Big Foot

When I was in high school, one day a friend looked down at my feet and said, "Your shoes look really sloppy like that."

"Like what?" I asked. They were new, without holes or stains, which was not always the case. I am all about comfort, so I had been (and still am) known to wear stained or torn shoes. In high school, despite being, as all adolescents are, overburdened with crushing worry about what I looked like, for months I wore a favorite pair of fabric shoes that had holes directly over my pronounced bunions. My bunions stuck out through the frayed fabric. Any time someone would point it out to me, I'd say, "They're comfortable like this." I even bleached them, so they'd look cleaner and nicer while the holes got bigger.

But the shoes this friend was talking about were very new. I could not figure out what was sloppy.

"When you wear the laces like that."

"Like what?" This was making less and less sense. The shoes were laced and tied, all very normal and neat.

She sighed. I seemed to have that affect fairly often; my friends would sigh and wonder why I was clueless.

"Here. Let me fix them." She untied my shoe, then grabbed the laces and yanked, hard.

"OW!" My feet were always pretty uncomfortable, which I blamed on the bunions, and anything squeezing them was incredibly painful. While my oldest daughter was always self conscious about her bunions, and wore shoes that hid them, with pumps and ballet flats for dress shoes, I spent years buying only dress sandals, so my bunions could poke out through the straps. Sometimes, a friend would try to talk me into pumps, and I'd say, "Closed, rigid shoes hurt!" Anything tight across the bunions could make my foot scream, and my whole leg ache.

"What?" she wanted to know.

"You're squeezing my foot!"

She reached out and grabbed the sides of my shoe, trying to get the parts where the laces go through the holes to meet.

"OW!! That HURTS!" I yanked my foot away.

"This is as tight as they go?"

"Yes! This is as tight as they go!" I rubbed my foot and retied my shoe.

"You need bigger shoes!"

"These are half a size bigger than I normally wear." I showed her how I had over an inch between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe.

"Then you need wide width!"

"These ARE wide width!"

She looked aghast. "You should be able to close them, like this." She stuck her own foot out. The only part of the tongue that was visible was the tip, sticking out of the top of her shoe. The parts where the laces went through met in the middle and touched.

"I have never in my life been able to pull them that tight."

She looked just horrified. After a few more minutes (and comments like, "That's all your foot?") she sighed and said, "I guess you'll have to wear them like that, then."

"Yes, I will."

Obviously, I still do. That's my current pair of shoes in that photo, snapped on my cell phone.

I mean, isn't the whole point of laces to adjust them to the individual, because not everyone is the same? I think so. I always have. And yes, those current shoes are wide width. Yes, I still have an inch, maybe more, between the end of my toes and the end of the shoe. My toe hits well below the line of the triangle pattern.

Of the many things that have caused me to feel self conscious, this was not one. It was another instance, though, in which I wondered if her thinking was alien, or mine was. Not that it changed anything; I still have to loosen the laces when I buy shoes, but that's why there are laces, and not zippers.

I don't quite understand a lot of conventions on human interaction (that I have been told are just instinctive and built in). That's fine. But, if I may, I will suggest a way to have that conversation that was not alienating.

Example:

Friend: "Why are your laces so wide? Are they really loose?" See, asking questions is a great way to find things out - do not start out assuming that you know everything. This is hard, but necessary.

Me: "No, they're actually pulled pretty tight. I just have really wide feet."

Friend: "Really? That wide?"

Me: "Yeah. I have a hard time even finding shoes that I can wear, even in wide width."

Friend: "I've never had that problem."

Me: "You're lucky." And we'd go on about our day, and I'd have forgotten this conversation, instead of being annoyed by it decades later. I had dozens of conversations like that over my school years, and I can only remember the details of this one.

See?

Occasionally when I tell stories like this, someone will say that this is why we all need to guard against letting other people know our thoughts, because if people know what you're thinking, they won't like you. Respectfully, no, that is not the point here. The point is how you express yourself. I am deeply aware that a significant percentage of people will find my feet to be weird, gross, or just outside of their experience. This is normal. A few others will think that I'm exaggerating, probably for attention or sympathy. This opinion, too, is normal. The fact that both of those assumptions are wrong doesn't make them any less common. Thinking them is not a problem. Saying them is not a problem. Being rude because of what you think is a problem.

Making assumptions without asking is a problem. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that there are things that every person on Earth does not know, does not understand, or has not ever encountered before. Quit assuming that if it's outside your experience, it doesn't exist. Quit assuming that you know everything. Ask, politely - "why do you" instead of announcing, "that's sloppy."

