Lessons Learned

Sometimes it is hard to get motivation for a post and, to me, that is a very frustrating feeling. I love writing them, but they are only fun if other people enjoy them as well. Talking about my new found love of "Teen Mom", or hatred of food on the bone, might make a good sentence or two but probably not an entire post.

With that in mind, I was determined to write something interesting so I googled "Good Topics to Blog About". I know it sounds a little desperate, but just wait until you hear some of the findings.

Thanks to my Google search, you could have had a blog based on many intriguing topics including:

• What might a shoe and a sock talk about? (Feet? Are they serious?)
• How can you make friends? (By not blogging about this....)
• Could a lapidary play leapfrog in a lyceum? (Dad, if you are reading this: 1. I know you answered this faster than you read it and 2. you know, without a dictionary, I have no idea)
• How is a skiff like a lugger (They both have double letters? I am sorry, what?!)

As you can imagine, I gave up on that idea pretty quickly. I continued to think myself through this slump, and realized I had 21 and 1/2 years of my life, undocumented, with great potential.  So, with that said, I wanted to take you back to one of my favorite stories. It is not my favorite story because it is joyful, in fact the whole thing was pretty unpleasant, but it did teach me a couple very valuable lessons.

It is Christmas time (of course) and the Bryson family has once again traveled to Hampton, Virginia. I think I was in sixth grade at the time, and was still obsessed with all things Christmas. However, this particular Christmas, there was one thing that I was dreading: sharing a bed with my sister. Remember that whole song thing? I think the Jaws theme song would start playing (haha, kidding Katie....kinda).

After a wonderful Bryson Christmas, Jaws, I mean Katie and I crawled into bed and started to slowly fall asleep. Katie was uncomfortable so she asked me to roll over. Since she did not (technically) specify, and being the wonderful big sister I am, I thought it would be funny to roll towards her. She immediately got angry, and told me to move over again. Well I, of course, was enjoying this so I once again rolled towards her. Bad. Move. Jessica. Two seconds, and a very hard twist of a finger later, I was crying.

When something like this happened, Katie and I had come up with a very mature solution (haha). Stop crying and one of us will promise to do something for you so we don't get in trouble. It went a lot like this "Katie, stop crying and you can choose what movie we watch....and you can have the pretty Barbie....OK fine, Ill even slice you some apples and bananas to snack on!" Once the offer was compelling enough, one of us stopped. That night was no different and Katie offered to rub my back until I fell asleep. Crisis averted.

I like to think of it as learning negotiation at a young age.

It wasn't until the next morning I learned the first lesson of this whole event. I woke up with a black and blue finger, showed Katie, and before I could put my toes on the ground she was already in Mom and Dad's room telling them about how mean I was for rolling over. She is kidding right? She broke my finger! I ran into their room and before I even got the full sentence out of my mouth, the lesson was learned:

The early bird really does catch the worm.

I was grounded and Katie was free. To humor me, my parents made a splint out of Q-Tips and band aids (how could a 2nd grader possibly break my finger? it wasn't even that swollen) and sent me on my way.

Finally, one week of slight discomfort later,  I convinced them to take me to the doctor and have my finger checked out. Turns out it really was broken.

This is where I learned my second valuable lesson: negotiation doesn't just happen between a 6th and 2nd grader.

My parents were, of course, very upset they hadn't attended to my finger sooner and exclaimed "Jessica, we are so sorry, are you OK?! Is there anything we can do??" I quickly replied "Yes, Mom and Dad, I am fine...just some pain.  There is only one thing need you to do....I think my finger will feel a lot better if I know Katie is learning a lesson...you should probably ground her."  Crisis, once again, averted. :)

Terrible, I know. Now, Katie and I are obviously way closer than we were back then, and it is all water under the bridge, but it makes for a good story, right?