Favors

Like most of you, I have a long list of things I DON’T do very well…learn choreography, dance in character shoes, keep my house clean and clutter free, run, cake decorating, play basketball, find new and interesting ways to serve my families vegetables, lose 10 pounds, win myself a car …and the list goes on. But with all those things (and more. So many, many more. Sigh) that I am not good at, it’s nice every once in a while to enjoy something is easy for me. Something that may be hard for other people, but for me, it’s a piece of cake.

My neighbor called me this week and asked if I could possibly do her a HUGE favor. She had been assigned, because she has access to a silk screening machine, to do a flag for girl’s camp. She had gotten the tiger all done on the flag, but she needed someone to finish the edges and figure out a way to hang it. She brought over a flag pole and a walking stick, unsure of which one to use, or even how to attach the flag, since her flag pole was kind of broken in the attaching department.

“No problem,” I said. Because, honestly, that didn’t sound like a hard thing at all. And, it wasn’t. I cut it straight (even though for the life of me, I can’t find my rotary cutter. Urg.), serged the edges, hemmed it, sewed in a pocket and a little thing to hang it by, “fixed” the little attacher thingy on the pole with a few rubber bands (don’t look at me like that–it works, I promise!) and put the flag on the pole. Done. Silly me, I didn’t take a picture before I took it over, because I thought it really looked good.

I took it over to her last night and she was SO GRATEFUL! Like her gratitude was too much for the amount of work I had done. I told her it was no big deal. But, to her, it WAS a big deal. Because she doesn’t sew, she had NO idea how to get it to stay on the pole, and it was one more thing she had to do to get ready for camp. I’m very happy that I can be of some help. It reminds me that we all have talents and things that come easily to us, and it’s ok to be proud of those things. It’s good to share your gifts with friends. It’s nice to be able to do that thing that for her is a huge problem, but for you, it’s no big deal. Now if I could just find someone who can lose 10 pounds for me, that would be a nice favor, don’t you think?