"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
Fluffy and I were
headed toward Sunday School last week, and as usual we beat the
crowds and were the first ones to get to the Relief Society room. We
have learned that it’s much easier to navigate a wheelchair if
you’re not swimming upstream, salmonlike, against a river full
of people. I, for one, do not like being a salmon.
When we got there,
Fluffy left me in my wheelchair in the hallway as he turned to open
the door to the room. As I sat there, a boy I had never seen before
passed in front of my chair. I could almost see the light bulb
illuminate in his wee little brain. He pivoted around, jumped into
the air, and stomped down with both feet as hard as he could on my
left foot.
I’m not going to
pretend the kid was André the Giant. He was about six or seven
years old, or maybe he was three or four years old. I can’t
tell these things. The point is, he was no heavyweight. But no
matter how old he was, he landed on me with all the force he was
capable of. My first thought was, “Wow. I’m glad that
foot is paralyzed. If it weren’t, I’d be in a world of
pain.”
All this happened so
quickly that neither Fluffy nor I was able to grab the little boy, or
even say anything to him before he disappeared down the hall. As the
kid marched off, just as proud of himself as Godzilla would have been
after squashing the Empire State Building, all I managed to say was
exactly what I’d been thinking: “Gee, I’m glad
that foot is paralyzed instead of broken. If it weren’t
paralyzed, I’d be in a world of hurt.”
(Technically, I’ve
learned that in my own experience there’s a whole lot of pain
associated with being paralyzed. Everyone thinks that paralyzed =
numb, but my “numbness” has been associated with enough
screaming that I got private rooms in all my hospitals. But that’s
a column for another day. For the purposes of being
Godzilla-stomped, let’s assume that because my foot was “only”
paralyzed, it survived the attack pain-free.)
Suddenly a woman
appeared. “Did that little boy just stomp on your foot?”
she asked.
“He sure did,”
I said.
“That’s my
son,” she said.
This is where the story
gets weird — because the story ends here. Mom did not look at
my foot to see if it was bleeding. She did not ask me if my foot had
been injured. She did not say, “That’s my son,” in
any way that indicated she was:
Embarrassed by Godzilla’s rampage;
Ready to inflict the Wrath of God on her son;
Weary of her son’s antics;
Proud of her son’s creativity, or
Counting the seconds until she
could tell her husband they were going to have to move out of their
brand new ward because she was too humiliated to continue living
here.
She did not do any of
those things. She matter-of-factly said, “That’s my
son.” And she walked off.
I told the story to the
ladies sitting next to me in Relief Society. We all decided the
fault did not lie with Godzilla. We may not like to admit it, but
stomping on the feet of women in wheelchairs is what little boys do.
It is probably written in the Little Boy Job Description, somewhere
between “playing with matches” and “running around
naked in public places.”
No, the fault lay with
the mother, who just may have owed me some explanation for her
son’s foot-stomping behavior (“He’s being raised by wolves”) or some sort of apology (“I’m
sorry if he injured you, but at least he didn’t use his machete
this time”) — or maybe just some concern, even if
it was fake, as to whether the Empire State Building had suffered
pain from the feet of Godzilla when he had stomped it to smithereens.
I wonder if Mom will be
just as nonchalant when Young Son knocks over his first convenience
store. “Yes, officer, that is my son wearing the ski mask,
holding the assault rifle, and sporting the CTR tattoo on his right
arm.”
For my part, I did the
only thing I could do. I tried my best to put the dear sister’s
face out of my mind, so if she does continue living in our ward I
will not recognize her or Godzilla if I come in contact with them
again. On second thought, maybe I should try to remember Godzilla for
the safety of my feet and other body parts. When I see him stomping
down the hall, we can quickly take an alternate route to our
destination.
This is the kind of
thing that happens when you live in a ward. Anyone who is looking to
be offended could find a new source of offense every week. But life
is too short for that, so it makes a lot more sense to laugh off the
potential offenses and realize that people — even good people —
still make mistakes every day of their lives.
But this doesn’t
mean that young Godzilla will be at the top of my Christmas gift list
this year. It’s probably just as well. I have no idea what to
buy for a lizard, anyway.
Kathryn H. Kidd has been writing fiction, nonfiction, and "anything for money" longer than
most of her readers have even been alive. She has something to say on every topic, and the
possibility that her opinions may be dead wrong has never stopped her from expressing them at
every opportunity.
A native of New Orleans, Kathy grew up in Mandeville, Louisiana. She attended Brigham
Young University as a generic Protestant, having left the Episcopal Church when she was eight
because that church didn't believe what she did. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints as a BYU junior, finally overcoming her natural stubbornness because she
wanted a patriarchal blessing and couldn't get one unless she was a member of the Church. She
was baptized on a Saturday and received her patriarchal blessing two days later.
She married Clark L. Kidd, who appears in her columns as "Fluffy," more than thirty-five
years ago. They are the authors of numerous LDS-related books, the most popular of which is A
Convert's Guide to Mormon Life.
A former managing editor for Meridian Magazine, Kathy moderated a weekly column ("Circle of Sisters") for Meridian until she was derailed by illness in December of 2012. However, her biggest claim to fame is that she co-authored
Lovelock with Orson Scott Card. Lovelock has been translated into Spanish and Polish, which
would be a little more gratifying than it actually is if Kathy had been referred to by her real name
and not "Kathryn Kerr" on the cover of the Polish version.
Kathy has her own website, www.planetkathy.com, where she hopes to get back to writing a weekday blog once she recovers from being dysfunctional. Her entries recount her adventures and misadventures with Fluffy, who heroically
allows himself to be used as fodder for her columns at every possible opportunity.
Kathy spent seven years as a teacher of the Young Women in her ward, until she was recently released. She has not yet gotten used to interacting with the adults, and suspects it may take another seven years. A long-time home teacher with her husband, Clark, they have home taught the same family since 1988. The two of them have been temple workers since 1995, serving in the Washington D.C. Temple.