A few sundays ago in our relief society hour of church, there was a lesson on provident living—getting out of debt, living within your means, getting your food storage and making do with what you've got and not wasting it. The woman conducting it and giving the lesson is a cohort of mine into the foray of photography. After a short film by a church leader on the subject, she started to give the lesson. I stopped her by raising my hand. She gave the nod for me to speak and I motioned I needed to come up to the "front of the class." Shock registered on her face as I stood beside her; she asked what it was about very softly and I whispered into her ear, "the dress", as she had been aware of the frustration of mine in the making of said dress.I then proceeded to subscribe my double-sided dress and the problems and frustration of making it. It was a good lesson in making lemonade from your lemons and also to not throw anything out.
As I looked into the faces of the women, about 30-40 of them, I noticed some smiles, some outright laughter and then something that quite astonished me. I saw "what in the heck is this chick talking about" look on some of the faces. Of course, since most of those women have never taken the time to get to know me or my humor and joie de vive they might have been stunned. But that's no matter as I plowed along in my own little world attempting to get my point across.
Later that day I sent an email to my friend about asking her how she could have allowed me to totally embarrass myself and I'll never ever open my mouth in that class again. It was much longer than this snippet but you get the idea.
Later that evening a knock on the door brought me and Love Bunny out of our sunday evening stupor. As I opened the door, there stood my young mommy friend. She sheepishly looked at me and asked if I was serious and was I angry with her. Stupified ME said, "of course not!" I didn't stop to think, since we are "partners in humor" and both eager "photographers in learning" sometimes, that it woud have affected her so. She wiped tears from her eyes for the 40-45 minutes she visited then. I truly thought the humor would have come through on the email, but it didn't and she spent the next few hours trying to chat with her hubby and kids, going to look at the email again, back to family, back to email and finally dashing out the door to see if she had offended me or what in the heck was going on.
I laughed and said, "no, nothing is wrong". I just thought I made a complete jackass out of myself in usurping her time and evidently astonishing some of the women. But the tears got to me in a way not much else could. I thought I fell flat that sunday but evidently there was more going on than I thought. But it assuaged her tender feelings and for that I'm certainly grateful.
And yes, those are her eyes in the photo.
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