Megan and Tashya- Sisters in Embarrassment

Let me tell you how my prayer embarrassed Megan.

Megan is my older sister. I'm taller than her by maybe about 1/4th of an inch. Regardless, she is my big sister, and I'm rather fond of her. She is blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. Megan is a Vocal Education major in her last semester, and she has a lovely voice. Her calling in church is the Stake Music Person. She was also the answer to my prayer on Saturday.

Megan was asked a while ago to prepare a musical number for a Relief Society activity to be held Saturday morning. Megan, being very busy, forgot about until Friday afternoon. She called everyone she could think of to sing the song, but no one was available. Discovering that her own voice was the only option, Megan found a girl to play piano for her.

Megan has a knack for picking up music, sort of looking at it, and then being able to play it on the piano, improv a better accompaniment, and sing along with it all without a hitch. (Jealous? I am.) She wasn't too worried.

But then the next morning when it was time for the two to perform during the activity...

That's right. Whoever had gone into the room to set up for the activity had forgotten one eensy-weensy teeny-weeny ever so crucial detail- the particular song the organizers had REQUESTED required a PIANO. And there wasn't one in the room. So Megan and Lolita (whatever her real name is) had to run around and try to find a piano real quick.

(NOTE: Ignore my awful grammar in that picture. I promise that not all of my English education is wasted all the time. Just some of the time. Like when I'm drawing pictorials and I can't edit it afterwards without expending a great amount of effort. If you know how to fix things like that, let me know. We'll be friends.)

So when they finally got the piano in there, they composed themselves, and prepared to perform the special musical number. They began the song, but it turns out the microphone was on the fritz and that most people couldn't hear Megan singing (which generally isn't a problem even without a microphone). They asked Megan and Lolita to start AGAIN.

And so Megan starts the song again, practically eating the microphone. But she notices something. Her music is out of order. All of the running around dragging in pianos had somehow discombobulated her sheet music. And she didn't even know the song. Not even the chorus. Megan just started making things up and singing whatever part was in front of her. Poor Lolita just tried to follow her around on the meandering journey through Wonderland.

Poor Lolita. Maybe she would've been able to follow better if everyone would stop calling her Lolita to get her attention. How is she supposed to know where to go if no one will say her name?

After this whole fiasco, Megan gave me a call to share the woeful and hilarious tale of unfortunate incidents with me. I laughed. A lot. Megan asked, "WHY DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN TO ME?!" I was about to respond with a "Because you're Megan and you're special enough" kind of speech, but I stopped to think about it. And then I realized something. 

It was my fault. I've been having a hard time with some things lately, and I wanted a good laugh. So I prayed that I would find happy things, and funny things, and things to laugh over with people that I love. And then I get a call from Megan, one of the people I love most, detailing quite the musical fiasco, and we laughed together.

Well, there you go. Now you know that prayers really are answered. And the next time that something awfully ridiculous is happening to you, think about who might be praying for a reason to smile, and go and find them. Share your experience. Laugh. And then tell them to pray for something else.

Let me tell you how I embarrassed myself.

Yesterday at church, I saw a lady I've talked to a few times. Her name is Susan. She's a very nice lady. She has a son (she has several sons, in fact) who recently had a bad accident. Something about his ankle, and ligaments and/or tendons (are those separate things?) being torn. They knew that there was a pretty good chance of his needing orthopedic surgery, and that didn't make things any better. He also has a hard time getting around. That doesn't make situations pleasant for the patient or for the people trying to be patient with the patient. (This is not to say that he isn't an excellent patient- you'd have to ask his mother.) Cookies are always appreciated, no? I offered cookies, and cookies were accepted. That meant that I needed to go home and make some.

However, I hadn't planned on feeding the missionaries at 5:00. We found out at about 3:00ish, and church got out at 4:00. We got out to the car pretty quickly so we could could get some food started in the kitchen. I was rather frazzled by the whole affair, so I was glad to be able to bake afterwards. I whipped up some good old chocolate chip cookies. Such a pleasant little morsel of happiness. Cookie purity. I was feeling relaxed...

Until I realized that I didn't have any plates I could use to bring the cookies over to The Patient. Just a bunch of cheap plastic wrap that doesn't work. It doesn't stick together until you don't want it to. It puckers and gapes and lets goodness slip out of its confines. Except when it has me in its clutches. 

Not wanting to lose cookies or endanger myself, I decided that using a brown lunch bag would work. After much confusion as to the proper method for stacking cookies in a brown lunch bag, we managed to get things packaged. I included a quote (that I made up on the spot) on the front of the bag:

Hey, if they don't fix your body, at least they can bring a grand old smile to your face and bring back happiness and cheer and memories of happy times in childhood years of yore. 

We took the Bag of Happiness over to the correct house, and walked up to the door. We knocked, and listened to a giant dog make loud barking noises until the door was opened by The Patient's father. 

That's right. I mumbled. I made a strange face. I started to become very uncertain about being at the right house, especially when he asked again,

Andrew jumped in and covered up my muttering. It was then that I realized that I had arbitrarily assigned The Patient the name of Brett. I have no real idea where that name came from. I'm sure that there is a very nice man named Brett that I met recently who is walking around, blissfully unaware of the grief and embarrassment he caused me Sunday evening. 

Seeing the comment about the healing properties of cookies caused a realization for one, amusement for another, and chagrin for the third.

Yes. Garrett. But in my heart of hearts, The Patient will always be fondly referred to as Brett. I hope that he enjoyed those cookies. I hope that he enjoyed the fact that someone who didn't even know his real name would make him cookies and package them in a brown bag bearing a fictitious proverb JUST to make him feel a little bit better. 

And I really hope that this doesn't mean that Megan has been praying for a laugh. Because I don't know how much more of this I can take.