Life at the Front: Part I

A little crumpled but intact.

Shortly after I stepped off my Brussels Airlines flight and into the humid Liberian evening, I was handed a small pamphlet, three fold-out pages in length. “Welcome to Liberia!” it said, and without skipping a beat, the next line began, “There is an outbreak of Ebola.” It went on to cover the basics—what the disease is, how you contract it, what the symptoms are.

Just one of the many changes that have come to Liberia since I left. After getting off the shuttle bus—where I received my pamphlet—I was directed to wash my hands at a large fifty-gallon cooler with “EBOLA IS REAL” printed on it. I did so. (Why they would have incoming passengers wash their hands, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is to accustom travelers to the reality of the situation in Liberia—a little practice, maybe?) There was no place to dry my hands, so I patted them on my clothes and hoped it wouldn't bleach them.

It was an encouraging sign of progress, especially since the only public notices I recall when I left in early August was an “EBOLA IS REAL” banner strung across ELWA Junction.

Going in, a woman in scrubs checked my temperature and let me into the airport building. Getting through immigration and customs was thankfully brief, and by my count we had collected all twenty-three of our checked bags in record time. I won't spend long on the reunion that followed outside the airport, but suffice it to say that it was wonderful to see many familiar faces again (including the face of one ornery four-year-old.)

My bowl of joliff rice.  (I went back for seconds.)

We got back to our house and unloaded our luggage, piling them in the living room. (Most of them are still piled there; we're digging through the mountain bit by bit.) I ate (JOLIFF RICE—forgive my enthusiasm), showered, and hit the sack.

I woke up to rain the next morning, which is unusual in the dry season. But for an American readjusting to the hot and humid climate, it was a beautiful thing—I even had to pull on a sheet halfway through the night.

Going out that afternoon revealed even more changes. ELWA Hospital had been restructured in some ways, with new fences and tarps. The ELWA 2 unit was no longer hidden behind sheet metal; there was an entrance cut from the zinc with a banner hung to the left. (It read, “Welcome to ELWA-II Ebola Treatment Unit”, alternating between sinister block letters—“Ebola”—and a curvy “Welcome” to a place no one wanted to be welcomed to.) You can see it pictured below.

We went past it and out the middle entrance to the ELWA Campus, right beside MSF's ETU. For those of you who don't speak Acronymic, it was Medecins sans Frontieres—“Doctors Without Borders”—and their Ebola Treatment Unit. MSF has been doing much of the Ebola response since the outbreak began.

The MSF sign outside the ELWA Campus

A glimpse of ELWA-3, the world's biggest Ebola unit, through an orange fence.

While driving, we went past the Chinese ETU, which was up before any of the American units. (I'm not sure where the American units are, but I didn't see any American presence—there were Ebola response vehicles, but those were often UN or Liberian.)

One of our errands was to go up to the supermarket. We visited the Exclusive first, and had our temperatures taken and washed our hands with bleach water before going in. Handshakes, where they happened, were replaced with first-bumps and elbow-knocks. Still, we saw many familiar faces, and the store looked the same as always.

A sign at Rehab Junction, warning Liberians that Ebola is still on the prowl.

Yes, much of Liberia was the same as it was six months ago. There were some aesthetic things that changed, but everyone was out and about, buying and selling in the market, honking wildly, waving for taxis, manning their commercial stands on the side of the road. (That's a big phrase for a plywood shack and wares, but it works.)

However, everywhere we went, we saw many different signs of Ebola. (No, literally, look below: it's a sign of Ebola about signs of Ebola.) Billboards, banners, and even logos on cars.

One of the half-dozen signs posted about Ebola at ELWA Junction

An Ebola Task Force vehicle,
one of several Ebola-related vehicles I saw
while we were out.

I mean, an outsider might just take this in stride. Ebola was serious, people are working on getting it contained. Cool.

