I've struggled over the years to come to grips with my personality flaws. Ask anybody who knows me, I have more than several. The one in particular that we will address today, ladies and gentlemens, is my propensity to tear up way too quickly. I'm the guy who chokes up every time that pitiful rain soaked teddy bear crawls over to the curb and dies in that tracking device commercial. When the daddy finds him and brings him back to the little girly and she hugs him and hugs him and I'm all huck, huck, sniff, sniff. Gets me every single time.
I cried at the end of Toy Story Three, for cripes sake. But I don't like the word crybaby. For years I've been telling people I'm a sap because I thought a sap was a crybaby. After this morning, I was forced to look up sap and crybaby.
No. A sap is "a fool; someone who is prone to being taken advantage of, or who has been taken advantage of, usually in a situation that is easily perceived by others as foolhardy." I could well be described that way but clearly, and verified by all things true and internettal, saps and crybabies are separate dudes. E-info also says a crybaby is a "sissy, wimp, wuss, mama's boy or a pantywaist." I take from that that a crybaby is afraid but I don't cry when I'm scared. It's complicated.
So if I were honest and clear, I'd describe myself as a clueless pantywaister who's unafraid and who has not yet tried on girls underwear. I'm good with that. The reason I came to that epiphany in the boys room this afternoon is because I wasted two whole panties this morning before 8:30.
The first was while under the covers with the cell phone as I read Roy Exum. His "Lesbian's Daddy" story is powerful with an upper case P. Tragic and so unnecessary and so avoidable. I'm not much on religion but I do believe and I think people I love are waiting on me up in the clouds. So to me, this story is ultimately really, really beautiful. I did cry. I choked through the shower and the shave and the clothes and into the truck. And right about the time I regained some balance, about halfway to work, the familiar Friday acoustic guitar began and I knew "Story Corps" on NPR was about to come on. "Dear God!" I thought. How about just one pantyflow a day? Alright? Already?
Remember, I have sap in me so I left the radio on. Very stupid.
This one was about a black family in Mechanicsville, Tn., which is near Knoxville. The narrator is one of the first black students in a college (don't remember which) and I was sure the story would be about racism. I won't give anything away but I will say that I could not have been more wrong. Please, I beg you to go to the NPR site and listen to this. Don't read it. Listen to it. There are times when a voice means so more than any other form of communication.
A situation like the story you are going to listen to happened to me once and I thought of that as a big, fat, wet sucker rolled down my face while I sat at the red light at South Broad and 25th. I am encouraged to tears that the world is still good. There are still people out there like the two who raised William Lynn Weaver and his brother Wayne.
God most certainly blessed them.
Savage Glascock