Another problem is acting on your unconfirmed assumptions, especially in a way that leads you to cause someone physical pain. If you don't know what's causing something, your chances of messing things up are pretty high!

Also, let's say that I thought that loose laces were some kind of fashion statement that made me look cool. Telling me that you don't think so is OK. Insisting that I change because you don't think so is NOT OK.

The biggest problem for me, though, is why it still annoys me after decades - the assumption that I should experience shame because someone else didn't like my body parts. This girl's entire demeanor screamed, "Eeww, gross!" - which is, again, not uncommon - but then went on to assume that I ought to be just as horrified. I ought to hide my gross feet. I ought to hope that no one notices how gross they are. I ought to avoid lace up shoes. I ought to be depressed because something about me wasn't pretty. 

This is a problem.

In general, people talk about being proud of who you are, ignoring "the haters," realizing that "you're perfect, just the way you are" - until how someone is conflicts with someone's idea of how they should be. Women are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not pretty. Men are told that they have less intrinsic value if they're not strong. This is garbage.

Women talk about how we don't owe it to anyone to be pretty, but a lot of us are then disgusted by bodies that just aren't pretty, or women who "don't even try" to be pretty; you know, the loose clothes, no makeup, short haired women. Or, we're not disgusted, but we decide that those women are probably lesbians, because men would just never be interested in them.

I just cannot buy into that. It's inaccurate. It's damaging.

That's why I'm still annoyed. Someone thought it was better for me to experience shame than to simply accept that this is how my feet are. I was born this way. 

When I had them surgically altered - bunions removed, etc - it was so they would work better, not because of how they looked. They're still wide. They're still hairy. They're not pretty. My laces are still loose.

I am not embarrassed by my feet. At that point, in high school, I was embarrassed by my saddlebags, my rounded tummy, my receeding chin, and probably more, but I grew out of that. Because even though my body is me, it is not what gives me value.

My feet have taken me great places. My shoes are comfortable. That's good enough.

Pandemic Problems

 So, it's been almost exactly a year since the world shut down for COVID 19. I was on a cruise ship when that happened, with spotty internet and no real idea what the rest of the world looked like while I planned my days around trivia quizzes, lectures and movies. We came home to a very different world than the one we'd left.

We all remember, I think, the last time things were "normal" before they changed. It's a shared experience; we all understand it.

As is usual, though, I find that I don't really understand how some other people reacted to the new reality. I mean, on an intellectual level, I can tell you how they feel, and why. I just do not emotionally relate to it.

Some people, when I'd post photos from my own back yard online, would say, "You went outside!?! Why? It's dangerous outside!" Well, look, being exposed to other people was potentially dangerous, but there's nobody in my back yard except me, and maybe someone who lives in my house with me. I didn't understand the extreme fear of simply existing in the world.

I went anywhere in public only once in that first month, to get groceries. There's three of us in my house, so in the first three months, each of us went to the store once. Maybe if I had a job outside my home - I don't - I would have been a bit more prepared for this, but when I finally went somewhere in mid to late April, I could not get over how many people were on the road. It looked like any other ordinary day. "Where are all these people going?" I wondered. 

After a month at home, I went driving to a lake just outside of town, hoping for fresh air and the chance to take photos; those are two of my preferred ways to relax. And all across town, the streets were full. When we got to the lake, the parking lot was almost full. Luckily, most of the people were out on the lake, wind surfing, so we were all distanced, and I got great photos. Still, I was a bit surprised by how many people were out and about. And how one of them wanted to walk RIGHT UP TO me to talk; hey, I don't even like that when I'm not worried about germs.

Which brings me to the other people that I don't understand, the people who experienced fear and anger and pain in being home all the time. I started to see all kinds of things online about how "humans aren't meant to live like this!" and predictions that violence and suicide would increase - and they did! This was a surprise to me.

Because I was, sincerely, happy as a clam. I woke up every day, especially in the first three or four months, thinking, "Yay!" I had no schedule, no expectations, no obligations, and it was delightful. For most of my life, I rarely watched TV during the day, but now, I had no problem with sitting down in my jammies and watching TV any time I felt like it. I read books, I painted, I stayed up late (for me, anyway) and slept in. I'd look online and see that people were taking online classes, cooking from scratch and making sourdough, and FaceTiming daily, and it just sounded exhausting. I was not organizing my closets and deep cleaning. I was rewatching old TV series - hello, Stargate Atlantis; I'm always going to gloat a bit that I knew how cool Jason Momoa was years before everybody else figured it out. I should have done more cleaning, really, but it felt like vacation, and who deep cleans on vacation? Not me. Everybody likes vacation - how were they not as happy as I was? Really, I was puzzled; I am puzzled.