Except, save for that aforementioned banner over ELWA Junction, these are the first outward signs I've seen of the outbreak in Liberia, and I left in August—months after the outbreak began, and in the middle of the horrifying exponential growth that gripped the country for several months afterward.

Bike tires for sale near Rehab Junction

Now do you see it? To go from a solitary banner during a week in which there were fifty cases of Ebola to billboards and preventions everywhere is a solid indication of the progress that has been made. The huge drop in cases seen at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 was not without reason. A massive campaign was launched to make sure the average Liberian knew Ebola was real, and even indoctrination can be good. In this case, the same things were repeated so often that they actually took root—Ebola is real, Ebola is dangerous, wash your hands and don't touch sick people.

I'm withholding full commentary, considering I've only been here a couple days. There are obviously exceptions. Dad went in to an electronics place yesterday afternoon without washing his hands, and then lectured the security officer afterward for neglecting to make him do so. (The security protested that he didn't think of it and didn't want to bother him.) Still, what I've seen so far is encouraging.

Moving on, there are other, subtler changes to Liberia. For instance, bicycles have made huge gains in the past several years. Today I spotted someone selling bike tires—common enough for regular tires, but it shows how prevalent bikes have become in Liberia. Also, just in case you don't know what gum is actually called, here's a sign correcting you:

What can I say?  It's good to be back. I'm only here for three and a half months, but it's going to be an awesome three and a half months.

I could say some rubbish about how our garden represents our lives—our banana/plantain trees are beginning to produce and our papaya tree is big-o—but that analogy would break down when it comes to the mess of weeds and abandoned plants we have beside the house. Suffice it to say that we're really moving forward and everyone feels renewed and chomping at the bit. 

Till next time! 

****

About this series of posts: “Life at the Front” isn't sure what it's supposed to be, so it settled for part Ebola commentary and part missionary life. Definitely a mix of styles. And it's also really sporadic, so sorry about that.

I'll be continuing this whenever possible, covering both the developments in my personal life and whatever news comes my way concerning the current Ebola outbreak. Including taking iPhone pictures of signs I've never seen before. (Guilty as charged.) My sisters tell me I look like a tourist. (Certainly not guilty as charged.)

But, I've got this notion in my mind that I'm writing down things that people are interested in. So I can afford looking slightly idiotic as I brandish my smart phone and fake a wide-eyed tourist look.

Happy reading.

Speaking of faking a wide-eyed tourist look...

The Board of Time Management Discusses Adulthood

When God created the world, he wanted to ensure that time went on as normal and that no one interfered with the inner workings; and he created a government for time, so that his creations in general couldn't get anything done.

Said government was called the Board of Time Management, and the Board met today to discuss a special case of human age, the most common topic of discussion before the Board. The person of question was the honorable Jacob “Jake” Buller, who is in the unfortunate position of turning eighteen on the Eleventh.

Debate opened on the floor with a filibuster from an existential philosopher who believed that age is a relativistic construction and doesn't in fact matter in human affairs. Having drank too much Diet Coke, he had to exit the filibuster to use the little boys' room, and discussion resumed on the grim topic of adulthood.

Normally teenagers attain adulthood automatically, a dubious practice, but this case required special consideration, since several board-members raised questions about Buller's general maturity and readiness for adulthood. He was already on their radar due to his queer writing habits, primarily of humor, and that he had other cases of age modification that already ran in the family. (His mother was granted pension by the Board to stay twenty-six for the rest of her life, and one of his siblings, a sixteen-year-old girl with medical aspirations, was accidentally given an irrevocable amendment to her mental age, causing her to have the mind of one who is thirty-two.)

The first half of the debate on whether or not to grant Buller the right to become eighteen started with the opposing party, who brought evidence to the table. (This group primarily consisted of people called, ironically, “old-timers”.) Video footage captured by the NSA showed Buller gallivanting about in a trench-coat on a cold November night, evidence of his relative insanity; more recent footage showed him dancing about his farmhouse to movie soundtrack. At this several of the members who witnessed this video had to be taken to a facility for the mentally unstable, as the sight was deeply disturbing.

