The CEUs of Life

When I was teaching, like lots of people in lots of professions, I had to keep my CEUs up to date. I had to have enough Continuing Education Units every five years to convince the State Board that they should renew my credential.

I am enjoying the CEUs of Life these days. Sometimes they are challenging, difficult things, but sometimes they are just downright happy and crack me up.

A recent CEU was in one of my favorite areas of course and lab work: Introverts and Extroverts: How to Be Friends, or, Kathie's Perpetual Amazement at The Differences and How She Blows Right Past Them.

The other day, my sweet buddy Becky, my smiling airplane seatmate from the airstrip dedication, lost her keys. An email popped up at work right at the end of the day, sent by another friend in the office, saying that Becky could not find her keys and asking if anyone had seen them. Becky was looking forward to heading home and voting (now you know what day it was) and could we help out by taking a look around?

A few minutes later I toodled over to the other side of the building to see if there had been any success. Nope. Someone had volunteered to pick her up in the morning, and another person had volunteered to drive that evening and drop Becky off at her polling place, but they had to get home and couldn't stay to wait for her to vote. Becky said she would just walk the couple of miles home after voting.

The sun sets here in Idaho at 6:00 PM this time of year; can you say dark and cold? I couldn't stand it, so like the helpful-whether-you-want-me-to-be-or-not girl that I am, I told Becky I was taking her to vote, would wait for her, and would drive her home. Yeah, I am gonna let my friend walk home in the dark and cold and rain...right.

As we head to the car, Becky relates to me the saga of looking for the keys and their inexplicable disappearance. She, along with a couple of other folks, searched every inch of floor and drawer in her office. Nothing. She sheepishly confesses that she does have a theory...do I remember that morning when I opened the front door for her because her hands were full with a huge box and other goodies because she refused to make a second trip out to the car? Well, she thinks perhaps her keys fell into the box while she was carrying so much stuff...a box filled with smaller boxes she was sending to a friend for Christmas...which she sealed and mailed that afternoon...to Portland.

Tee hee hee! Becky might have mailed her keys to Portland! I am cracking up, and reminding her that at least the box is headed to her childhood best friend and not a stranger!

As we get to the car, Becky tosses her things in the backseat and climbs in front. As I am still loading a few things into the back, a colleague comes out to her car and asks if Becky found her keys. I leap up to stand on the side where the back door is open and yell over the roof of my car, "No, no keys, but guess what? Becky thinks she might have mailed them to Portland! Ha ha ha!"

I plop myself into the driver's seat and find Becky looking at me, eyebrows up. "Um, not everyone needs to know I might have been a dunce and mailed my keys away."

Oh. I stare back, my eyebrows furrowed down. What? "I was aleady kind of horrified when they sent the email asking for people to help look for my keys...I finally gave up out of desperation, but I would have been perfectly happy for no one to know."

Oh. Ohhhhh. I pull my mouth down into a sad face. Oh, yeah. There are introverts in the world.

I apologize. She laughs and tells me it's fine...she needs to learn to chill about things sometimes. I sheepishly confess, "I forget that introverts don't want everyone to know every time they do something foolish or embarrassing. I, on the other hand, like a good extrovert, have a blog where I can broadcast all the stupid and humiliating things I do. Anything for a laugh. I'm kind of a laugh ho."

By now we are both laughing hard. And I get her permission to tell this story using her real name :)

And she treats me to dinner at Bardenay after voting! Apparently, extroverts pick exceptional friends!

The keys, by the way, did not end up in Portland. They were cleverly hiding under a folder, waiting to be found when Becky sat in just the right spot at her desk the next morning. We think God wanted us to have a great dinner together so he hid her keys :)