But, because I was puzzled, I thought about it, I read about it, I talked to people, and I tried to figure out what people were thinking. I feel the need to repeat here that I don't look at differences as being an intrinsic case of, "who's wrong, who's right?" Right and wrong are for moral issues and the laws of physics, not for the fact that the world contains infinite variety, especially in humans. I'm also deeply puzzled any time someone sees that they're out of step, and immediately agonizes that they're wrong, or judges that everyone else is wrong and probably stupid. Some flowers are yellow, and some are red. Some dogs are small, and some are large. Some people prefer things that make me miserable, and vice versa. The point is to understand, not to relegate everything to two little boxes.

I also need to be clear that I am not speaking about about families or individuals who were experiencing job loss, illness, death of a loved one, lack of food, or anything else that is actually tragic. Those people deserve every bit of help and love and empathy that we have, and more. Their pain should, always, be our own. I also understand that most people were having some kind of empathy response, feeling for those who were experiencing these things. I'm speaking from my place of incredible privilege, about people whose homes looked a lot like mine - plenty of food (and TP), income, secure housing, good health, and loved ones who are mostly in that same boat, people whose lives are physically comfortable, but who now had to deal with being home (in comfort) almost all of the time, and were feeling uncomfortable about it.

The things that didn't resonate with me were things like, "How many times can you organize your sock drawer?" or actual angst, like the woman who said to me, "Was I always this friendless, and I just didn't notice?" I had to roll that around in my brain for a while, because it made no sense to me. How can you have fewer friends, just because you're at home, not out and about?

I think I've figured that out; it has to do with who we perceive as a friend. My definition is very broad and encompassing. If I like you, if I have positive thoughts about you or feelings for you, you are my friend. Unless I specifically dislike you, you're my friend. That means that you, personally, are in luck if we've ever met; I would be hard pressed to name more people than I can count on one hand as being people that I just do not like. Even then, even counting the very few people on the planet whose presence I avoid, I don't wish harm or misery on any of them. I hope they're happy and healthy, just not in my presence. If they were to be in my presence, I would be polite, unless pushed pretty aggressively.

Sure, I understand the concept of "close" and "casual" friends, but it's become fairly clear to me that I don't categorize the same way some other people do. There are people who have never been in my home, who have never hosted me in their home (despite living in my community), whose numbers are not stored in my phone, who are absolutely my close friends. Some I've known for decades. 

A few years ago at a funeral, I saw someone with whom I hadn't been in contact for over 20 years. But we were kids together, we understand a lot of each other's backstory, they could have my organs if they ever need them, so the first words out of my mouth were, "I love you!" accompanied by a hug. And they said, "I love you too! How have you been?"

I'm often sincerely puzzled by people who see each other several days a week. I don't understand that; I don't do that. My parents didn't do that. My parents had family, neighbors, friends that they liked, that they did things with, but there were no weekly bridge games or girls/guys nights. There were no daily, or almost daily, phone calls. I'm the same way. Seeing someone 3 or 4 times a year feels "often" to me.

I also sincerely cannot make sense of the idea, "Well, I did like you, I thought you were fun, but then we didn't see each other for a while, so now we're not friends anymore." When I talk to people who only feel close to someone if they see each other all the time, it feels artificial and needy. I can be outside of your presence and still feel that you're my friend. One of my close friends, who I've known since we were kids, described it this way: "I don't need to see people every day to know who my friends are."

Other people have called me and my relatives like me "anti social." I prefer the wording of a professional counselor that I once saw - "You just function with a very high degree of autonomy. Most people don't." I'm not afraid or unhappy, I'm just self contained, and I can't imagine why that would be a bad thing.

I remember being puzzled when I was a newlywed moving to a new town. I'd be hundreds of miles from the only city I'd ever lived in, moving to a city in which I knew no one but my husband. Someone who truly was concerned about me said something about how hard it would be, because "you won't have any friends!" I replied, "I'll have the same friends that I have right now."

"But there won't be anybody to hang around with, day to day!"