Despite these images destructive to the reputation, much of the board was unmoved. Thus, the other side presented their case. While Buller was weirdly unique in some ways, they said, particularly in the fact that he possessed an odd sort of cheerfulness that is obviously unnatural in today's gritty and wonderfully realistic world, he is in fact no worse than any other teenager. As there are different species of Dog, Buller was simply a different species of Teenager, and ought to be rationed out his age accordingly.

Several members objected to this, and said that they strongly felt that Buller was not enough like the typical teenager to be allowed Adulthood in this way. He had neither the wonderful atmosphere of the modern high school to lift him up, nor the egotistic and monocultural American worldview which is essential to the American dream and American society. What is worse, they said, is that Buller had dared to speak out against American society and was recorded on Facebook showing intense disapproval and even vulgarity. Their example followed: "Society is a steaming heap of wormy feces crawling with decadence and shallowness."

The debate devolved from there, and many of the anti-Buller board-members defected to the pro-Teenager party, resulting in a debate on whether Buller should be allowed Adulthood as a Teenager or whether he should be given Adulthood because he didn't like it.

The vote is scheduled to take place shortly before midnight; pundits say that it is likely that Buller will become an adult to-morrow. What they are unsure of is whether it will be a gift or a punishment.

A Moody Pluto

Sometimes I have this nagging feeling that I live on a planet that is not my own, where all of a sudden the world takes on a different hue, as if the color of my lenses have changed; and everything that seems ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Take, for instance, the marvelous sensation of driving at dusk, in some lonesome and half-forgotten spot in central Kansas. The sun has set some time ago, and is sending out the last gasps of light to the horizon nearly choked by darkness. The crescent moon, thin as a needle, makes the dark circle it is tied to nearly tangible, if only I looked for it hard enough.

It is light enough enough that you can tell the grasses are there, but dark enough to where you cannot make out the individual tufts. Little swells of pastures and fields roll on into the world, to meet the dying horizon. It is the sort of landscape that I feel like requires a music of its own, a minor key from some haunting woodwind. An empty feeling starts in my stomach and goes up till it reaches my throat, and the world shifts.

It's as if I have a larger view, not quite a bird's eye but not quite a human's gaze. I can see the world gently turning on into the night, and the moon hanging above, mostly darkened; and this darkly blue sky rimmed with a dusty green horizon somehow seems like a different wrap entirely, a strangely foreign blanket over strangely foreign soil. The grasses darken, and the world looks like a moody Pluto, far from the sun and yet hanging onto existence.

The lonely wind sings over these hills with the slightest flavor of chill. It whispers to me that the whole land is empty; this is a new planet, and I have suddenly left the old one behind.

The minutes that pass are immeasurable, marked only by the emerging stars above; then the dusk dies, and the night comes on like a slow burn.

Then the vision leaks away from me, and gradually I hear the sounds of life again, seeping into my ears. Yet some measure of this sight, this lonely land with foreign hills, remains with me. And the next day, everything I've seen before has a different look to it—an aura of possibility, that this world I live on might have been a different world.

And somehow that makes me grateful that Kansas is, in fact, Kansas; and that I stand on rich brown soil rather than the windblown red of Mars.

Independent Contender Says He Will Create 200,000 Jobs for Kansas

WICHITA, KS – The race for Kansas governor is heating up as incumbent Republican Sam Brownback faces off against Democrat Paul Davis.

An unlikely contender has risen up against them, however, in the form of independent candidate Bill McDoothly. A Kansas native, McDoothly was born in Kansas and moved to Scotland for the first ten years of his life before coming back to the United States as a teenager. He quickly gained a reputation for accented brilliance in his rural community, and after graduating from a local college, climbed the political ladder with the speed of a freight train.

