That day that I Louis C. K.ed

I shared this on my Facebook the other day. When I did so, I did while mostly thinking about it from the side of the person who was hurt, not the person who had committed the hurt. 

Yesterday, I had an interesting experience. I was volunteering at an event where I was selling programs. At one point, I had 3 people approach me nearly simultaneously. From directly in front of me, a gentleman approached, and there was a woman right behind him. Mere moments later, as the first man reached into his pocket for money, a second man approached on my right, asking if I had singles to be able to make change for his $2 bills. (Programs are $5.) I did not, as I had not received any singles so far in the day, but the man already pulling out his cash said he had a couple of singles, and would be able to help the man to my right. 

The man in front of me, with the woman on his heels, purchased two programs, handed two one dollar bills to the man on the right, took the two dollar bill, and walked away. The man on my right then handed me one of the singles and two two dollar bills, took his program, and walked away. Then the woman stepped up.

"How much?" she asked. 

"Five dollars." I replied.

"Well, you just lost a sale. I was here before that man, you should have waited on me first. Stop giving preferential treatment to men." 

I had begun to interject with an "I'm sorry" - you see, I had thought she was with the first gentleman. She wasn't interested, however, and walked away. 

I was left a little dumbfounded. I certainly had not intended any slight, and there was only a few seconds between the first man walking away and the second walking away. Less than 10 seconds. I didn't view any of it as preferential treatment, as the first man and the second man held the bulk of conversation between themselves, while I waited to hand them their programs in exchange for the cash. Frankly, I was offended by her reaction. I'm standing alone with a cart full of programs (we usually have at least 2 or 3 of us together, but we were shorthanded, so I was flying solo) and three people come up within mere moments of one another. I'm making eye contact and responding to direct questions, smiling, and trying to be as helpful as I can, and it wasn't good enough for this woman who perceived my (volunteer!) work as insufficient. 

As I thought back about the entire exchange, trying to determine what went wrong, this quote came back to my mind. She was hurt by my actions, or at least offended enough by them that she was going to stand there long enough to make her statement. While I didn't intentionally slight her, she felt slighted, and that was real enough to her. 

Was I responsible for her feelings? No, I don't think so, but that doesn't mean that her feelings were invalid. I hope that she felt better after scolding me, and I hope that just maybe she stopped at one of the other spots where the school kids who we are selling the programs to support were standing and bought one from them. 

Such a proud momma…

So…

That boy? The one that just turned twelve?

He has insisted on stealing my heart.

I mentioned in his birthday post that he was growing his hair out to donate it. Today he told me this:

On April 26th, we’re going to join some students at Indiana University and he’s going to take part in a St. Baldrick’s event, shaving his head to raise money and awareness for pediatric cancer.

This decision was not one he took lightly, and I’m so impressed with him, I can’t begin to describe it to you. His hair has become such a big part of his identity, and let’s face it, it’s tough being a tween/teen. This was something he slept on, thought about, and decided he was willing to do.

I am so proud of him. I can’t begin to explain it.

Anyway – if you would like to donate, we’d love that, but if you can’t donate, would you consider sharing his donation site via your social media  of choice? Each tweet or FB post reaches out to someone else, and if we raise nothing more than awareness for the kids who are fighting cancer, that’s one more step.

Jeep’s St. Baldrick’s Fundraising Page

Thanks!

Banners in my Blood

Now, let me flip this around a little. A Facebook post about a historic home in our community led someone to me, because of a family name. That question led to digging out a 12 year old printout of some genealogy stuff that a cousin had done. I used Ancestry.com to lay out the connections she had, and then switched over to mundia.com, which is related and free.

I followed little leaves, plugged in things I knew, and googled the heck out of my maiden name. And then? I found this.

This is a photo of a couple of guys who played basketball at Indiana. They were part of the team in 1939-1940.

That season just happens to be the year Indiana won their first NCAA championship. These guys were part of banner number 1.

They are my grandfather’s cousins.

I have banner blood.

So, I found this late one night, and tweeted about it, and a guy who works for the university in the athletic department tweeted back at me -

@taxmegan They are your cousins? We just discovered that Bill, who was killed at Normandy, was on that team. So cool.

