Hearst Hall wasn't available for Sunday, and we couldn't find a really
suitable alternative. We ended up renting a small church in Maryland, with
the intention of serving dinner outdoors, southern-style.
Sunday came, and we were setting up at the church. There were fixed pews
toward the back of the room, but enough space up front to set up folding
chairs in a hollow square. People began to arrive and seat themselves in
the pews.
Suddenly someone noticed that it was raining: not just a sprinkle, but a
full-fledged downpour. Now there would be no place to serve dinner!
Mimi suggested that we call off the Convention, but I couldn't see just
sending everyone home. I said we could set up one line of food tables in
the aisle along the left wall. When it came time to eat, we could
dismantle the hollow square and set up tables for eating in the same
space.
Some of us started setting the food out on the tables as I had suggested.
However, we could not set up the folding chairs because the previous group
was not finished with that space. They were dancers, performing an
elaborately choreographed production. The dancers were: a beautiful young
woman, a girl of about nine, and a chubby little blond boy not more than
three years old. The two children were running at full speed while the
woman danced more gracefully, but they always came together precisely with
the music. A balding gentleman with a large bear belly stood at the right
side of the dance floor. He wore tan knickers and an ill-fitting red vest
over a wrinkled white shirt. As he was panting and sweating profusely, I
took him for the young woman's dance partner. When the current dance
ended, I put my arm around the sweaty gentleman to escort him out,
complimenting him on the splendid performance. Then, fearing that the
woman dancer would get jealous, I quickly extricated myself.
As we were setting up the hollow square, Cathy Tucker asked me to chair
the convention. I accepted, and went to sit in the throne at the right
side of the altar. Then Cathy and Mary Kay Friday came up and whispered
in my ear, reminding me that we needed to choose the rest of the officers
and the committee chairs. Since it was high time to start the singing, I
suggested that the three of us circulate, finding likely volunteers and
asking them which function they would prefer to perform. The first person
I approached was Steven Sabol, who offered to be in charge of the food.
After that, I had trouble finding Sacred Harpers that I knew: there were
so many out-of-towners and newcomers! I was about to invite a friend of
mine to volunteer (even though this was her first singing) when I realized
that there was a flaw in my method: working separately, Cathy and Mary Kay
and I might come up with duplicate volunteers for some jobs, and none for
others.
The singing had already begun (someone must have volunteered to be the
arranger), but at that moment a middle-aged woman who had been standing at
the altar suddenly keeled over. Several men rushed to her assistance,
while I made my way to the front, frantically trying to remember my CPR
instructions from about twelve years ago. The men reluctantly moved aside
to allow me to examine her. She was a portly woman, black-haired and, at
that moment, deathly pale. We could not rouse her, but I announced that
she was still breathing, and her pulse was strong. I instructed one of
the men, a white-haired, beefy-faced man whom I vaguely recognized from
the Shenandoah group, to call 911 and tell them we had an unconscious
victim. He refused, saying he would run out and find some firemen that he
knew were quite nearby. My arguments failed to dissuade him, so I went to
call 911 myself.
I found a telephone on the floor in the narthex, but it was not plugged
in. I went downstairs looking for a phone jack, and found that the
white-haired man who had gone looking for firemen had returned without
them. He had gathered some of his cohorts from the Shenandoah contingent,
and they were heatedly engaged in criticizing my handling of the
situation.
Angry and deeply discouraged, I returned upstairs and managed to find a
phone jack. On closer examination of the telephone, I found that it was a
circular model. The number buttons, which were quite large, were arranged
in a semi-circle around the bottom edge. They were not in numerical
order, which made it more difficult for me to find the nine and the one.
Nevertheless, I did dial correctly. The phone rang at the other end, and
a voice said: "What city, please?" Thinking I must have misdialed, I
apologized, hung up, and tried again. The same thing happened, so I
thought that maybe she was trying to determine my location. I answered:
"Wheaton, Maryland."
"She's not here," said the voice on the phone. Mystified, I asked the
people who had gathered around me exactly where we were. Someone handed
me a map, but it was a road atlas of North America. There was not enough
detail on it to determine whether we were in Wheaton or Kensington.
"We're just north of the Beltway in Maryland," I said. "I think we're in
Wheaton."
"I told you, she's not here," said the voice on the phone.
"For God's sake, this is supposed to be 911!" I shouted.
Then I woke up.
You all probably thought I was unconcerned about the problem of finding a
space for our Sunday singing, but this story proves that I have been
thinking about it, even in my sleep.
Feel free to pass this on via email, if you like, but please include my by-line and URL:
© 1997 by Miriam A. Kilmer
http://risingdove.com/fancythat/humor.asp
All other rights reserved.
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