Now, he has his sights on nothing less than the governor's seat. “Aye, I think I've got a fair chance,” McDoothly says, in an exclusive interview with The Satirical Kansan. “Kansas has common sense. We're going down a political road that leads to a worse political road.”

When asked if his political ads were a little too “brash” and “ugly”, McDoothly took a strong stance. “Our experts have focused on creating a pushy smear campaign. There's a difference between pushy and ugly, and we're being pushy. I hired a writer last week that promises to come up with catchy insults, and I will be using those to full capacity in my next debate.”

His choice of policy may seem aggressive to some, but McDoothly believes strongly that his policy is the only way out for Kansas. “I can create 200,000 jobs for Kansas,” he says. “We can restore Kansas together. The governor has the right and the ability to completely take over the government in the form of firm leadership; and by providing 200,000 jobs, we can usher in a new age of prosperity for our beloved state.”

Despite his foreign accent, he views himself as home-grown. “I've got common sense and a strong back. I believe in Kansas, and I believe in the people of Kansas. We have values that everyone else in the United States has, and I believe in protecting those unique values. I sit around with a lot of random families, telling them of my political wonders, and I can feel the positive support they give me every day. I love my home state, and I would rather work here than anywhere else.”

McDoothly's first political ads, such as “Give Some Flak to Sam Brownback”, “Paul Makes Me Want to Bawl”, and “My Accent is Better Than Yours” debut on local channels later this week. “We're primed for victory,” McDoothly says. “All we need now is voters.”

Frank Discussion on Dihydrogen Oxide Addiction

“I've been drinking as long as I can remember,” Joseph remembers, clasping his hands in his lap. Joseph Weedy is a short guy, with corrective lenses and mouse-brown hair that tapers into short sideburns. He clears his throat and continues: “I think it started when I was a baby. My mom gave me dihydrogen oxide, or oxy as we called it. It was clear, tasteless, but utterly addicting. By the time I was two, I couldn't live without it. Scarcely a day could go by before I was begging my parents for more.” 

Joe is just one story out of many. Millions all across the planet are hopelessly addicted to this deceptive liquid drug. Taking it is simple: you get a glass from the nearest source—often as close as a sink or a fridge—and bottoms up. Many people take it dozens of times per day. Some more daring addicts try to drink it less often, but the withdrawals are devastating: within hours, your mouth dries out, and you start feeling weak. Sometimes this process, called dehydration, can lead to vomiting and diarrhea, and eventually leads to death.

This makes stopping an impossible task. Joe's tried before. “It was awful,” he recalls. “I stopped in the morning. By the time evening hit, I couldn't help myself: my hands trembling, I got a glass out of the cabinet and filled it up. When the glass was empty, my symptoms began to go away, but the knowledge that I couldn't kick this habit remained.”

Some enterprising characters have lobbied in Congress for the outlawing of this drink. “Drinking causes millions of people worldwide to have fulfilling and healthy lives,” one spokesperson said, the chairman of the National Nihilist Association. Their efforts remain fruitless, since oxy is an integral part of cultures worldwide.

There are many who think that dihydrogen oxide is, in fact, good for you. Joe dismisses this. “Oxy's an old disease. It's been around for a long time, and I guess it's a fairly harmless tradition. But traditions can hold us back, and I know for sure that there's a better liquid out there—one less constricting and better for you. We need to be free to drink what we want.”

Will scientists find a cure for the “H20” addiction? Many think that it's impossible. Regardless, drinking remains a crucial social problem in modern society.

“Look at both sides of the issue,” Joe says. “The NNA is just one of the many organizations trying to spread the word. We need as much tolerance and respect as both sides can muster, in order for the word to get out. Get educated, get involved, and help us find a cure for this old problem.”

"How Are You": A Definition

When I ask you how you're doing, I'm not puking up a piece of small-talk fluff.

