101 YEARS OLD AND STILL PARTYING

                                       101 YEARS OLD AND STILL PARTYING
                                                 Tommye.Wieland Allen
    Amazingly, she really is 101 years old and still traveling and partying several times a year.  Not only that, but she is often the center of attention because of her age and her love for activity.  Lately we have limited her activities to the wedding events of family members which occur several times a year.  Yes, with her length of age and her ability to still survive traveling, she continues to be a part of the celebrations of her many admirers. 
     She's lost a bit of the beauty of her youth so she's not much to look at these days, but after 101 years of traveling to 570 big events and lots of small events attached to the big events, for her to still travel and party, let alone still survive, is amazing to everyone who encounters her.  Her appearance has faded from her original coloring a bit and the elasticity with which she used to easily adjust to circumstances has relaxed considerably, but she still adjusts to the festivities attached to the events to which she has received special invitations months ahead of the events, while the event is still in the planning stage on the bride's wish list.  Yes, she keeps right on trucking, as people say.  She enjoys being the honored guest and that thrill keeps her going at her advancing age. 
     She doesn't dance anymore like she used to do at the receptions.  Because of her advanced age, after she makes her appearances at the weddings and receptions, she is quite pleased to just rest in the special place set aside for her after having done her duty of giving special blessings to the marriage of the bride and groom.  Her blessing is almost as desired as is her valued attendance at the weddings.  She is always an honored guest and her presence at the festivities warrants all the many oohs and aahs from everyone who is alerted to her presence and her remarkable age.  Her history is quite well known by then to all of the wedding guests. 
     This famous old girl, although faded and again in need of repair, has already had nine "facelifts."  She is a blue lace garter which has been worn by 570 brides in her 101 years of traveling and partying.
     Her first event was in 1919, her attendance having been as a gift especially made by Marguerite Trowbridge for her college roommate's wedding in Denver, Colorado.  Her appearance at the wedding was a special surprise gift for Marguerite's roommate.  Then her second wedding came after the suggestion was made by the roommate that she return the garter to the maker for her own wedding, to the delight of Marguerite who married Robert Jarrett Allen in June of 1920.  After that event the garter had a ten year rest until Marguerite was attending a wedding shower and the talk among the female guests began to be about the tradition of "something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue."  That began her legacy of traveling to weddings as an honored guest after Marguerite offered her blue wedding garter to the first bride. 
     At that time the garter was bright blue satin and the lace was still pristine white and those colors lasted for about 20 years.  Inside of a blue satin pocket attached to the garter by Mrs. Allen she placed a 1919 six pence coin commemorating its beginning of its many trips down the aisle for the first time in 1919.   Since the garter fulfilled the tradition of being something old, something borrowed and something blue, that solved the problem for many brides who usually considered their own wedding dresses as fulfilling the "something new" requirement in the tradition.  The garter, as I said, has 101 years of history as of this year.  She has traveled up and down several hundred miles of church aisles, and has attended many receptions where she danced on the leg of the brides.  That was before she got too tired as the evening's dancing progressed,  Understandably, because of her fragility and age, the tradition of the throwing of the garter was discouraged many years ago because of the age related condition of the heirloom garter.  During the last few years she has only been worn during the ceremony and then she has been retired to her ornate silver box to be boxed up and returned to me for her eventual trip to another city in another state.  She will be the honored guest at the wedding of one of Mrs. Allen's great granddaughters in Arizona three months in the future.  
    The garter had one mishap.  The 1919 six pence was lost during the wearing, possibly after being thrown by the groom to a group of attending eligible men as is the common tradition, and the coin was replaced by a 1956 six pence.  The father of the bride searched many coin dealers for a 1919 six pence to replace the original one, but none was to be found.  He settled for the 1956 one, which was agreeable to Mrs. Allen.  Somewhere in the garter's travels a bride added a 1919 penny to the box and another bride added a different garter to be thrown to the group of unmarried young men for the tradition of whichever guy catches the garter is the next one to be married, per the same tradition of the bride throwing her bouquet to eligible women.   
    This famous old garter, although now faded and again in need of repair, has been worn with pride by 570 young brides.  Since 1970 it has been limited to being worn by women who are relatives of a former bride who also wore it.  I am the custodian of the garter, being the wife of the Stephen, the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. Allen.  It has been discussed by family members that maybe the old girl is too tired to continue to travel and party; but as long as a relative of a former bride who wore it requests our fulfilling of her important family tradition she will keep on traveling in her ornate silver box inside of a cardboard box via U.S. Postage into the waiting arms of an excited bride and her mom.    
    In her first 50 years, the garter had the reputation of there never having been a divorce of a bride who wore the garter.  However, that reputation died a long time ago.  The garter has been delighted to grace the leg of brides on second marriages with no condemnation from the garter for the bride having chosen the wrong man for her first time down the aisle.  She still enjoys the attention and is such a sentimental gal that she blesses every marriage, first, second or even more as if it were the first marriage.  
