Irony, The "GI Jane", and Side-splitting Laughter

OK. There are those days where you get to decide whether you are going to hide in a corner and cry or completely laugh yourself silly. For me that usually centers around a series of ironies that if strung together and put on paper would not even be believable in Hollywood. Today was that day. I have written some of these posts in tears. I do that tonight for a different reason. My mom and I just laughed so hard about today and what the results of my decisions made could be that we had to separate to recover from tears of laughter.

It was my first day back at work. That went well. It felt good to be back to doing "normal" things and I received a warm welcome from my team. The irony started in other parts of the building. You see, when you have a surgery like I have, and you're only 1/2 way done with the repair job it messes with people's minds. They don't know how to react, or more importantly where to look. I bring this up for the opposite reason that you think. It's the women I ran into today that seemed to forget that when you talk to someone, you look at their face. Now, if they see you coming from a distance, they're OK. There's time to check out the scene and sum it up. But, round a corner and surprise 'em...I must have giggled about this a good portion of the day because it happened so often and is so ironic. As for the men, I feel sure several of them know exactly how many ceiling tiles are in the building. Sometimes it's kind of fun to make people uncomfortable, as long as the joke's on you. But, that's not the good part of the story.

So, as I'm wading through 2.5 weeks of email, I get an email with the details of the singles retreat at our church that's being hosted at our new unbelievable camp. I say new because it's just about 3 years old I think. So, for 3 years I've been wondering when we were going to get around to having a singles retreat. You see, my best childhood memories and THE most important decision I ever made all happened at church camp. I tear up every time they show clips from the kids/student camps because I know what happens there. It takes me back to before the many years of wrong decisions, and bad choices...But, my camp was NOTHING like this one. We had no A/C, scorpions in the shower, huge biting horse flies that LOVED Deep Woods OFF!, and no windows in the cabins, just screens so that we wouldn't ACTUALLY die in the heat of a Texas summer. That's not our new camp. This is camp is 5 star!

As I turned to look at the dates on my huge wall calendar, I began counting how many days it was from Chemo poison (take #1) that is supposed to take every hair on my head within 14-17 days according to my Dr. last Friday. It's exactly 14 days!! So, here's where the decision came in...it took a little while to ponder. First thought...well I'm not going to that! I can't! Then...I've waited 3 years for this!!! Pity Party or Bite the Bullet? Can I even do this in a wig?

So, I picked up the phone and called the cancer salon. I decided to go to the retreat, and get the "cut" the week before, October 3rd to be exact. Apparently it's called the "GI Jane" appointment. They buzz your head, fit, cut and style your wigs, and you walk out with your "look" for the next year or so. I'm giving up my hair a week before I have to, but the thought of getting to camp and living through it coming out in chunks all weekend was awful. Then it became really, really, really funny. I'm so visual. I see things that I imagine and that can be dangerous. You know, hug a friend, lose a chunk. Hug another friend, lose another chunk. Hug enough friends, wear a robe, and suddenly everyone's trying to figure out who got the Krishna to come to our camp. Either that's hysterical, or I'm sick...probably both.

So, I somberly came to Mom's and sat her down to get the appointment on her calendar. (I don't get the "put everything on a calendar" from nowhere...) So, I told her about the retreat, the conflict of dates, and my decision. We were quite serious for a few minutes. Then she asked the question that sparked the cascades of laughter. "What activities are you guys going to do at this retreat?" (Beyond worship and study, obviously...) So, I mentally went back to the clips I'd seen from kids camp activities, and what I thought the email said from memory. It went something like this..."they have horses, a zip line, wave pool..." We stared at each other and started laughing hysterically because I just don't know how you do any of those things in a wig! Ride your horse too close under a tree...where's your hair? In the tree! Besides, I may be a Texan, but I can't even ride a horse! I'm a city girl. The zip line visual includes a hunting expedition at it's conclusion... Forget capture the flag, it's find the hair! And no one needs to explain the wave pool part... (It's actually a lazy river, either way it doesn't need a wig floating in it.)

Then she tells me about a friend who rear-ended someone in a wig, saw the "head" fly over the back of the seat, and began screaming because she thought she had decapitated someone. Suddenly, my worst nightmare was the funniest thing I have laughed about in months.

Our camp's called Allaso Ranch. They tell us Allaso means change. So, really it's Change Ranch. That's a place I belong, hair or no hair. Besides, if I do get my hair stuck in a tree or lose it in the woods, my good friend, Susan, will retrieve it for me. Of that, I'm certain.