"I don't hang out with my friends much now." I was 20, only two years out of high school, but I considered frequent contact to be something that kids with a lot of free time did. Several of my best friends had moved away, others were in school full time, some were like me and working two jobs. There was not a lot of time or money for hanging out, and our schedules were no longer similar, nor did we all live in the same neighborhood anymore. Getting together was a 'special occasion" kind of thing. I thought that was normal; I still do. I liked them, they liked me, I still wrote long, newsy letters, but now I put stamps on them instead of handing them off between classes. I didn't feel the need to audition people for Frequent Contact Buddy, because I wasn't lonely without one.

And yes, sometimes being with other people feels very much like an audition. They're trying to figure out if they want to spend time with you. Sometimes, the answer is no; sometimes, that's a good thing. Not too long ago, a dear friend - someone else I've known since we were kids - told me about someone who phoned them and said, "I'm sorry, it just takes too much work to be your friend, and I can't do it." The reason? An invitation was extended, the answer was, "Let me check with the rest of my family, and see what the work schedules look like," and that took until the next day to accomplish. That sounds so very normal to me. My husband's in bed at 6 PM, and works 12 hour shifts; if it's not an emergency, I may not discuss it with him for about 24 hours, because I won't see him for about 24 hours. Apparently, the Invitation Extender felt that things can, and should, be determined quickly, and arranged via text almost immediately. Having to wait overnight stressed them out.

I have to say, if that's the case, then I couldn't really fit into their circle, which means that "we can't be friends," since their definition of "friend" looks different than mine. Theirs sounds exactly like "too much work" to me. I tell people, truthfully, that I don't often carry my phone, especially at home. Calls, texts, or emails are usually answered within 24 hours. If that doesn't work for you, then no hard feelings, but we should not plan on doing things together.

So, the pandemic doesn't feel all that different to me. In fact, I often see or speak to people more than I did before quarantine. I spent weeks taking Porch Portraits, because people were home and available, and I love to have subjects to photograph (and I could stand out on the sidewalk, no close contact). I took the first family photos for friends with a newborn. I took "first home" photos for young couples. I learned how to Zoom. People occasionally call just out of the blue, to see if we're OK. I do not feel ignored at all.

Do you know what has happened? I hate driving. I sincerely hate driving. I have been on the freeway only once in about 9 months, and I hated every second. It takes 15 minutes on the freeway to get to our favorite pizza place; I drive through town, taking 30 minutes. The first time I drove out of town since quarantine began, I had a little panic attack on the highway. It was a familiar road - I've driven it since I was a teen, and I was only going an hour away. I've driven it twice in a day before. Now, I just came unglued. That was ten months ago. I haven't driven on the highway since.

I've never been really comfortable with traffic or high speeds. Even as a kid, I was not a speed demon. I grew up during a time when 55 was the national speed limit, and I drove a clunky, slow VW van, and I really resent being asked to drive 75 now. It feels dangerous. It always has. So does traffic. My husband and I have always had a deal: on road trips, I will drive for hours through open country and small towns. He will drive in cities. I once had to drive home through LA when he was sick, and I spent at least an hour yelling at other cars and saying, "YOU OWE ME!" to my sick husband.

My brother lives about 10 hours away by car (at or near the speed limit). It's a familiar road; I've been on it, as a passenger and a driver, since I was a kid. Most of it is flat, straight, wide open road like you see in car commercials, where your visibility is 50 miles. But there are two mountain passes, steep and curving, that I hate. I'd be OK if I could drive them at 45 or 55, but I'm told that I can't, that someone will hit me from behind, so I cringe every second I'm there. I'm going too fast, other people are going WAY too fast, there's little visibility, there's no margin for error. I hate it - and that's on a good, normal day. I hate being a passenger there, too. Now, I do not know when I might ever be able to face that again. Certainly not now.

And I hate talking to people about it. I say, "I'd be fine if there were no other cars. I could mosey at 45, and everything would be fine." Then other people say, "What are you talking about? If there were no other cars, you could cruise at 120, and do 150 on the straightaways!" That just sounds like death. Speed is dangerous, speed turns small rocks into something that will spin you out or puncture your tire, it makes you likely to lose control, it will send you hurtling over edges and off of curves and tumbling down the mountain until you explosde. I hate speed. As a teen, I once got up to 65 downhill, and it felt like the Daytona 500 and a very bad idea. That means that other people do not "get" me.

