Tag Archives: Indianapolis

Help Is Not a Four-Letter Word

Do you like to ask for help? Me, neither.

Even then, I thought I knew it all.

Even as a toddler, I yanked my hand from my mother’s and ran into a street in downtown Indianapolis. Terrified by screeches and honks, though, I clung to her at the next crossing.

Maybe I learned I wasn’t ready to take charge of my life? Nope. Instead, I believed Mommy needed help with hers. She needed me to iron while she was busy with my baby sister. That I ironed my left hand (I still bear the scar) should have made me question my choices.

It did. I still avoid ironing whenever possible.

But cautions about so-called independence learned during childhood vanished during my teens. My friends and I knew everything. Parents resembled forerunners of ATMs, except they gave advice along with money.

I should have wondered why The Beatles, the 1960s epitome of youth and success, sang lines about needing help and growing older. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were only 25 and 23 when they penned “Help” and McCartney wrote “Yesterday.”

But I didn’t until I married and had our first baby. Where was the faucet to shut off drool, puke and pee? I finally admitted that perhaps … I needed guidance.

Image by Natalia Lavrinenko from Pixabay.

Did I ask my parents or in-laws? No. Instead, I consulted books.

Though I did learn from several good ones, none provided critical answers I needed.

Most of the books then and today tell us to look within. That we know all the answers.

Instead, shouldn’t we open the Book that tells us to look up? To realize Someone much bigger and smarter stands waiting to help us?

We Americans pretend every day is Independence Day — even in January. However, 2024 stretches before us, its kamikaze traffic already whizzing by. Can we really navigate it alone?

Or, when we cross unknown streets, should we reach for the Helping Hand always ready to guide us?

Image by reenablack from Pixabay.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Where does your help come from?

Field Trip

Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay.

As a child, it never crossed my mind that supervising a busload of screaming kids with unsynchronized bladders wasn’t a teacher’s dream. We must have pushed them over the edge.

We children celebrated with 30 choruses of “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”— amending to “Ninety-nine Bottles of Coke®” when Teacher threatened to return home to soul-choking fractions, verb conjugations and Norwegian exports.

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay.

I recall only two scenes from our trip to Indianapolis. First, the governor’s office, with its kingly desk and (gasp!) gold trim on the walls. Surely, this guy wore a crown.

Second, at the Indiana State Museum, an enormous stuffed owl stared with topaz-colored eyes. We remained a respectful distance away.

The final event overshadowed all others: the Dairy Queen. I ate my huge hot fudge sundae without sharing a bite with siblings.

Fast-forward a quarter century. I volunteered to chaperone my child’s class trip to Chicago.

I handled “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” with parental aplomb. My charges only got lost 23 times in the Field Museum of Natural History. It wasn’t my group who knocked down the dinosaur skeleton. I felt in charge — until we reached the Sears Tower (renamed Willis Tower in 2009).

Image by Aprille from Pixabay.

I must have repressed this destination. I don’t like anything higher than one-inch heels.

No time for regret. We rocketed 103 stories up in the elevator.

Any rational architect would have designed small peep windows at the top. Instead, the area resembled a giant greenhouse.

“Come back!” I simultaneously gripped a railing and grabbed at my charges.

They escaped to the windows.

I yelled, “Don’t look down!”

“Isn’t that why we came?” A sensible girl cocked her head.

“Cool!” A nerd plastered his nose against a window. “That’s a cumulonimbus cloud formation below us.”

The wind kicked up. The building swayed like a giant Hawaiian dancer.

Hours later, I woke up on the bus. “Kids! Where are you?”

“We’re fine.” All four were eating hot fudge sundaes.

My daughter slipped beside me. My failure as a field trip chaperone shrank in the face of her loving solicitude.

“So glad you’re sitting with me.” Tears welled.

“Teacher said I had to thank you.”

I stared. “For what?”

“She knows she can finish the school year now. Compared to you, she feels perfectly sane.”

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you chaperoned a school field trip?