GIRLS ARE NOT FUNNY

Winter Park, FL

Besides nannying, I spend my Mondays working for Florida minimum wage, assembling “boutique” paper goods for Rifle Paper Co. It’s all very cute, very hip. But I find myself looking around asking – does this assembly line of beautiful, talented woman understand that they’re dressing up like Anthropologie models to do work most companies pay children in China to do? I also find myself laughing, a lot.

The last time I was just visiting Central Florida, Mj showed me a website that a friend of hers made. Every day the guy would put up a new jingle. They were terribly funny and usually about cat food. I became his fan. He also works at Rifle.

“Wanna go to lunch?” I asked my friend Liz.

“Yeah, one o’clock okay?” she replied.

“Sounds good. But uhh, you think Tom has lunch plans?” I sheepishly inserted.

“Do you want me to ask him for you?” she sarcastically replied, completely onto me.

“How’d you know?” I asked. “Ha. Don’t tell him I said anything.”

Through laughter she consented, but it didn’t really matter because I soon realized he had overheard the whole exchange. I was still unashamed.

During lunch…

“Why are you wearing that string around your neck, Tom?” Someone asked.

It’s my trophy.” He replied though a large grin.

“Tom went to my baby shower yesterday.” A very pregnant boutique paper company employee responded. I began chuckling at the thought of a coed baby shower. “Yeah, you know that game where you have to guess the circumference of the mother’s pregnant belly?” she went on, “Well Tom won and now he is wearing the string as his trophy.”

I looked over as he was literally wearing his trophy, closing his eyes, smiling wide and nodding his head in complete satisfaction with himself.

“And you wanna know how I really won? What my strategy was?” he asked the group. “I measured my own belly.” The whole lunch group exploded in laughs, shouting “no way!” and “whoa!” There was no denying it, his very jolly, round physique proves his strategy true.

“The string was spot on,” the expecting mother confirmed, “not a millimeter too long or too short.”

Read another Minimum Wage Conversation

Orlando, FL

Five years ago I spent the night before Easter with some SDSU friends taking shots out of plastic eggs, peeing on someone’s lawn, throwing up into a little trashcan that I am sure many other college students have thrown up in time’s past and blacking out. I then spent Easter morning at my mom’s house hung over and throwing up some more in which I overheard her asking my brother, “Is she pregnant!?”

So when I say – I am convinced if there is any good in me, it is because Christ claimed me, reconciled me, justified me and sanctified me all at Calvary – I mean it.

Happy Easter everyone!

Winter Park, FL

Besides nannying, I spend my Mondays working for Florida minimum wage, assembling “boutique” paper goods for Rifle Paper Co. It’s all very cute, very hip. But I find myself looking around asking – does this assembly line of beautiful, talented woman understand that they’re dressing up like Anthropologie models to do work most companies pay children in China to do? I also find myself laughing, a lot.

Krissy is a high school senior and was born in 1994. 1994! She was born in 1994. Her dry wit, constant smile and unassuming disposition leaves me coming back for more and more.

“How’s step team, Krissy?” someone asked.

“You’re on a step team?!” I hopefully demanded.

“Yeah. We broke up.” She replied.

“You broke up? Right when I thought all my wildest dreams were coming true…” I sighed disappointed.

“Yeah, it’s sad. And we were going to perform at my church’s talent show.” She explained.

“What!?” My world was falling apart.

“But now, since there are only three of us, we thought we would perform as the Jonas Sisters.” Hope was restored.

“Oh my gosh can I come?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t think we’re going to do that anymore.”

“Oh.” I replied sadly.

“I think we’re going to do a scene from The Lord of the Rings.”

“Shut up!” I yelled.

“Yeah, and I am going to be the ring.” She replied.

The thought of her in a gold leotard, depicting a ring, with writing down the middle of her body made me lay my head on the table and silently laugh for no less than twenty seconds.

“I say you step it up and turn the scene into an interpretive dance.” I suggested.

“Yeah, that’d be nice. I’ll tell the girls.”

