A pain only my enemies should know

You may recall a while back I wrote about how I'm a big cry baby and then I listed off things that made me cry and one of them was people being kind. Here's an example:

My knee locked up at church yesterday, right before church started, up on the stand, as the choir was about to start practicing. In the words of Bubbe, "Oy, the pain, the pain. A pain only my enemies should know." I won't go into detail of how much this hurts except to say that if some kind man had come up and offered to amputate my leg above the knee with a rusty nail file I would have said "Yes, please!" Because it hurts so bad moving is out of the question. Just the thought of moving made me a little swoony. So does writing about it so I'm going to move on. The nub of it was that this has happened several times before and the only thing you can do about it is to wait for it to unlock which meant that I was trapped on the stand, right next to the organ, which I should have been playing, and right next to the choir, which I should have been singing in. But I wasn't doing either because I was too busy trying to not pass out.

Naturally I started to cry, because that's what I do. But it wasn't so much the pain that kept the tears coming, it was how nice everyone was being. Kindness kills me every time. What I could really use in situations like these are tough love and a good joke. But that was not what I got. I got lots and lots of hugs and sympathetic looks and a hanky (how do you decline a hanky when you clearly need one but you have a disturbing feeling about hankies in general?) People don't think to say something funny when they see a girl crying. I really wish they would. I spent the entire meeting up on the stand in tears. The only thing that got me smiling was the thought that people in the congregation who didn't know what was going on probably thought "Gosh, Rachel is really struggling with something today," and hoping that someone would feel so bad about it that they would bring be a plate of brownies this week.

Eventually someone did tell me a good joke (thanks Brandy!), and the primary kids cheered me up with their rehearsal for next week's program (is there anything better than primary kids? I don't think so.) and 2 hours after it locked up (TWO HOURS!!!! Knights of Columbus!) my knee cap moved back to where it was suppose to be (queasy again. Must stop thinking about it.) and I was finally able to get off the stand. Angels were singing in the heavens and the Blue Bird of Happiness returned to my heart.

Except that the tears didn't stop because the kindness didn't stop. For the rest of the day I got lots of "Hooray! You're walking! Let me give you a hug!" Weep, weep, weep. Even when I got home it didn't end because I was getting phone calls from people making sure I was okay. And then I started thinking about Suzanne, who played the organ for me, even though she doesn't feel comfortable winging it. And then I realized that I don't even know who took over my Sunday School class. I was a complete pathetic mess.

So what did I do? I went down to my paren's house because only my mom knows exactly the pain of a locked knees and the inability to stop crying.*

********************************************

Want to know what else makes me cry? The Special Olympics. Liz, Liz, and I helped out with them on Saturday and seeing people get so excited over a ribbon really warms the heart. There's not much to report on it because it basically consisted of us standing around for 8 hours cheering as the athletes rode by on their bikes but it was still a great time.

*Check out the family blog for the epic Dice Showdown that occurred after my mutant powers turned the lights out again.