Let me just get that out on the table. Maybe “How are you?” is different in the real world. But since there is some confusion about what it means, I'll let you know my definition—what it means when I ask you how you're doing.

When I say, “How are you?”, I am not looking for a one-sentence response. When I ask you how you're doing, it's because I genuinely care. How are you is me asking how your life is going—what you're feeling right now, what's good and what's bad. I want to understand what's going on. I'm not asking for a one-word answer; I'm asking for a window into your life.

How are you is me asking what's on your mind. What has you excited? What has you down? It's a permission to talk, to ramble even. If my friends can stand listening to me talk about the state of the animation industry, it's the least I can do to listen to whatever you're currently obsessed over.

And contrary to popular belief, I don't mind. When I get going, I can talk a lot. But my default is to listen, and I really do enjoy it—even if I'm not saying anything in return.

And when you reply with “alright” without any explanation, it's a missed opportunity for both you and me. If I wanted to know what's new in your life, you can effectively shoot down the conversation by replying with one word: “good”. I don't get to better understand how your life is going, and you don't get to talk to me.

Let's face it. “How are you” is an empty phrase ninety percent of the time. It's just something you say after “hello”, and too often the reply is a cover-up for how you're actually feeling. (“Fine”—except not really.)

And there's really no better phrase in the English language to catapult people into conversation, if they take advantage of it. Shoot straight. Tell people how you're actually doing. 'Cause if you're honest, you're not just “fine”. People can't sum up their lives in one word. You could be doing fantastic, you could be doing awful, but no one will know if you don't tell them.

Dare to say more than one sentence.

Seeing Beyond the Sunset

The other day, I was riding my bike.  I turned down a path lined with old trees; I'm not quite sure what type they were, but since trees here typically shed leaves all year round, the gravel was lined with brown.

I followed the road up a little bit and around a newly built house.  As I rounded the house, I came upon an intersection, and beyond the intersection there was a grassy area.

The sun was beginning to set, and just as I reached that place, it shot yellow beams all over the grass and hung in the air like mist.  It was so golden and dreamlike that I stopped my bike and gazed at it for a good minute.  And for whatever reason, my mind turned to one of my stories; and I thought about the vision I had seen in my mind's eye, of the Dreamtreader sailing through a golden sky—a sky just like that sea mist that had drifted in to sit on the grass.

Then I went on.

Today it happened again, though not the same way.  The sun was in the process of setting, and I was on the road as it passed by the beach.  I halted the bike and watched the sun set; when the last bit of burning yellow had left the ocean horizon, I continued on my ride.

But the sunset continued on, while my back was turned.  When I turned round again to head back home, I turned my gaze to the skies and saw the sunlight, while gone from my vision, still playing in the clouds and little thunderheads off to the east.  The sky was awash in pastels, golds and oranges and dusky light reds.

It led like a trail to the south; and then it halted in a swirl of pink and gold that mixed with the liquid navy sky, and all of it seemed dusky, like God had added a bit of cream and grey to the mix.

At the center of this, the full moon was rising.  It was oddly inviting, like a cup of warm milk.  It was at the center of this swirl, the milky white contrasting with the dark blue and pink-white-orange clouds.  It made you feel like something was happening; somebody was sailing up there in the colors, stirring them up and tasting the moon.

And again, I thought of my story, Dreamtreader.  I wondered if it was the Dreamtreader sailing up there; and if it wasn't, that it should be.  It felt like the sunset had been made for my story; that the golden beams I had seen on the grass were the same golden beams I had seen in the clouds and on the sails of a sky ship.

That little bit of sunset stuck in my heart.  It gave the story gravity and reality.  Because if I could see that vision in the sunset, perhaps others could see it too.  Perhaps other people had felt that same feeling when they stare up at the pastel clouds; perhaps other people feel like there is something alive in the dying of the sun.

There are days when I wonder.

