I Kid You Not

 There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.  George W. Bush

Misquotes, missteps, and malapropisms. They happen to everyone. When I hear them, I chuckle. When I commit them, I try to laugh—or at least giggle a little bit. Often, though, I turn bright red, or my embarrassment results in a total brain shut-down. In those moments, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you my name!

What I can do is to pause. Take a moment to regroup, take a breath, and find my center again. It’s a difficult thing to do when all eyes are on you, but it’s doable. We’ve all been there. Can I tune in to our shared humanness? Am I open to sharing in the silliness of the moment, or is my ego trying to tell me a lie about how inferior I am? That same ego will battle back after the fact to find resentment and anger, if I forget Who I Am.

Gratitude can be hard to feel sometimes, but in moments of shared mirth, even when (maybe especially when) it’s at my expense, I am invited to relax into the shared experiences of all us crazy, spontaneous, funny, often foolish people.

I kid you not.