— jfgray (@jfgray) October 19, 2012

Holy moly, wait, what!? So, we have this whole conversation, and the guy on the right played for 3 seasons, then went to war and was killed in 1944. Apparently, someone else had recently contacted the university, and there was some information that had been uncovered that had been lost for the last, oh, 60 or 70 years, and now they had it?

Next – my visit with @jfgray and what we uncovered.

Hoosier Hysteria

Ok, I’ve talked a zillion other times about my love for Indiana sports, specifically football and college basketball. Not gonna rehash that.

I will take a second to mention that the basketball Hoosiers? They’re supposed to be pretty good this year. Lots of preseason #1 rankings.

So, this weekend. We had our official basketball season kickoff Saturday. It was a free event, people were lining up 36 hours before it started, and it was going to be awesome. I was going. The Mr. wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home and the children and I loaded up and headed to Assembly Hall. We did NOT go 36 hours before it started.

We went at 3pm. Doors were to open at 4. When we got there, we found a line, and then we followed it until we found the end. We didn’t even know what door it was going to take us in.

I took this from our spot in line. The big building on the left, for those not familiar with Assembly Hall, is where we were going. The line we waited in snaked from doors that are directly behind that cute little tree right there up front, down the side of the building, back up the side of the building, out into this parking lot, and then you can see it wrapping through the lot. Behind us, it was back down the side of the building again. It was nutso long.

But! We got in! (This is important. They had to close the doors with an hour and a half to go before the event technically started.) Now, mind you, I am desperately trying to keep track of all three of my kids in a building jammed full of 20,000 people who are mad-rushing to score the best seats that they can and lining the hallways to get autographs. I was stressing. We ended up one row from the very top of the balcony in the building. We were WAAAAY up there. (We actually gave up seats that were a bit lower because we couldn’t see the scoreboard well, and we were trying to watch the end of the IU football game. It was worth it.)

The energy in that building? It was amazing. Moments that brought us to our feet, brought tears to our eyes.

This guy? He is the women’s program strength coach. His neck was broken in a freak bicycle accident, and his recovery so far? Nothing short of amazing. When he was introduced?

No words. #TomsTeam

 

And she’s hard to see here (let me remind you – I’m like a million rows up, and I have a point and shoot, so be gentle with the photos here, k?) but our emcee for the night? ESPN’s Sage Steele. Why? Because she’s a Hoosier.

Listening to  her speak, so many of her words could have been mine. She was here in the years that were so formative in my love for this program.

Plus? What a great role model for me to share with my own daughter.

Then? Our guys came out and did a little showing off. (And gentlemen? This is a friendly mom-based reminder : Your showing off in this venue, under these circumstances, that was ok. It was expected. But remember, we’ve not won a single game yet. So don’t get cocky, k? Let’s PROVE it.)

Dunk contest. Scrimmage. My favorite Hoosier fans.

There are some other fun things that have come up this week as well, and I can’t wait to share them with you, BUT, this is long enough for now. Just know, there’s more. And it’s amazing.

Indiana, Our Indiana….

Oh heeeeey, everybody!

What’s up? I feel like I haven’t been here in forever, but then I realized that it’s not even been a week since Melissa’s birthday, which means I at least did that letter to her within  the last week, which means I’m not as off the rails as I thought I was!

It’s been, as is par for the course, a little crazy around here. The past couple of weeks in my classes have included writing papers and several tests, so I’ve been pretty focused on all that.

But! My honey and I enjoyed a lovely night out on Saturday. An old friend had some tickets to the IU- Ohio State football game that she couldn’t use, and offered them up to us. It was a late night, but was a MUCH better game than we were worried it would be, and we enjoyed the heck out of ourselves.

This was the one pic I snagged of the two of us, and it’s awful! We had met up with some folks to tailgate for a bit before the game, and then we took our cooler back out to our van before going in for kickoff. We ended up hanging there for a few minutes so I could try to charge my phone back up a little, and I took this while I stood outside, and he sat inside of the van. Not a good picture at all, but oh well!

 

My Hoosiers really played hard, and I gotta tell ya, I came home with NO VOICE at ALL. I was yelling with all I had! 

 

 

This one? It’s for my dear twitter friends, who help us in our endeavor to get #FFFLLLAAAGGGSSS trending. It’s an IU thing.

I think this weekend we’re going to try to get out and check out Hoosier Hysteria and our preseason #1 basketball squad. Fingers crossed that we can get anywhere near Assembly Hall!

So, what have YOU been up to lately?