Light Green Grass Studios: A New Era in Animated Movies

Some weeks ago Hollywood was shaken to the roots by the announcement of the incorporation of a new animation phenomenon, Light Green Grass Studios.  The studio is spearheaded by executive Joe Kordney, of the little-known Princess and the Mafia controversy, a movie which made Hollywood history by having a net profit of negative $226.1 million.

“The success of that movie,” he said, “should be ascribed to my screenplay revisions and my innovative work on watercress animation.”  As he explains in a widely read Rife interview, all this credit was stolen from him by his money-grabbing associates.  He has had similar experiences with El Doratho and the plagiarism of his treatment of Mango, which was to be his debut work.

It was this injustice that led him to begin work on creating a new animation studio.  At first the fledgling idea had financial problems, and existed in name only for “nine hundred and sixty-two days,” according to Kordney.  But through hard work and a generous gift of $203.23 from an anonymous donor, Kordney was able to get the studio off of the ground.

“We're starting out small,” said Kordney.  “We're focusing on short films right now, experimenting with animation styles such as Skin Deep, a method that will allow us to render animated toes with incredible detail and realism.  We're planning on releasing them on Redbox in a collection titled Grass in Shorts by 2015.  If it sells well, we'll follow up in 2016 with Grass in Pants.”

When asked about the source of his passion for animated movies, he said, with tears in his eyes, “Money.  If I can make even one dollar off of a viewer, then I'll consider my life goal fulfilled.  Even one dollar is worth the sacrifice.”

He went on to elaborate on their plans for full-length films: “And the money's in feature-length, no doubt about it.  What Pixar did with Toy Story and what Disney did with Tangled, we're going to do with our next project.  If all goes according to plan, it'll be such a rocker that it'll knock Frozen out of the park.”

Kordney explained that, while the project was under wraps, he could give a little bit of detail.  “I've hired Brett Blech of the Diary of a Raincloud fame to write the original screenplay, which naturally I'll be overseeing.  We don't have many ideas yet, but we do know that we want the story to feature a talking mattress and some hilarious bathroom humor.  It's a bestselling idea, and I think it'll be really well-received.  And of course, animated movies aren't all jokes; when we came up with the main theme of the movie, it nearly made me cry.  What is it, you say?  Well, it'll have a rebellious teenager and an overprotective father theme...can't say much more than that.  We wouldn't want anyone to take our idea!”

This blockbuster is slated to release sometime in 2018, and Kordney seemed optimistic that it could outdo even Frozen 2.  Speaking of Frozen 2, he mentioned that he had a lot of respect for Disney's decision—the fact that they announced a sequel before Frozen was even out of theaters meant that they had the most important goal in mind: profit.  “It's good to know that even the big-name studios have old fashioned values,” Kordney said.

Light Green Grass Studios is expected to release their first short sometime in the next six months, and the investors feel sure that the eyes of Hollywood will be waiting with bated breath.

Till It's Gone

The less you have something, the more grateful you are for it.

I've touched on this in other posts. Not having hot water makes me grateful for it; not having air conditioning makes air conditioning all the more wonderful. I am thankful for the things that I don't have. This principle is succinctly summarized in the old proverb, “You don't know what you have till it's gone.”

But if you approach this from a purely logical standpoint, you begin to see some difficulties with this principle. How far do you go with this? Eventually you'll end up as an aesthetic. If you're more grateful for hot water when you only have cold water, are you more grateful for a house when you don't have one? Is the state of “not having” inherently better than the state of “having”?

We all like getting new things – they are fresh and unexpected. But the problem with new things is that they get old. “Having” something eventually means that you become less grateful for what you have. If that makes you less grateful, are you a more grateful person if you go without everything?

I turned this over in my head for a long while. I came to the conclusion that the best way to get around this issue is to act as if you don't have the things you do have. If you feel deeply in your heart that you don't have hot water, you are irrepressibly grateful when you jump in the shower and find that you do have hot water.

