As much as I hate to admit it, there are times when I do something dumb and then have to slap my forehead and say “duh.”

Holding my keys in my hand while looking for them constitutes as dumb. Going to the grocery store to get eggs, coming home with $65 worth of groceries and no eggs is another one, as is pouring a cup of coffee and realizing I forgot to put grounds in the basket.

But when the electricity goes off in our garage and I can’t find the reset button that’s right in front of my face, well that ratchets stupidity up to a whole new level for me.

Not being able to accomplish relatively simple tasks goes back to my childhood. I remember the first time the chain came off my bicycle. An hour later, covered with black grease, I still couldn’t fix my bike.

My brother came along and slipped the chain back on in less than two minutes.

As a teenager, I had an Impressionist wall in my bedroom because I stood on a folding chair to paint the moulding around the top of the room. Instead of having a blue border, I had a white wall decorated with a huge splat of cornflower blue paint.

I also backed our car into the house one afternoon. Oh, I can say I was distracted by my baby brother or I was a young driver and couldn’t judge distances, but the hard, cold truth is that I backed our Ford sedan into our house – that wasn’t moving – and cracked the sheetrock from the ceiling to the floor.

Then there was the evening I put Dawn liquid detergent in the dishwasher after running out of powdered cleaner. I never bothered to read the dishwasher directions, but when mountains of suds came spewing out the sides of the Kenmore, I learned my lesson.

So when I came home from work this week and the garage door didn’t open, I thought the power was off in the house. I went inside and realized only the garage was without power.

Growing up in an older house, I knew to check the breakers, but none seemed to be tripped. At this point in time, I did what any intuitive person would do – I called an expert. That expert just happens to be my husband who was taking a needed break out in the country.

He asked me to look around the garage for an outlet similar to the one in our bathroom that trips from time to time. I didn’t see one but I told him one of the breakers had to be tripped.

I described the electrical panels to him and checked all of the switches to see if any had tripped. Knowing I must be missing something, I took pictures of the panels and emailed them to him so he could see what I was seeing.

Nothing looked tripped, but my husband decided to come home in case something deeper was wrong.

Frustrated at not being able to figure out the problem, I stomped around the house for a bit and then decided to go back to the garage one more time and look around.

That’s when I saw the electrical outlet with the ground fault interrupter.

It was right below the electrical panel.

With one press of the trip button, the power was back on. That move took less than three seconds, the same amount of time it took me to slap my forehead.

Am I feeling like the dumbest person on the planet?

Oh yeah.
 
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

In the morning, my clock radio clicks on at 6 a.m. A half hour later, I’m walking out the door, headed to work.

Along the way, I pass dozens of cars, all heading someplace other than home. Almost 12 hours later, we’re all back in our vehicles, dueling on the roadway for a better position in the fast lane.

On the weekend, it’s tackle the mountain of laundry, change the sheets on the bed, clean the bathrooms and then fight our way through the grocery store, a list in one hand, coupons in the other.

In between, we’re juggling bills, sorting mismatched socks and hoping the squealing washing machine makes it through one more payday.

Driving through the rain on my way home, my mood soured as trucks sprayed water all over my windshield. But then the rain slacked up and a pale rainbow appeared over the horizon.

I almost missed that heavenly sight, too absorbed in thinking about what to cook for dinner and the list of chores waiting for me.

Suddenly I realized I was wasting a great deal of time whining about what I had to do and the lack of time to do anything I wanted to do. So the next morning, when the “I-have-to-do-this” thoughts hit me, I turned off the car radio and rolled the windows down.

The sweet smell of spring was too fragrant to ignore and the sound of the wind outside was a much prettier melody than anything I’d hear from the speakers in my car.

While putting new sheets on the bed a few days later, I made myself stop calling what I was doing a chore.

Instead, I thought about my grandmother’s back yard and how we’d run in between the sheets as they dried on the clothes line. We’d wrap the sheets around our shoulders, and the smell of sheets crisp and dry from a laundry line is forever etched in my memory.

With that thought in my head, I sat down in the rocker we have in the corner, a chair we’ve had for years, but one I seldom sit in any more. I leaned back and looked out the window, remembering I used to sit in that chair and rock the boys when they were babies.

As they were going to sleep, I’d hold them up close to my cheek, their breathing so quick, their scent so sweet. Many evenings, I’d rock them long past when they were asleep, savoring those moments.

But then they were toddlers, too busy for mom’s lap and a mom too busy picking up after them. Then they were wild boys who morphed into teens and then they were gone. The chair stayed in the corner year after year, slowly becoming a collection point for blankets and tossed-off clothes.

But today, I sat down and rocked.

And thought leisurely thoughts.

And, bit by bit, relaxed.

Responsibilities were far away and memories came flooding back of unhurried moments in my life – afternoons on the beach watching the boys running in and out of the surf, Sundays in the back yard listening to my dad spin tall tales while he barbecued chicken and relaxing in the kitchen alongside my mom, her peeling an apple in one, long unbroken strand while we seemed to talk about nothing in particular but said everything important.

Those unhurried moments, the ones we rush through, are the ones that last much longer than a clean bathroom or a pile of matched socks.

I just have to remember to roll down the windows and let the wind blow where she will.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

One summer while on vacation, I saw an advertisement that a restored B-52 bomber plane from World War II would be on display at the local airport. I always wondered about these historic planes, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to actually climb inside an aircraft used in battle over 50 years ago.

The interior was cramped, and the floor opened up on either side of a narrow walkway to let bombs drop. I could only imagine terrified young men standing there, gripping machine guns, while pilots dive bombed over cities and the countryside.

