The Poosey Digest... by Freida Marie Crump
Come on out from under your bed, Margaret
Greetings from Poosey.
Margaret was perhaps seven years old when she moved into our community and became a third-grade classmate of mine. Tall and athletic for her age, she soon became the first chosen for every game we played in P.E. Maggie could hit the softball further than any boy in the class and she had a hook shot that left us agog. That's why we were all so surprised on the day Margaret went nuts and became a sobbing coward.
She'd moved to our little Missouri school from Florida. In fact, in all of her seven years she'd never been outside the Sunshine State. She'd seen the ocean and we hadn't. She'd tickled the heads of dolphins and we'd settled for wrestling catfish. She'd slid down sand dunes and all we'd ever done was trip over cornstalks. But then it snowed and Maggie lost her mind.
Word has it that she was playing in the front yard with her brother Ross on one December afternoon when the first snowflakes started falling out of the Missouri sky. According to Ross, Margaret first froze, then her eyes widened, and the next thing Ross knew his sister was under her bed, screaming about the sky falling. It took a pleading mother and two bowls of Prairie Farms ice cream to bribe her from under the bedsprings.
I sometimes sit and flip through the news channels as the economies of the world burp and wrangle, wars ignite in faraway places, and the new form of professional wrestling known as politics pretends to do something about all the hassle. On the right and left I have Fox Network and MSNBC who don't even pretend to be objective, and CNN that screams the "The Sky is Falling!" headlines like a video version of the National Enquirer.
Which sometimes leads me to ask myself, where's the truth? Is the sky falling and if so, is there a place I can safely hide? Does Margaret have room under her bed?
From the comfort of my easy chair, I can turn my head just slightly away from the television and look out the front window, and believe me, the two perspectives just don't match up.
This morning I saw Billy Whiteside working in Mrs. McBride's yard. She lost her husband last summer and her words, "I just have no idea how anything works. Frank did it all." As a result, even the smallest tasks; fixing a leaky pipe, propping up a sagging eaves trough, putting a bit of gravel in front of her garage have become major worries. Billy Whiteside saw the problem. When he drives by her house and sees something in need of a quick fix, he simply does it. As does Hurley Martin who actually enjoys trimming a hedge and Lucille Biddle who's probably the best plumber in town. Mrs. McBride leaned over in church last week and told me, "You know, Freida, when Frank died I was afraid to call anyone. I didn't want to be a bother. I had no idea how much people would enjoy helping me."
And while Fox Network screams fear and paranoia, MSNBC slathers everything with a liberal brush, and CNN just screams, I again glance away from the set and see a church down the street whose boxes are bursting with toothbrushes and Excedrin bottles bound for Haiti. Strange. The sky on the TV seems to be falling while the live-action drama outside my front door gives me a view of Bob Laird going down the street in his pickup to gather the winter-drop of sticks in every yard, Emma Wilson who's pulling out of her driveway to serve her stint as "volunteer reading buddy" at the grade school, and I know it's just about time for Marge Thompson to put on her warm boots and head down to the Bread of Love where today she'll be ladling out chicken and noodles.
The sky may indeed be falling on the talking heads of the cable news networks but we've somehow been spared the crash out here in the hinterlands. Of course the real danger comes when we actually begin to believe what we hear from those commentators whose income is determined by their ability to play to our fears and prejudices.
So I look down at my TV's remote control, trying to determine which button will give me the true state of the world. Aha... I find it. It's labeled "Off."
Come on out from under your bed, Margaret. Not only is the sky firmly in the firmament, but it's a much better than you might have feared.
You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you'll enjoy the trip.
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