If you are human and live among other people at one time or another you have said or done something that appeared to another or others to be something you did not intend. The following cute story describes my thought, even though it may be a little unlikely. A man was in the habit of carrying an umbrella wherever he went. Unfortunately, he broke his last good one. Looking at the six useless umbrellas in his umbrella stand, he decided to take them all in and have them repaired. On the way home on the bus, he picked up the umbrella of the woman sitting next to him, purely out of habit. She immediately cried, “Stop thief!” and he surrendered the umbrella and got off the bus, much embarrassed.
The next week, he went to pick up the repaired umbrellas and when he got on the bus with six umbrellas under his arm, he just so happened to sit next to the very same woman. She gave him an icy stare and said, “Had a good day, huh?” I hope he did have a good day in spite of the woman on the bus!
No! Things aren’t always what they seem or the way we may interpret them to be. The following story is such a case but makes you realize what bravery a young boy exhibited during a brief period of misunderstanding. The story is as follows: “Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liza who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her five-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, “Yes, I’ll do it if it will save Liza.”
As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, “Will I start to die right away?”
Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give her all his blood.
Whether an event is a funny misunderstanding or a life threatening one it matters not. In either case it makes us realize how important it is to make sure we say what we mean. We can’t expect, for example that a young boy would understand complex medical terminology without a little boy explanation to accompany it. Too! We shouldn’t expect a lady passenger to understand what we are doing with six umbrellas at the same time. How often do people even save a broken umbrella let alone take six of them to be repaired.
What we hear and what we see often lead us to false assumptions because we are trained to see and hear things in a normal fashion.
When we see or hear something out of the ordinary we draw unusual and unsubstantiated conclusions. That, my friends, is precisely why a musician can find employment and entertain us because he introduces us to the world of blur and we are never sure of exactly what we just saw.