    I feel honored to have been selected by Marguerite Allen as the caretaker of the garter.  It has been endearing to converse with the brides and mothers of the brides for the last 30 years and hear over and over again their exclamations that the bride cannot, absolutely cannot, get married without wearing Marguerite Allen's wedding garter.  As long as I keep on trucking, she will keep on trucking.  Then my daughter can decide what to do with her.  Until then, it's one wedding after another for the old girl as long as she holds together.  She's pretty resilient, kind of like the woman who first made her, Marguerite Trowbridge Allen.  

                                              WHO WAS THAT MAN?
                                                      T. Wieland Allen

     I just returned from my 6:00 a.m. trip to Walmart to do my bi-weekly grocery shopping.  Fortunately it wasn't raining because the bigwigs at Walmart had implemented the caution of only allowing a certain number of oldies, speaking of seniors, in the door to shop because of the pandemic scare.  We "oldies" have our own allotted time to shop at Walmart, fortunately.  However, I never knew there were so many of us in our town.  Since I arrived there at 6:05, there was a reasonably short line standing outside to enter, considering that we had to stand on the consecutive yellow lines which marked the six feet distance we had to keep from the person in front of us and behind us.  I suddenly did not feel like a senior but instead I felt like a kindergartner filing into the school who had been assigned distance markers to keep Billy from harassing Sarah or vice versa.  In this day and age it's more likely to be Sarah harassing Billy.  
   We were obedient to the Walmart worker who stood halfway between the line and the door.  For some reason, I had to resist the urge to tattle to the Walmart line monitor about the man standing two people behind me who was refusing to stand on the yellow lines and instead insisted on standing between the yellow lines.  I normally am not a judgmental person, but I have noticed that the more rules and regulations we are asked to follow during this worldwide pandemic the more tempted I am to be a little bit rebellious to the guidelines. 
   There is a voice in the mind of most of us humans that when we are told not to do something, we instinctively want to do it just to see what is so important about it to warrant a warning.  I always relate it to my grand nephew who was visiting us one time when he was 5 years old and my husband took him to the street in front of our house, picked the boy up in his arms, stood on the curb of the busy street with him and told the young boy not to go into the street under any circumstances because it was a busy street and the youngster might get killed by a fast car.  My husband put the young boy down in the yard to play with the other kids while he went into the house to get something.  No longer was my husband's back turned than the kid walked right out into the middle of the busy street and looked up and down the street to see what he was going to miss that his uncle didn't want him to enjoy.  No car hit him, but I could see on the kid's face what I always thought God must have seen on Adam's face when God cautioned Adam, for his own good, not to do something.  There was a look on our young relative's face of, "I knew Uncle Steve was lying.  There must be something great out here that he doesn't want me to have."  You know that voice in your head that tells you nothing is going to happen if you don't obey the rules.  It has caused humanity problems, destruction and even death since the beginning of the earth.  There were those people in line with us at Walmart who insisted on standing between the lines instead of on them.
    Back to my story about my trip to Walmart to pick up some groceries.  I was glad to see that 99% of the seniors who were shopping along with me had masks on their faces and many had plastic gloves or rubber gloves on their hands, just like I did.  I even had a big scarf around my neck, covering up every spare inch of skin from my shirt to my chin.  You can't be too cautious.  My very cautious son had warned me to be extra careful at Walmart because his brother-in-law had fed him a horror story about how few people were obeying the new rules and regulations pertaining to the pandemic by shopping without masks and even in shorts and summer shirts.  My experience was contrary to what was reported to him.  Now, for Me, a confirmed rule follower, the only skin that might be exposed to the drops of the pandemic virus was the skin between the top of my mask, which was right under my eyes, and the beginning of my hair.  I felt like I had been a very obedient person and had, to the letter of the law, obeyed what the CDC experts had advised.  It was a somewhat eerie feeling to see everyone covered up with masks, scarves, long sleeved shirts, long pants, shoes that covered their feet and various kinds of gloves covering their hands. 
   Suddenly something happened that surprised me and it has left me with some consternation about my appearance.  Almost every person in that store was covered up completely and some people had hats on their heads, just to make sure the drops of virus did not lodge in their hair.  I had not thought about that precaution myself.  The scene in that store reminded me of some movies about the world being destroyed and everybody was rushing to make sure they had enough food if they died, which always defied logic to me. So there we senior citizens were, decked out in our homemade camouflage gear, thankfully, as prevention against the drops of virus that were supposedly in the air, pushing our baskets on which we had sprayed the handles thoroughly cleaned of any suspicious "drops" using the paper towels that had been sprayed with disinfectant as we entered the store.  Happily feeling like I was incognito in my gear, looking like everyone else, suddenly a man pushing a cart said to me, "Good morning, Tommy.  How are you?" 
