I notice on my bulletin board there is a note card cut into the shape of a butterfly and on the note card is written: Hebrews 4:13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. When I put that scripture on there I was thinking that the butterfly once was perhaps an ugly caterpillar before it went through its metamorphosis— in a sense naked before giving account. I contemplate the scripture and I think about people.
When I was very young I used to stay at my grandparents house a lot. Whenever we would go to town for groceries or to the bank or to the library I would notice a bony older man with wispy, thin white hair. He would be dressed in white from head to toe; white shirt, white pants, white shoes and he even wore white gloves. My grandmother told me that he dressed that way because he used to work on type writers and it was very important that he keep clean so when he went to work on them, there would be no dust or anything to ruin the keys. Now that I think about it, I think she made that story up so that I would be more careful with the typewriter that I wrote short stories on at her house.
A few years after, while attending grade school I remember a little girl named Cecilia Pinto. She always wore outdated raggedy clothes and she looked like she didn’t own a comb or a brush. Everyone made fun of her and no one wanted to be her friend (me included). Some people said she got lice and after that she never came back to school, but no one really seemed to miss her.
Years later, in a different town, after reaching adulthood, I remember another man somewhat skeletal with a drawn in face. He would always have on a green Army coat and sometimes he would be carrying a bag, but always walking. His hair was stringy but combed back with some sort of Brylcreem or something similar. He would stop every few feet or so and put his index finger up to an imaginary chalkboard and he would seem to be carrying the numbers of some complex math problem. For me it was quite interesting to watch him. They called him "the counting man".
Several years after that, another town, another oddball whose name was Bobby. He could be spotted either walking or sometimes driving a beat up old Ford Escort that was missing the driver’s side door. He had Tourette syndrome and would go off at a moments notice on a tirade of explicit language filled with vehement. Where ever he was off to he was always in a hurry and occasionally he would look back and brush away the imaginable people he seemed to constantly have following him.
As I recall this wayward group of minorities, I rest again on Hebrews 4:13 where "...all things are naked and opened to the eyes of Him...". I am now plagued with curiosity about these people. What happened to them? Where did they end up with their lives? I never spoke a word to any of them, yet now I can remember each of them vividly in my mind. Isn’t it interesting how people can exist in the background of our survival and we can live our lives not even acknowledging them or giving them the time of day? Still years later, they stick out in our mind and we remember them, not for anything great that they have done, but for who they were. Nevertheless, we shy away from people like them because they are not like us. They are different.
Our human nature is to crave attention and appreciation. We all crave to have a pat on the back or an occasional “Atta-boy”. I recognize this with my dog when he comes to me every morning after his breakfast. If I’m not attentive he will paw me to death until I give him the attention he craves by petting him until he has a loud human like burp. We all need that attention and yet sometimes it comes in ways we don’t recognize.
The people mentioned above got plenty of attention, but not appreciation; laughed at, pointed at, ridiculed, made of fun of, mocked. Most likely not the attention they craved. I can never go back and change things I should have done, could have done, would have done if I only knew then what I know now. But today is different. Today is a whole new day. Today I won’t be afraid of the things that I don’t understand. Today I’m going to be the one that is different. ☼
© Crackerberries 2011
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