Stan the Man

This story is for an assignment that FoN over at Kids and Daiquiris threw out there. (Doesn’t the rhyming remind you of a Sesame Street sketch with a man in a van?) Go check it out, and add another story to the mix!

The dance rehearsal was interrupted mid-Tango when a crazed delivery man in tan carrying an awkward bundle burst out of the rear room. He raced toward the door, followed by a middle-aged woman with a tape-measure strung around her neck like an anorexic, robin-egg blue cashmere scarf. “Tob! Tob!” she yelled. Her lips were pressed together, holding straight pins. They dangled from her mouth just as an old-fashioned detective would have dangled a half-smoked cigarette from the corner of his mouth while gabbing on the phone, feet propped up on the desk.

I instantly sprang into action, shouting, “Call the police!” as I two-stepped it out the door. Out on the street I looked left, then right, and spotted the man in tan slamming the door on a double-parked delivery van. The chase was on. I leaped onto the rear bumper and grabbed the door handles. As the truck veered into traffic, I swung myself up to the roof, limber as a cat. “Being a dancer has unexpected advantages,” I thought, and I flattened myself against the warm metal. The truck lumbered along, the driver unaware of its debonair stowaway. I inched my way forward, up to the cab. I swung my feet into the open passenger window and gracefully descended into the seat. I found myself face-to-face with the startled thief. “Wanna rumba?” I growled as I forced him off the road and up an embankment. A squad car pulled up, lights flashing, and officers pulled the man in tan from the van to question him.

A reporter arrived soon after, and I flashed her a smile as I revealed my prize–the costume designer’s coveted sewing machine. Why the man in tan wanted it, I could not say. “And you are?” the reporter asked.

“I’m Stan.” I replied.

Today is a Difficult Day

My mother-in-law has a flaw. She thinks about others first.

About fifteen years ago, she lost her balance and fell. She broke two vertebrae in her neck. However, she didn’t want Ed’s dad to call Ed for a few days, since he had plans for the weekend. She didn’t want to cause a fuss, and make Ed cancel his plans. Ed was chaperoning a lock-in for the youth group at our church, and it would have been easy to find a replacement for him.

When I was planning my wedding, her granddaughter, my soon-to-be niece, was eight years old. She was going to be our flower girl; she had always wanted to be the flower girl in her uncle’s wedding. As all little girls do, she wanted to be sparkly. I didn’t want her to be sparkly. I picked out her dress, and it matched my wedding dress perfectly. Well, my niece didn’t like it. So we went from dress shop to dress shop, trying to find a dress that maybe she would like. My mother-in-law defended my choice, and insisted that my niece wear what I had chosen. She got to wear a sparkly dress for Christmas, instead.

I was very lucky to have my mother-in-law as my mother-in-law.

All week, it has been difficult to substitute past verbs for present verbs. “She has”…to “she had”, and so on. You see, today we are going to celebrate her life. We are going to remember the twinkle she always had in her eye, the dry wit she displayed even when she was in pain, the smile she always had for her grandchildren.

We love you, Grandma.

My song is love unknown
My Saviour’s love to me
Love to the loveless shown
That they might lovely be.
Oh, who am I that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

Here might I stay and sing–
No story so divine!
Never was love, dear King,
Never was grief like thine.
This is my friend, in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend!

Text: Samuel Crossman, c. 1624-1683
Tune: John D. Edwards, 1806-1885