Learning Some Life Lessons: Have I Finally Got It?

As long as we are alive, life presents us with opportunities to learn life lessons. Sometimes these are huge and come at a great personal and emotional cost, and times they are rather inconsequential in the whole scheme of things, but just like the little foxes that ruin the grapes, even an in inconsequential event can have a big effect on how we feel about ourselves.

I have had some experiences recently of the more inconsequential variety that have taught me a couple of lessons:

Three times a week I eat for breakfast, along with the homemade yogurt I regularly eat, a serving of frozen mixed fruit with berries (raspberries, blackberries, and sometimes blueberries) that has been thawed. The thawed berries produce quite a bit of juice at the bottom of the bowl.

Twice last month I went to town to pick up the mail after eating my breakfast and came home to find that I had dribbled purple berry juice on my chin. Both times I met people at the post office and visited with them, so they had plenty of opportunity to observe that my face was dirty.

After the second embarrassing episode I learned life lesson 1:

Always check my face after I eat the fruit and before I leave the house. Always. No exceptions

And I have done so, and that hasn’t happened again.

On Saturday we had chopped spinach as one of the vegetables for our evening meal. I play the piano for a contemporary service at a local church, and so about 45 minutes after we finished eating, I changed my clothes, went into the bathroom, looked at my face in the mirror, and combed my hair, and left.

When I got home, my dearly beloved greeted me as I walked in and said something funny that made me smile, and then he started laughing and wanted to know did I realize I had spinach in my teeth? Had I done much smiling or laughing at the meeting?

No I didn’t know…. and yes I did. Of course I did—well, perhaps not laughing but certainly talking and smiling.

And then we had an interesting discussion about how people will not tell you when something like that is wrong.

To say I felt embarrassed about the spinach in my teeth doesn’t quite cover it. 

So life lesson 2:

Always brush my teeth before I leave the house. Always. No exceptions.

Today it was once again a day for a frozen fruit with berries for breakfast This morning before I left the house I did not forget to inspect my face in the mirror (it was clean), and I remembered to brush my teeth, and when I did, I observed blackberry seeds stuck in my front teeth.

Whew!!!

To quote Professor Henry Higgins: By George, she's got it! By George she's got it!