My appreciation grew by leaps and bounds through interviews I’ve had with veterans over the years. I didn’t think it would be possible for my admiration for those men and women to grow.

Until I read “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand.

“Unbroken” chronicles the life of Louis Zamperini. A rebellious young scamp, Zamperini was on his way to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, fit and talented enough to break the four-minute mile, when World War II erupted.

Zamperini joined the Air Corps and soon found himself right in the middle of the fighting. In May, 1943, he and a crew took off on a troublesome B-24 plane. Over the Pacific Ocean, the plane failed and smashed into the waters.

Thus began Zamperini’s first ordeal – floating aimlessly on the ocean for 47 days, fighting off vicious sharks and starvation. When he and two of his comrades were picked up by the enemy, he weighed 67 pounds.

But that wasn’t the worst. Zamperini was taken to a Japanese prisoner of war camp where he was beaten, starved and tortured for almost two years. He suffered through dysentery, malnutrition and seeing his friends and comrades brutally murdered and tortured.

The worst, though, was Mutsuhiro Watanabe “The Bird,” a savage, brutal Japanese guard who seemed to take pleasure in torturing all the prisoners but none more so than Zamperini.

“The Bird” not only beat the former Olympian but delighted in making Zamperini’s life as miserable as possible, both physically and mentally.

But Zamperini did not let “The Bird” break him, refusing to bow, even when The Bird repeatedly smashed him in the head with a metal belt buckle. Zamperini refused to give up when he was transferred to another POW camp and found out The Bird had transferred as well.

But the hate Zamperini had for that guard kept him going; and he vowed if he ever got out of the camp, he’d kill him with his bare hands. When the Allies freed the prisoners, Zamperini – disease-ridden, weak and malnourished – was elated but never forgot the evil Japanese guard.

For years, constant thoughts of killing The Bird drove him to drink and almost lose his wife and family. It wasn’t until 1949 when he reluctantly attended a Billy Graham revival that Zamperini was able to finally let go of that burning hatred.

Zamperini subsequently opened the nonprofit Victory Boys Camp, a place that helped lost boys. At night, he’d sit around a campfire, telling the boys about the war and how he finally achieved inner peace. He also traveled the world, speaking about his experiences and receiving awards and honors.

In his 60’s Zamperini was still giving speeches. In his 70’s, he was still running. When he was in his 80’s, he was skateboarding. And when he was in his 90’s, he was skiing down mountains – always with a smile on his face.

One of the greatest moments of Zamperini’s life came in 1998 when he was asked to carry the Olympic torch through the streets of Nagano, Japan, the site of that hellish POW camp. His journey had evolved from despair into tranquility.

Zamperini’s words to Hillenbrand and ultimately her readers reflect what I’ve heard in the quiet voices of veterans I’ve had the privilege of interviewing.

They survived because they chose to bend, not break.
 
This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

When I was in high school, most of us trying to avoid gym class took typing. I remember walking into Ms. Thomas’ room and seeing gray manual Royal typewriters on every desk.

Over the course of my junior year, I learned how to type, pressing down hard on those round keys and trying not to get purple carbon paper all over my clothes.

I was pretty quick on that typewriter and was soon up to about 85 words a minute, mostly because if you typed that fast, you’d get an A in the class.

When I went to college, my parents gave me a small portable typewriter so I could type research papers, handy even though the thin metal bars with the letters on the end were always getting tangled.

Luckily, electric typewriters, IBM Selectrics to be exact, hit the market. The Selectric featured a round metal typeball that made changing the font possible, and we no longer had to press down on the keys like we were pounding nails in a board.

My college typing teacher said if we could type 100 words a minute, we could get out of class three weeks early. That was a carrot impossible to resist, so I practiced until I was zipping along fast enough to watch television for an extra hour every day instead of sitting in typing class.

And then came computers. They could move entire paragraphs around, automatically fix spelling mistakes and print out a beautiful, error-free paper. Those old manual and electric typewriters quickly became dinosaurs on the top shelves of our closets.

Just when we thought life couldn’t get any easier, along came text messaging. After years of zipping along on keyboards, I should be a fast texter.

Wrong. I’m the slowest texter around. A text message from me is usually less than five words because I just can’t get the hang of texting.

I’ve got a lot of excuses. I blame the slick surface of my iPhone as there aren’t buttons to press, unlike a typewriter or keyboard. I also blame prescriptive text for “going to store” somehow getting translated into “Great to Steal.”

Maybe it’s because I’m still trying to figure out how to text with my thumbs that I fumble around for a simple five-word reply to a text. I’m one of those archaic one-finger texters, and it takes me forever to answer a text message question.

I don’t understand why people who have a lot to say don’t just call me on my cell. Talking is a lot easier than texting, but texting is more private than talking on a cell phone in a crowded room.

That’s true but when I’m a slow-as-molasses texter, I seldom get my point across before the conversation’s over. Another problem with texting is it’s difficult to explain a mix up.

One night, I got a text from my niece. I replied to her, I thought, and then went through 10 minutes of back-and-forth texting with someone on her mass text messaging distribution list until the ditzy woman finally figured out who I was and apo

logized.

Hanging up the phone is a lot faster than texting an explanation; and once you’ve hung up the phone, that pesky conversation is over unlike texting that can go on forever.

As time goes on, however, I am getting faster at texting although my inner grammarian voice still cringes at the abbreviations. But at least when someone asks if I’m exercising, I can say yes – my fingers and thumbs.
 
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.