   I was flabbergasted.  How had the man recognized me with only a few inches of my face being exposed to the air?  I was amazed how he had recognized me with so little of "me" being exposed.  I answered the man politely that I was wonderful and asked how he was, mindfully keeping six feet between us.  I was trying to act like I knew the man who had kindly spoken to me because few people were talking, either because of the early hour or because of the fear of breathing in a drop of the virus.  I had no idea what the identity was of the man who had spoken as if he knew we very well.  All I could see was gray hair, but every head there in the store that was exposed had gray hair in various poses of disarray, considering the early hour.
   As the nice, friendly man and I pushed our baskets further apart, making sure we were at least six feet from each other, I began to think, okay, what about me is so recognizable that the man recognized me with only a few inches of my body exposed when I didn't recognize him with the same number of inches of skin exposed.  Let's see, was it my ample derriere of which I used to try to cover up until JayLo made well shaped rear ends on women popular, for which I am eternally grateful to Jaylo?   No, that was covered up with a long vest.  Was it my distinctive German nose that I inherited from my dad?  No, it was completely covered up by the mask.  Was it something about my hair?  No, I had dyed it the day before and it came out a darker color than usual.  There was no logical explanation to me on how the man recognized me while I did not recognize him in his cautious pandemic coverings.  All I could see on him were his eyes and gray hair, just like me and everybody else in the store.  He looked like every other man in the store. 
   That experience will give me something to keep my mind busy, at least for the day, on what is so recognizable about me that a man could single me out in a store filled with people who all looked alike from a distance of much more than six feet, when I was completely covered up except for my eyes and hair.
   I rarely look in a mirror except when putting on makeup, but I might have to don my pandemic gear again and stand in front of a mirror and figure out what is so unique about my appearance for me to have been recognized quickly and easily by the man, whomever he is.  No, I won't do that.  Just as curious to me is who the dadgum man is!  Now, that is the real mystery!  That will keep my mind busy at least all day.  I may never figure it out. 
   Isn't it kind of pitiful that here we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic with not much encouragement that it will be over soon, and things are so boring from being cooped up for three weeks that the only exciting thing to happen to me is being recognized in the grocery store by some mysterious man.  I guess the question in my mind is, should I be complimented or should I be insulted? I think I'll consider myself complimented to have been so easily recognizable.
   Life does keep getting more and more interesting as we get older.  Not in a bad way, but in a good way. My preoccupation in my mind with wondering how the man recognized me caused me to do an "old lady thing" when I got home.  After I had washed off my plastic gloves to make sure any virus drops went down the drain, took off the gloves and disposed of them, washed my hands the required length of time of five ABCs, put my vest and mask in the laundry room for the rest of the entire day in case there were "drops" on them, unpacked the groceries and threw away the plastic sacks after grabbing them from the inside bottom instead of the outside to avoid "drops", left the unrefrigerated groceries that were in plastic containers on a remote cabinet for the rest of the day to allow the "drops" to die, washed the outside of the containers of refrigerated food with Colorox wipes, put those food items in the fridge, changed my shoes which was suggested by the CDC officials in case Walmart didn't do a good enough job sanitizing the floor, I finally was able to fix breakfast for myself, having thought all of that time about why the man recognized me.  I scrambled the raw egg and the egg white in a bowl, added the spinach and cheese, all the time thinking about the man.  I made coffee, heard the microwave oven beep that my scrambled omelet was ready.  So I opened the door to the microwave only to find it empty and the bowl with the omelet raw ingredients was still on the cabinet.  I had microwaved nothing.  I had done another old lady thing, as I call them, which always warrants at least a giggle from me and sometime outloud laughter as I laugh at myself.  That was a signal that I had spent enough time on wondering something concerning myself and it jolted me out of self reflection, which often is the devil's temptation to give too much mental attention to one's self.      
   Maybe the incident happened for me as an opportunity for me pray for the man.  I just thought about that.  It was really a supernatural event.  Okay.  I got the message.  The man needs prayers.  Thank you, God, for the reminder. You got my attention!  God knows who he is.  I'll just pray for the mystery man.
   Thank God for having the privilege of belonging to God's Prayer Co-Op, a name that a friend and I called the cooperation between a person, God and us when we know that we are called to pray for someone.  We bring someone into the unity relationship we have with God.  It's like when Jesus prayed that we would be One with other people and with Him just like He and God are One.  When we pray for someone for whom God alerts us to pray, it's cooperation between God, us and the person, a spiritual co-op! 
   God's Co-op is much more important than any thought relating to ourselves.  We can always trust Our Father to bring us back to what is important, praying for each other and praying against the demonic force behind the pandemic or any other catastrophe that is going on in the earth.  That's what His kids do, enjoy the Co-Op's call for prayers.
   There's nothing to be bored about when we are engaged in the call of God's Prayer Co-Op.  It's a full time profession which has magnificent results which bring unspeakable joy to us.
   God bless the mystery man!   I know He will!