When the Dumb-Dumb Is You

 

Wherefore, my beloved brethren,

let every man be swift to hear,

slow to speak,

slow to wrath:

For the wrath of man worketh not

the righteousness of God.

                                    -- James 1:19-20

           

It was my turn to take Maddy someplace yesterday, for my Beloved to have his weekly meltdown. On Sunday afternoons, he usually takes her someplace so I can have mine.

 

For weeks, she had been wanting to see the movie, "Tooth Fairy." Even though it looked pretty dorky and lame, I took her.

 

 

We were uncharacteristically early, and the theatre complex had just opened, so there wasn't even a ticket-taker for the matinee. I guided her into Theatre 6 via the overhead signs, which clearly showed that "Tooth Fairy" was supposed to start at 12:30 p.m. The overhead arrow pointed this-a-way, so we walked into the theatre.

 

Well, we really WERE early . . . because we were the first ones there. We sat front and center, and enjoyed the music and the little quiz questions on the screen for a few minutes.

 

AND NOBODY ELSE CAME IN!!!!

 

Boy, I mused. This must really be a stinker of a movie, or else it's been out for so long, everybody else has already seen it.

 

We waited and waited, and still, nobody else came into the theatre. I gave Maddy my cell phone for the rare privilege of text-messaging her older sister Neely about how creepy it felt to be the only ones in a movie theatre.

 

 

By the time the between-movies video had run three times and we knew all the answers to the quiz questions, I glanced impatiently at the clock on my cell phone.

 

IT WAS 12:37!!!!

 

SEVEN MINUTES PAST SHOW TIME!

 

THOSE IDIOTS!

 

DIDN'T THEY KNOW IT WAS PAST TIME TO START THE MOVIE?!?

 

DIDN'T THEY REALIZE WE WERE HERE WAITING?

 

DID THEY THINK IT WAS AN EMPTY THEATRE, SO THEY WOULD JUST BLOW OFF THE 12:30 SHOW?!?

 

HOW DARE THEY?!? WE PAID TWELVE BUCKS FOR OUR TICKETS!!!!!

 

Well! I never! In a huff, I grabbed Maddy and stormed out of there, ready to give the theatre manager a piece of my mind.

 

Until . . .

 

. . . I looked at the overhead signs again to confirm the theatre manager's terrible crime . . .

 

. . . and realized that WE had been sitting in Theatre 5.

 

The MOVIE was in Theatre 6!!!!

 

The two signs were next to each other, with arrows pointing the same way. The theatre we'd been sitting in was going to play some other movie in a half-hour from then. So no wonder no one else was there. Meanwhile, we could hear loud sounds coming from inside the theatre where we were SUPPOSED to be.

 

It had been my mistake! Good thing we realized it before I reamed out the poor manager!

 

Boooooooooooooooop! That's the sound of my ego shrinking to minuscule size.

 

Maddy's face, in stark contrast, expressed extreme joy. "I can't WAIT to tell Neely!" she said. "She will laugh herself to the ground."

 

I cringed: the only thing worse than doing something really dumb is having a chatty little witness who is one-sixth your age eager to broadcast it to the civilized world.

 

With me thus humbled, and Maddy beaming in anticipation, we tiptoed into the darkened theatre, having missed only the preliminary trailers. Even though the movie was, as suspected, dorky and lame, we both loved it.

 

But the day's lesson was clear:

 

Character Flaw 51278(a)subsectionQ(iv) got me again. That jackrabbit temper and perfection complex made me jump to conclusions. I tend to assume, right off the bat, that when things don't go exactly right, someone ELSE must have screwed up.

 

A lot of us have that problem, to some degree. But if we'd just take a breath and think things through, we more than likely would find out that WE were the ones who made the mistake.

 

To get where you're going, you need to slow down and take time to read the signs.

 

Luckily, there's someone else with an even more embarrassing story along these lines:

 

She and her family had just ended a wonderful week's vacation in northern Minnesota. It was a 12-hour drive home to Omaha. They went by caravan. Her husband was out front in his car, towing the boat. She and their daughter took up the rear.

 

They sailed down on the Interstate through the State of Minnesota and came upon the one big turn of the trip, in Des Moines. If you turn west, you come to Omaha. If you keep going straight, you wind up in Missouri. She had lost sight of her husband, up in front, but didn't worry about it too much.

 

She and their daughter had made that trip so many times, they were on auto-pilot. So they just kept sailing along, and sailing along . . .

 

. . . and suddenly, they came upon a big road sign that said:

 

 

 

Hunhhh?

 

Mis-SOU-ri?!?

 

How could THAT be? They should've been in Nebraska by then!

 

Did it occur to her to think that she might have missed the turn, 'way back in Des Moines?

 

Did she perceive that she had been barreling south, not west, for the last two hours?

 

That the sunset was mysteriously in the NORTHERN sky, according to the logic of her path?

 

Nooooooooo. She saw "Missouri" instead of what she expected, "Nebraska," and exclaimed with great compassion:

 

"OHHH! SOME ROAD ENGINEER HAS MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE!!!!!"

 

After a few moments of silence, as that statement sank in, she quietly took the next exit, tucked her tail 'twixt her legs, and followed the signs home, arriving almost four hours late.

 

Her family tries never to speak of it again, at least when she is within earshot. In the same way, I expect to be reminded with humorous hyperbole of the movie theatre episode from time to time for, oh, the next 40 years.

 

But that's OK. Live and learn. Sooner or later, it's everybody's turn to be the dumb-dumb.

 

It's good to know that God has given us directional signs in the form of His Word. If you take a wrong turn once in a while, don't blame others and don't get mad . . . just slow down, lighten up, smile at yourself a little bit . . . and follow the signs to get where you want to go. †