One-eyed Jack (or Jolene in this case!)

Okay, so here’s my thing…..I believe every person should engage in service. It is a great way to focus on what is important in life. Whenever I am feeling upset, depressed or stressed I try to insert a little bit of service into my life. Unfortunately for me, more often then not these service opportunities seldom turn out the way I want them to!

For example, I work retail. During this time of year the hours can be long and harried. The stress of the holiday season was recently getting to me. I found myself experiencing a bad case of tourette syndrome after being yelled at for the fourth time that day by a guest who couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t tell them everything on the ad that would be coming out in 3 days!!!!

Then I had to clean up a level 3 spill on the magazine aisle. (A Level 3 spill indicates a spill that could possibly contain hazardous materials ie…blood, throw up, chemicals, bodily fluid) You don’t want to know what it was but a guest slipped on it and fell AND the person who left it was arrested for shoplifting ladies panties and indecent exposure!

About this time I decided I needed to perform some form of service so I could remember what the season was all about. Outside the front doors there was a collection of people who had been camping out to buy a WII Nintendo system. They had been out there for days and it was very cold. I decided I would take them some hot chocolate. Now, I'm allergic to chocolate. However, I decided I could safely get the chocolate to the guests outside without coming in contact with it.

I went to the food area to pour the chocolate. UNBELIEVABLE! The machine was broken. I decided this was Satan’s attempt to stop my act of service in its tracks! I was not going to let this alter my plans. I was determined to do a nice deed! I went and bought a can of Swiss Miss (with marshmallows even!) and made 15 cups of steaming, hot chocolate. I carefully carried the cups to the front door. I balanced the cups on a row of carts. I unlocked the front doors, picked up the tray of chocolate and proceeded to spill it onto my crotch! It was so cold outside I could actually see the steam coming off my pants!

As the hot beverage soaked into my clothes, I ran to my office. I scrambled to find my epinephrine pen. I gave myself a shot and grabbed my inhaler. I had the pleasure of managing the store the rest of the day with a chocolate stained crotch while trying to walk without rubbing the hives and blisters raw that formed between my legs!

This brings to mind another time in Logan, Utah when my service goals went awry. I was assigned to visit-teach a blind lady in my ward. This lady was very kind but was very high maintenance due to a drug addiction. During the time I knew her I went above and beyond the call of duty to try and help her any way possible.

I once drove her to the local Wal-Mart (there was no Target in Logan!) and helped her pick out lingerie for a special night with her husband. I wished I was blind when she asked me to help her get the outfit on and then, “How do I look?”

Another time, I invited her to come to a ward party. The men were going to be serving the women dinner. I arrived at her house to pick her up and found she wasn’t ready. I asked her if I could help in any way. WAY WRONG QUESTION!!!!! She asked me if I could put her eyeballs in! What the #@##%#$#@. Up to this point in our relationship I didn’t know she had glass eyes. I actually would have been okay never knowing this information. (I had a beautiful neighbor who once told me she shaved her big toes and that was all I could think of for years.)

My neighbor explained to me how to tell which way they went and I proceeded to “pop” them in. I got them in and immediately noticed one didn’t look quite right. From the side view my neighbor looked like Igor from Young Frankenstein. The Christ like thing to do would be to “pop” the eye back out and start over. However, I’m not very Christ like. I took her to the party with the bulging eyeball.

Midway through the meal, Jolene started complaining that her eye felt dry. (Since I put the eye in upside down, her eyelid wasn’t closing over it properly.) She asked me to help put some wetting drops into THE eye. No way, Jose! I could see that thing was only holding on by a thread. Finally, we got to the speaker portion of the evening. As we were listening to the talk, Jolene……sneezed.

Yep, you guessed it! Her eyeball flew out of her eye and started rolling across the floor. All I can say is at these stressful times in my life I tend to have tourette's. There I was, chasing this poor lady’s eyeball across the floor. Thank heavens for the microphone cord! It stopped the eyeball. I grabbed that slippery little sucker and raced back to the table. I tried to clean it off by rubbing it on the hem of my skirt but that was creeping me out. I decided to drop it into my glass of ice water to get it all clean and shiny again. (Besides, she said it was dry)

Just in case this ever happens to you….I don’t recommend putting an eyeball in a glass full of ice water. It tends to ruin the spirit when people start screaming. I took the eyeball out with my spoon, breathed on it to try to warm it up, and put it back where it belonged.

The moral of my story is…..For about a year after this whenever I thought of the scripture…..When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God…..I could only think of that eye, floating in my cup of ice, staring at me!!!!!