Orlando, FL

As a nanny, I am responsible for four little souls. I have introduced you to Gav and King. And now with such honor and adoration, I’d like to introduce you to Londy. Londy is not related to the rest of the gang comprised of two brothers and one sister, but still very close because their mothers are best friends. King and Londy are close in age so when I am with both of them I spend most of my time planning their future wedding and breaking up their fights.

Londy is a hitter. In fact, she’s such a hitter that every time we arrive to King’s house together he instantly goes into defense mode. His smile falls, he cocks his head and then side stares at us as we travel across the room. I’d like to say that would intimidate the nineteen month old little girl, but it doesn’t. You see, if one could hold the Olympic gold medal in staring contests, it would be Londy. I usually find myself in a staring match with her right after I have told her to stop doing something. Just like that, her icy blue eyes complimented by the largest/cutest cheeks, like this kid, begin to search your soul. She can hold this gaze for minutes. And though everything in me wants to out stare her, I can’t, because every second I stay is another second of my soul that she knows. At one point in a stare down with Londy, I doubted my salvation.

She is a sure force to be reckoned with which is why I keep coming back for more and more – neck kisses, tickle fights and “girl time” walks by the lake included.

If King and Londy are sitting next to each other, Londy will hit him and King will cry. It is inevitable. So when I had to go to the bathroom to take a quick tinkle while they were watching cartoons, I was expecting some cries and, “Stop it, Londy!” from King.

Not even by the time I get into the bathroom the whining has begun. No big deal. Pants down, mid tinkle and the usual crying has turned into life-changing screams that you never want to hear out of any two year old child. I have no other option than to clog myself up and take my bare-butted-jeans-around-my-ankle-self to stop the first degree murder that is occurring in the living room to Barney’s “I Love You” theme song.

I enter and King is lifelessly leveled while Londy sits expressionlessly over him with his hair rotated around her hand about five hundred and forty degrees. After I untangle his hair out of her monster grip, put her on an eternal time out and comfort him back to emotional wellness – I finally find some time to pull my pants back up to avoid the potential awkwardness of a parent coming home early.

As damaging as this encounter could have been for everyone, especially the pant-less nanny – it just made me adore, love and appreciate Londy all the more.

Orlando, FL

In the last few years I have been prominently discipled by two women. From the first, I took away this, “Jessica, I know God is going to use you, well. But you are going to squander it if you do not start showing some integrity in your character. Be a woman of your word, faithful with whatever is given to you, and for crying out loud – show up for things on time.” So as I was doing just that, the second entered my life and had this to say, “You’re under the impression that you’re great. You are not great, in fact you’re mean and you suck. You have absolutely no concept of how to treat people properly, but don’t worry, you’ll get better.”

I did get better. I think. I hope.

Based on these ideologies that have stuck so well to me, it’s no wonder that I was drawn to the beginning of Part Two in Paulo Coelho’s book The Alchemist. Overall the book is very enticing – putting a tale behind and relating to its reader’s most desired outcomes, journeys, dreams and visions. And more specifically, they key players in those situations. After the boy spends a year with the merchant, the merchant can’t help but confess,

You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.

And just like the drive leading the boy affected the merchant, so did brushing up against those two women affected me. I was content with the life I had built, the fun I was having and the friends that I had made – but from the vantage point of a couple women ten years my senior – I was epically missing out.

Furthermore, this book came at such at impeccable timing. I am on the cusp of departing from my first stop here in Florida and the pressure to stay is getting real and thick. I have ministry, community, church and friends in ways that I never thought a mere three months could ever offer. The relationships are deeply rich and the opportunities promising. But something very stern in me states – keep going.

As the boy has moved onto a different land and is now traveling, namely with the alchemist, they have this exchange,

“My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.”

“That makes sense,” The alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”

It would be silly to assume I won’t lose by leaving. Hopefully though, it will not be relationships that are lost, but rather the loss will only account for moments in time – which everyone will lose, because time moves and moments vaporize into memories. So by leaving, I am giving up memories with people in which I am profoundly fond. This is a price I am willing to pay to follow my dream.

I pray you are willing as well.