Still, I coped well. Only a few years ago, I drove, by myself, on a 6+ hour round trip, on the highway, just to get photos for a niece's school Flat Stanley project. I left town headed north, and hours later, returned to town from the south. I had fun; the solo driving was a kind of meditation time. Now, I cannot muster up the courage to drive 10 minutes outside of town to take photos of the wild horses. Oh, I'll go one direction, on the old highway, because the new highway bypasses it, meaning there's almost no traffic on the old highway. But I will not get on the interstate.

Six months ago, I gritted my teeth, and was a passenger while my husband drove us an hour away, on smaller, state roads, for a tiny vacation. I didn't worry too much about the virus, but I worried A LOT about traffic. It felt as if I nearly had a stroke when he passed a highway department vehicle on a downhill curve. The drive was misery.

You're supposed to visualize doing things that you want to do, or get better at. I want to eventually drive on the freeway, and leave town on the highway, so I visualize it. I'm fine and calm until I visualize other drivers on the road. Then I freak out. I don't like other cars. They're deadly weapons, driven by impatient, distracted people. They could kill me.

Doing something frequently smooths out the edges of the anxiety, desensitizes you to it, so it becomes more doable. During this quarantine, I have lost all of my desensitization to traffic and speed and curves. I am a raw nerve ending.

I want to fix it. I eventually will fix it. But when people talk about what makes them sad right now, it's being home, and what makes them happy is leaving. I'm happy at home, and leaving makes me sad. Then people feel compelled to tell me that I'm "not normal," and need to work at being normal, because normal is a life goal. That's misery, too. "Normal" and "average" are just math. And I'm entitled to feel however I feel.

But in a society that considers sameness to be a bonding experience, I'm outside of the loop.

A Piece of the Puzzle

 Our church runs a week-long camp for girls ages 12 and up. After your first 4 years, you can be junior staff members, helping the younger girls. I went for 6 years, and loved it. I planned to come back at 18, but had to be out of state that week.

Although you can express interest in going to camp as a Tent Mom (supervising a campsite group, usually 6 to 8 girls), kitchen staff, first aid staff, or other adult, as with all jobs in our church, it's unpaid, and you are "called" by your leaders, and asked to go. I was only asked once, long after my older girls were adults, but before my youngest was old enough for camp. I thought that was slightly odd, since I'd always figured that if I went, it would be with one of my girls. Still, it wasn't too odd, and I was excited. I'd loved camp, I'd spent years as a Scout leader, and I felt prepared and enthusiastic.

Things had changed a bit since I was a kid. When I went, you didn't meet your Tent Mom or camp group until you arrived at camp. They've since changed it so that you all get together several times to meet each other, plan, get supplies, and the like. You also have two Tent Moms per group; again, having been in Scouts, I'd seen "two deep leadership" instituted, and I understood why.  We had our meetings, figured out how many tents we'd need and who had them, and otherwise made our plans.

I'm used to camping. When I was a child, my family traveled frequently, but I only remember two nights in hotel rooms. We camped. I remember my parents choosing where we could go based on gas prices. We had a great tent and sleeping bags. My parents built a wooden "grub box" with a latch, to hold the dishes, silverware and food. Everything else, including the clothes we wore while camping, were too worn out to be used every day. They were the threadbare things, the things with holes, stains, or broken handles, the things that were mismatched. A towel or a pan or shirt or something else would get to the point that we'd relegate it to the camping stuff. This was pretty normal - I spent a lot of time in campgrounds, and everybody's camping stuff looked similar to ours.

When I was planning for camp as a Tent Mom, every now and then someone would suggest buying something new, and I'd say, "No, I have an old one that we can use." Our church leaders encouraged us to use what we had, and not spend too much, so I felt prepared and obedient.

Then we got to camp. The other camp moms and I were on totally different pages. People had bought brand new, themed and color co-ordinated stuff. There were pots still in cardboard boxes. At the camp site directly across the path from me, the Tent Mom had brought brand new, pale yellow towels. Yellow! In the forest! She had also brought co-ordinating art that she put on stakes and tied to the trees. Their camp theme was cherries, bright red on sunshine yellow backgrounds. She literally had a ruffled apron that she wore while she used a (new!) broom to sweep the paths. (I wanted to yell across, "It's all dirt! You won't get down to bedrock!" But I didn't.) 

The other groups had hand decorated, personalized mailboxes for each person in their group. Our mailbox, that was for all of us in our camp, was a bucket. A non-decorated, non-personalized bucket. Yeah, I brought it. I brought the stained, used rope for our clothesline. Our one decoration was a posterboard with our group name (that year, all the groups went with cartoons for their group names). The mat in front of the tent was one that I'd bought years before on clearance for $2.54, then used at our home's door until it had balding spots. It didn't even say "WELCOME," or have a scripture printed on it; it was shaped like a fish.

