The Hunchback and the Hippie

Every afternoon at my school, teachers accompany students out to the car line. Even this late in the school year, many of the kindergarten parents still get out of their cars and walk up to the sidewalk to collect their little ones. There’s one couple who have captured my attention because of their uniqueness: the hunchback and the hippie.

Okay, go ahead and say it: “How arrogant can one person be! What gives her the right to label people?”

You’re right: I deserve it. I’ll admit, at first my only thought was that it made a catchy and comical post title. Then the Holy Spirit got in my face and reminded me of a couple of things.

Have I mentioned that my kids, Mary and James, are both named for my Granddaddy? Have I mentioned that our first child died of a congenital birth defect? That also came from Granddaddy.

You see, Granddaddy, his siblings, and three of his sons were hunchbacks. (We called them “humpbacks”.) They literally/noticeably had the look of Quasimodo. Hunchbacks run in my family, including my oldest child. So who am I to think the unfortunate trait  of the kindergarten mom anything close to comical?

And the hippie? My family has been stretched, its tolerance tested, by more than one and in more than one generation. Yessir, long-haired, pot-smoking, establishment bucking hippies. And I love each of them. No, I don’t exactly understand their ways and their thinking, but I still love them.

Instead of chuckling at the long-haired, hippie shaded kindergarten dad, I should have been thanking God for the gentle reminder to praise Him for the diversity in my family members.

It’s taken weeks to finally write this post. It’s embarrassing, it’s uncomfortable. I was afraid you’d see that horribly judgmental and shallow person in me rear her ugly head. More importantly, thanks to you I discovered transparency overcame my fear.
Thank you, Dear Reader, for holding up the mirror of self-reflection. 

What works for me is to look for more similarities than differences among the people I encounter. I  hope the next time I see someone not like me, I’ll be less likely to allow disparaging thoughts to “find a happy home” in my brain as our pastor used to say. 

Has that ugly person ever shown up in your mirror? How do you respond to her intrusion? Are you like me sometimes and allow yourself to shove the mirror into the drawer?

Come on over to Mary’s and Holley’s this week! There’s some pretty cool things happening in both of their places in space.