Ten-Finger Exercises

time wasters and new resolve

While enjoying myself snooping around Facebook, I've also fallen for the trap of playing games competitively. I don't play with people exactly, just have a sidebar showing how my friends are doing at the same game. Funny how that eggs me on to keep trying harder. Games I used to be good at though, like Jewel Box (by another name) and ones now called Path Word and Scramble, I'm not very good at any more. Slower reflexes? Maybe. But my mind doesn't come up with some of the combinations fast enough, that's for sure. And many of the "good" words with lots of points are ones I've never heard or would certainly never think of. Hmmm.

I should be writing anyway. Even if it's just this little bit every few days, it did give me a sense of responsibility, or accomplishment I guess is more like it. No, it's responsibility too: responsibility for thinking of something to write each day, for noticing some detail or eccentricity that was worth relating, kind of like carrying a camera and looking for good shots. Yes, I need to write more.

One of the little things I have thought of but not recorded is the simple and cheap improvement we made to the bathroom. We put in one of those curved shower curtain rods, and suddenly I have a spacious room! Even though the tub size didn't change, it's surprising how roomy the effect is. A small thing, but if you think about it, you probably spend more than an hour a week in there, so why not open up the space and make it more enjoyable?

Okay, maybe that's a silly thing. Here's another. My grief group was small the other day, and the lesson was a short one. So when the older members began talking about what it was like during the "Great" Depression, I let them go with it. Two women in their early 80's who grew up in rural areas told about the first radios they had, hooked up manually to the car battery. Their one room school houses had no electricity or any kind of lighting. "After all, we only wen to school in the day time," one said. "There was plenty of light through the windows." These same two women laughed about shoes wearing out, and having to put a rubber band around the sole to keep it from flapping and then tripping on it. Yes, they put cardboard in the shoes when they wore holes in the soles. A man, slightly older, who had grown up in town in New Jersey, said they'd had repair kits for their shoes. And he'd ridden a bus to school, whereas the two women had walked over a mile.

The young social work intern who was in the group really enjoyed the conversation. She hadn't heard much about those times before, and she said it was the most encouragement she'd had in months that a bad economy would not doom us all. It was clear that people's memories of that time were pretty much in agreement. Maybe it wasn't great, but it was do-able. It had made people, and families, stronger.