Today for lunch Paul and I, along with other staff members, joined
ClearView's 55+ adult group for the monthly luncheon (they invited the whole church staff to join them). It was quite an interesting and entertaining lunch.
So we got our plates, piled on the pot-luck food and sat down with the 55+ group. I should mention that Paul went to the dentist this morning before coming to work and was still very numb from the Novicane. Due to the half of his face that he couldn't feel, Paul was struggling a bit to eat. As Connie said, "he fit right in" with the crowd we were with.
Anyway, the schedule for the luncheon went something like this:
11:00 – the group started gathering.
11:30- we started eating
12ish- we sang a few hymns and Fletcher Allen spoke.
1:00- the luncheon ended.
Once the singing began I knew I was in for a memorable lunch. We sang two hymns out of the Baptist Hymnal, not leaving out a single verse of either song. The second song we even sang in groups- the first verse all together, the second just the women, the third just the men, fourth was a solo by one of the men, and the last verse we sang all together again. By the time we were finished with that song, most of the elderly folks were a bit winded. It's a good thing we only sang two songs, I don't think they could have sung much more!
After the singing commenced, the speaker, Fletcher, began. It took him a moment to get situated. He kept slipping off the stool (don't worry he didn't actually fall, it was just "very slick" as he put it) and having to adjust the microphone. He realized that he'd left his reading glasses at home but not to worry, at least four people offered for him to use theirs. After trying a few different pairs, he settled on a nice purple pair from Betty. He opened his message with a poem he had written for his late wife. He read it out of his book, "
Plowing Wind and Time." The poem was called "But Love" and is about his wife. As he read I looked around the room and noticed many teary eyed women listening intently to his words of love towards his wife. How sweet.
Though his message was short and at times hard to follow, Fletcher kept the attention of everyone in the room. The 77 year old man spoke about serving others, forgiveness, and friendship. One of the stories he told was about a missionary women in China back in the late 1800's. She came from a wealthy family and had many nice clothes, shoes, and hats that she would wear everyday as she did her mission work. As Fletcher told the story, he referred to this woman as "Miss
Fancypants."
His anecdotes and examples kept making me giggle. At one point he was talking about befriending the people you see everyday- for example the young guy or girl you see at the checkout and the grocery store. He said, "they wear their name tags right here (pointing to his shirt pocket) so it's easy to simply say 'Hello Gladys, isn't that a pretty name. How are you today?'" Gladys. What a great name to use as an example of the "young girl" that works at the grocery store. Now, no offence to you Gladys' out there, but lets be honest, how many people name their baby daughter Gladys these days? I've had this conversations many times actually, not specifically about the name Gladys but similar names that I feel are no longer used. For example, Phyllis. When you hear the name Phyllis do you picture a newborn little girl with chubby cheeks? No. At least I don't. I see a cute old woman teaching her granddaughter how to play canasta. How about Milton? Or Herbert? You get the point, sorry for the tangent... back to lunch with the seniors.
All in all, it was a very enjoyable lunch. Fletcher finished his message by saying, "I'm going to have to cut this short (he'd been speaking for about an hour) because I'm almost out of breath." After he prayed he made sure to let us know that he was giving us each a copy of his poetry book and if we didn't take one it would "break his heart." Of course I couldn't break his heart so I gladly took my copy of "Plowing Wind and Time."
Old people are so wise. And adorable. I hope I'm adorably wise when I'm 77 years old. I'll just have to make sure I have a pair of purple reading glasses.