In other words, if you act like it's gone, you'll know what you have. I am thankful for what I have, because there was a possibility that I might not have it.

See everything as if seeing it for the first time. You'll have all the goodness of being grateful with all of the goodness of actually having the thing you're grateful for.

Everything is new.

How I Broke My Glasses

I have a remarkable ability. In any other day and age it would be called a superpower. It is called being a klutz, the state of having too much range of motion.

I have for a long time advocated for an occupational name to be given to persons like myself. You might call it klutzery. Whatever the word might be, it can be said that I am the master of it, and few tales illustrate this so well as the tale of how I broke my glasses.

I have told it many times; because for the longest time I had my right lens slipping out every few minutes, and a plastic wire hanging down to my cheek like a thick strand of a spiderweb or an enormously thick piece of white hair. The plastic wire is what originally kept the lens in, and with that gone it fell out quite frequently. (Now I see through a maze of scratches on my lens, and sometimes I think it is a miracle that I can see anything at all.)

Alas, now my lens is fixed, and I no longer have an anecdote ready every time a new person noticed my broken glasses (or happened to see the lens fall to the ground). For fear that my absent mind will eventually forget this tale, I will relate it to you now exactly as it happened.

The first time I told this story, I started out in this way. They asked, “How did you break your glasses?”

My eloquent and deeply moving reply was, “Well, I put too much soap on my leg.” They laughed at this; and it took me a moment to realize that the logical connection, which was clear in my mind, was not quite as clear in theirs.

The truth of the matter is, it was because I had too much soap on my leg; or at least too much soap in the bathtub. I was taking a shower, you see. (For some reason, I always have to clarify at this point that I was NOT wearing my glasses in the shower. They were folded innocently on the left side of the bathroom sink, where they sit every time I take a shower.)

While I was taking a shower, I shifted my weight in some way or another, and ended up slipping. It was a fantastic fall; it was about as close to an art as accidents can come. My feet flew out from under me as if they had on the winged shoes of Hermes; my arms danced wildly from side to side, and I landed badly on my lower back with a terrific thump.

My right foot, propelled by this fall, slipped upwards and smashed into the bath faucet. The shower hose broke under this pressure, and flipped back towards the bathroom sink. It knocked against my glasses; my glasses trembled at this onslaught, and fell to the floor where the string broke asunder.

It took me some time to wash off the soap and blood (it looked quite alarming, but the gash in my toe was minor and healed up after several days), and afterward I picked up the pieces of my glasses and went on to be the comic relief of the missionary community for the next three weeks.

Although this makes an excellent story, there are nevertheless some deep lessons to be learned from this. The most obvious is that squinting like a pirate when only half your vision is corrected is an acceptable exchange for being the source of laughter.

However, the deepest lesson is more subtle. It is that, as a klutz, I have a greater appreciation for normal motion than a normal person does. The normal person takes for granted that they will not fall in the shower and break their glasses; the klutz takes for granted that they will probably stub their toe today on an object that has been sitting in the hallway for three weeks. Both find the experiences of the other alien.

This means that it is a continual source of surprise to me when things manage to go right. Several weeks ago I was playing volleyball, for instance. The several times I got a mouthful of dirt were not surprising; and being elbowed in the face hurt, but that was not surprising either. What was surprising was that I was actually able to hit the ball over the net. And so every score was a desperate score; every win was by the skin of my teeth, regardless of the actual number of points we won by.

A team of normal people might have fun when they play volleyball, and they might have joy when they win the game. But I will have the most fun, and every win for me is an exhilarating and improbable win.

Walking without hitting anything is everyday for the normal person; walking without hitting anything is a fantastic adventure for the klutz. I will therefore cheer the upright person for not submitting to the tyrant rule of the ground—every bicycle that does not fall and every runner that does not trip is a miracle from God.

The life of a klutz may bring more bruises, but on the rare occasion that we do not stub our toes, we will have more joy than the most optimistic athlete.