Never Say Never!

It really is wise advice…if that sage warning is heeded.  I said I’d never be a pastor.  I spent 15 years of my life, give or take, doing the pastor thing.  I said I’d never, ever work retail.  But I found myself in a position of being between jobs at one time where it was either starve or work retail, so I found myself banging register keys and picking up after nasty shoppers.  Besides leaving things not even close to where they were found, and stuffing things in bags and shoe boxes to lift them undetected by the eye in the sky, there were unspeakable things going on in the changing rooms.  Maybe that too, but I was talking about literally finding...um...how do I put this delicately…..excrement in the changing room.  No, not the mens changing room! Nasty job!

I’ve also said that I would never fall for some of the crazy things I’ve seen on Facebook.  You know what I’m talking about.  Those crazy posts that are supposed to be re-posted because they’re of the utmost importance,  gotta get the word out now, you don’t love Jesus if you don’t ‘like’ or reply, somebody’s gonna die if you don’t re-post…sheesh!  I’ve always gone to Snopes or another site that debunked urban legends, myths, and rumors that spread around the internet, especially social media like Facebook, like wildfire.  There,  95% of the things that I saw posted were refuted.   Many of these ‘facts’ had been making the rounds around the internet for years.  You remember the 5 ton wild boar, the 30 foot crocodile,  Sasquatch, Yeti, the guy picked up by aliens? 

Then why was I so quick to jump on the broom thing??  Yeah, brooms standing up on their own because of some kind of rare alignment of planets that only happens once every 60 years or so.  Supposedly it jacked with the gravitational pull of the earth so that a broom could actually stand up on its own in the middle of a room, with no strings, no hands, no hocus pocus.  Just pure science in action.

My friend from childhood, Janet (may or may not have the maiden name of Milne and current last name of Isaacs…I haven’t verified these as fact yet) alerted me to this strange phenomenon via her boss.  It was accompanied by a picture of a broom that was free standing in said boss’ home.  Wow, I said, that’s cool!  Then she sent a pic of TWO brooms in her home that were standing there, unassisted, no smoke and mirrors, all by themselves!  WOW!! Double cool!

So where is the first place I go?  Is it Google, my long time trusted cyber friend who I go to for everything from  a recipe for grilled salmon to finding out the correct spelling of mae culpa??  Is it Snopes where I always go to find out if there really is a pig with wings out there somewhere??  No, I go to my utility room and grab the frickin broom!!

To be honest, however, I did not run directly to the utility room.  I had those nagging fears in the back of my mind…’is this real?’,   ‘Is someone messing with my friend?’.  These questions did make me hesitate and ponder, be it ever so freaking briefly before I had a broom in my hand with the wonder of a 10 year old in my eye standing with a broom in my hand in the utility room.  With wide eyes, open mouth,  my footie jammies (nah! Not really, just thought it added to the image!), I let go of the broom….wait for it….wait for it….it stood up!!  I was amazed, and a little scared!  Was this the wonky gravity thing that ‘they’ were talking about?  Was it a fluke?  Was I seeing things?  Was it going to tip any moment?  Was it some demonic trickery?  Should I get out  the olive oil and bless the house????

Whatever it was, there was the broom.  I took a picture, posted it on Facebook with my story, and there it was!  Out there in Facebook land.  Out there with the 400 pound catfish noodled from the Mississippi River by Bubba, the video virus that looked like female body parts,  and the woman who kept herself alive for three years in a remote cave by eating only bat dung.

The comments started flying right away.  “This is a joke isn’t it?”, “It’s not working here in Mexico.”, “I can’t believe this!”.  I responded by saying, “Look at my pic!”  My broom, there, standing, by itself!  Soon others were posting their own pics.  A coworker here, a friend of my wife there, people from California, Colorado, a high school friend in Kansas, a cousin in Texas.  It was happening EVERYWHERE!

At work this morning, my coworkers were thinking maybe I had somehow gone mental over the weekend.  I told them the story, and of course they wanted proof.  I showed them the pictures, but they thought it was just a joke.  One friend said, “Hey Mark, I hear if you say ‘orange’ really slow, it sounds just like ‘gullible’.”  So, yes, of course, the search was on in that big office building looking for a broom.  Finally, we located a “broom” in a supply closet downstairs.  This was the saddest excuse for a broom I have seen in a while…the bristles looked like they had been in a blender and the handle was bent at about 45 degrees.  Sheesh, couldn’t have had a real broom to prove my sanity.  Well, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to tell you how badly that ended.

Throughout the day, it was slowly dawning on me.  It may or may not have had anything to do with the articles being posted for me right and left throughout the day explaining this “miracle” this “phenomenon”, this “wonder of science”.  But I was starting to realize that never before yesterday had I ever attempted to place my broom in the middle of the floor and let go of the handle.  Seriously!  I hadn’t!  Why the heck would I?? 

When I got home from work, I didn’t go to Snopes, didn’t go to Google….yep, went to the utility room.  This time was so different…the look of wonder was gone from my eye.  The adrenaline wasn’t coursing through my veins.  “Well, crap!” may or may not have come from my lips as I let go of that glistening yellow broom handle and it stood up.

The mae culpa on Facebook followed…egg on the face and slightly embarrassed, I fell on my sword.  Hopefully my mistake didn’t cause irreparable damage to some kids’ psyche out there somewhere.  Hopefully there isn’t some poor friend of mine hovering with red, bloodshot eyes who has been attempting to get their broom to stand just to get a good Facebook shot to post.  Hopefully, there are those friend of mine who will stop laughing soon at my…um….misstep.  I didn’t feel like I could just sweep this mistake under the rug, I had to come clean.  At least I can still laugh at myself.

For all those friends who didn’t believe me….who knew that jacking with people the way I do at times would come back and bite me in the butt??  On a positive note, it really illustrated to me how much we enjoy novelty, unique events, maybe even something bigger than or beyond ourselves and our understanding.  There are unusual things in this world that beg for explaination.  This will be remembered by me and a few others for years to come.  I’m quite sure my sons will never let me forget it…and if I don’t delete a bunch of pictures from my Facebook wall, it will be out there forever until Zuckerberg pulls the plug on the great social icon of our day.  And I won’t say I’ll never let it happen again!