I'm not exaggerating any of this. 

Let me be clear - those kinds of women - the ones with new, co-ordinating everything - are impressive in a dozen different ways, and I admire them. I will just never BE them. If all evidence wasn't to the contrary, I would have no problem believing that we are from different planets. I felt, that week at camp, as I do pretty much every day, that other people were given a different owner's manual for their lives than I had been given, but that mine was the only one that made sense.

The other Tent Mom in our group was a lovely person, but she spent most of her time with the Tent Mom in the next camp over, because they were best friends back home. The girls were fantastic, and I loved them, but I did not have effortless conversation. They were all excited because when we got back home, the new Twilight book would be out; I love books, but not *those* books.

Anyway, all of that is incidental to the story; I just want to set the scene. I never "fit in."

The girls are divided by age, so all the 12 year olds are together. That was our age group. There were other 12 year old groups, as well On the first day, just after we'd set up our tents, the "First Year" groups were asked to send a leader up to a meeting with the camp director and her staff. I went for our group. There was a girl there who needed a tent group. It was explained to all of us that she hadn't lived in the area while we were planning, so she hadn't been assigned a group, and didn't have any friends to join. They wanted to know if any of us had room for her.

The first group Mom said, "Oh, I'd love to, but we just don't have enough." They had already made personalized everything - mailboxes, sweatshirts, gifts for each girl - and she didn't want this girl to be the only one without what the others had. The second said roughly the same thing. They'd planned meticulously, bringing just enough of everything, all matching, for the girls that were already in their group. Plus, their tents were small, and pretty full. The girl looked uncomfortable.

And there was me. We had no personalized anything; even our mail just went in a bucket. Yes, I'd brought gifts to give to the girls over the week - stickers, pencils, note cards - but I'd also thrown in extra of everything, "just in case." Plus, I remembered being partnered with a girl in my first year of camp,  a girl who'd signed up late, and had no "camp buddy." It was great - we had tons of fun.

"We have plenty of room!" I said.

"Are you sure?" the leaders asked. "We don't want to put you out."

"I'm sure! No problem! We'd love to have her!" The girl smiled.

We had another girl in our group who'd come to camp without a buddy. She'd been with our group all through our preparation, but we did have an odd number. With the new girl, now we were even, and those two pretty much instantly declared each other to be their designated buddy. They were soon inseparable. All of the girls got along well, there was physical room in the tent, and we were glad to have her. Everything was great, and we all had fun. The other Tent Mom agreed with me that it was a good thing that we could add the late girl in.

And nobody griped that our stuff was old and weird and not pretty.

Those were the days before social media - imagine such a time! - and I lost track of most of "our" girls. Our camp had girls from all over the city, so we didn't even attend church in the same congregations. I was never asked to go to camp again. I assumed that either I'd taken my expected turn and all was well, or that I was just too out of step to be asked back. No hard feelings; I am out of step.

Anyway, years later, I found out that the girl who had arrived late had become so close to the girl who'd immediately become her friend that she became a frequent visitor in that girl's home. Time passed, and she actually ended up living with them, then being legally adopted by the family. And after a few more years, she got married, in the temple. (Our religion teaches that weddings outside the temple are "til death do we part," but marriages inside the temple can be forever.) I saw photos - she looked so happy, and so beautiful, and her adoptive family looked so proud.

It just really spoke to me that I'd had a teeny part in that. I certainly can't claim credit for anything in her life. It was a small camp - she would have met her sister there anyway. Because I am religious, I think that God put her in camp so that she could. What spoke to me was the idea that the weird leader, the one who was out of synch and sloppy and chaotic, the one who never fits, didn't get in the way of the plan.

And it's pure chance that I found any of this out. Nobody sought me out to tell me, personally. The girls might not even remember me.

Remember that the next time that you leave a situation feeling totally out of place, wondering why you were even there, and if somebody else shouldn't be doing it, instead. Maybe you're one piece in a puzzle whose completion you will never see. Maybe you helped good things to happen because you weren't quite as perfect as everyone around you. The way you are is OK, anyway, and doesn't hurt The Grand Plan.

And maybe, sometimes, you'll get to see some of the other pieces of the puzzle fall in around you, and you can see that, hey, I do fit.