blob to me the other day http://beachycomplex.blogspot.com/ which some might find very humorous—others might simply be lost, or just haven’t been blessed with a good sense of humor. We should feel sorry for the latter two categories of folks.

Their lacking can be explained via the following phenomenon:

The particle-like character of their observer’s eye-ball alters the observeds’ behavior in the quantum environment. So, if you don’t see the humor in this here blog, this quantum phenomenon is occurring. One cannot accurately catch both position and momentum of the satire. You see, lipstick, facial piercings and such are so jarring to the Beachy eye (like white legs), that one can no longer emit humor waves. Likewise, wide brimmed hats and pleated aprons have the same effect. Too Amish as well as too liberal, enacts this phenomenon. Yes, I know what you are thinking. This is not a case of the emperor’s new clothes because I am Amish Mennonite and I cannot lie or pretend anything—If I ever did not tell the literal truth, you would see me blushing through my profile picture.

By the way—I don’t know what these young punks are doing using satire. There is no Deutsch wort for satire—it simply doesn’t exist. I’m certain that the only explanation is mutation. These folks are the new mutants—Beachy mutants. Ach schantlich!

And if that all isn’t bad enough—they stole my quote. They stole the quote, where I’m quoting someone’s quote.

Actually, I like "the draft" the best--although I should not say so, because by now that Holiness Beachy Boy has got a swelled head and isn't so holy anymore.

florida moments

while waiting at the terminal…

I was drinking a fruit smoothy I brought along: brand name, Naked. I set it down on the coffee table, while we were waiting at our gate. My mom looks at it, turns it around, so the label was facing the wall, not the lobby, saying in Deutsch, we don’t want people to see that.” “Es sagt nackich.” (It says naked). Somehow it is much more schantlich (embarrassing and shocking) to say the word in English than to say its direct translation in German.

while waiting at the terminal…

Mom: What are you doing on your computer?

me: I’m writing.

Mom: For your blob?

me: (…after rolling on the floor, sides heaving with laughter, tears streaming from my eyes, everyone looking at us strangely.) ..., “Mom, it’s not a blob, it’s a blog.

my aunt: So what degree will you have now that you are done with, whatever it is that you have? What letters will you be able to put behind your name?

me: I’ll have a Masters of Arts in Theology. And I don’t know what letters that puts behind my name. I just know that I need to go to school for 4 more years to get my doctorate and then I can put Ph. D. behind my name.

my aunt: Oh, really! Then you should go to school for it, if that’s all it takes to become a doctor. We need a doctor to take care of us once we get old!

me: Well, I wouldn't be able to be that sort of doctor. It would be called something more like a Doctorate in Theology.

my aunt: That's not a real doctor!

The moral of the last two stories: No matter how “educated” or “advanced” one becomes, there will always be people who don’t recognize the “particular specialness” of the categories. And that is a good thing.

Amish Wisdom

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold that the bird froze in the air and fell to the ground in an Amish barn yard. While it was there a cow came by and dropped some manure on it. As the frozen bird lay there in the pile of manure, it realized that it was thawing out. He lay there all warm and happy, and soon he began to flutter and sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and ran over to investigate. The cat found the bird in the manure, dug him out and ate him.

Morals to the story:
a) Not everyone who drops manure on you is your enemy.
b) Not everyone who gets you out of manure is your friend.
c) When you’re in manure over your head, better keep your mouth shut!