a little speaking

Last night, I went to the annual kick-off meeting for the home-school co-op that we belong to. "Co-op" sometimes confuses people ... it's just a group of families ... we don't trade seeds or granola or anything. When we first started homeschooling and my kids would get asked where they go to school ... they would say, "we go to a co-op". This reply often raised some questions ... if not eyebrows. Rather quickly, the answer changed to ... "we're home-schooled".

Anyway, I went to this meeting ... and for the fifth straight year ... listened to all of the teachers give their little talks and then each of the board members shared a bit too. Every year, when I hear the speech teacher speaking, I think something like ... she's neat ... I like her ... I bet my kids will enjoy her class. She teaches seventh through tenth grade ... so I hadn't had any reason to make her acquaintance thus far. Last night, however, the speech teacher and I just happened to find ourselves at the snack table at the same time {getting cookies, of course} ... and I said, "I think you're so neat and I'm looking forward to having one of my kids in your class." She thanked me and then I added, very spontaneously, "You know ... when I was in school, I never had the chance to be in a public speaking or speech class ... maybe you could offer a little elective class for the moms sometime." Where did this idea come from??? It seemed totally out of the blue ... I had never even thunk this thought before ...

Then, tonight, my mother called me and we chatted about this and that and some nonsense too, I suppose. We were about to hang up when she said,

"Oh ... I've been meaning to tell you about this guy that I met at Savers a few weeks ago ..."

"Yeah?" I encouraged.

"Well ... there was this guy with a cart full of yellow tee-shirts ... new shirts. So I asked him what he was going to do with all of those shirts. And he said he was sending them to Africa. So I told him that my daughter {that would be me} had been to school in Kenya for a semester. And I found out that he is the pastor of a church. And he said it would be great if you would come speak to his young people."

"Hahahahahahahaha." This was me ... LAUGHING.

"Are you kidding??? Did you tell him I was there like fifteen years ago???"

"There's plenty of things you could talk about." Mom encouraged. "He gave me his business card so you can call him."

"Hahahahahahahaha. That's really funny. Really funny," I said. "Actually ... you know what makes it even funnier?" I continued ... and then, I proceeded to tell her the story, from just the night before, of my asking the speech teacher to offer a speech class for the mothers.

"See? God's lining it all up," Mom declared ... half-kidding ... half-not.