SPEAKER_00 1:01

Pablo Picasso once said more blue. This isn't going to be in any kind of chronological order. It's going to be God moments as I remember them, as they stood out, not as they happened. I remember the summer of nineteen sixty six, because it's the summer I saw the Beatles in Cincinnati, Ohio. It's the summer that our foreign student came from South Africa and we became lifelong friends. But it's also the summer that I had one perfect day. I kind of realized it at the time, but as the years went by and I looked back on it, it became more and more of that perfect day. And I knew that God's hand was in it somewhere. That I came to appreciate later. It was midsummer. And the weather was Iowa summer perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. Blazing sun, blazing blue sky. The corn well past knee high. Judy Hall was still around. She was in my high school. We'd been in school all along together since the second grade. But now she was on the edge of my acquaintances. She always wore braces and had a rather gym teacher quality about her. I'm sure she did sports. But our circles didn't cross. I just knew she was there. On the perfect day, it had nothing to do with Judy Hall. Except maybe obliquely. I was with a friend from school. A boy I liked. There was nothing special between us that summer. We were just casual friends. And we were hanging out with another couple from school that I knew. Slightly. One of them had a car. And we were mostly driving up and down the back roads. Through the fields and the little forests that grow by the rivers in Iowa. And I call them little forests because they never extend to more than half a block or so away from the river. And then we're back to prairie. But we came across a little bridge with a stream running underneath. Maybe ten feet wide. And you could see from the bridge it was very shallow, so we decided, all of this, that we'd go wading in this beautiful river on this beautiful day. A sparkling day, really. I remember that the leaves sparkled in the sun and the water sparkled, and it was just a sparkling day. So the four of us climbed out of the car and clambered down the hillside and began wading in the water. And the water was only ankle deep or so. And we were splashing each other, and it was just it was just a day of people having fun and people enjoying their lives and people being alive in the universe and alive in the moment. And all of a sudden, I raised my foot and it came down squarely on a broken bottle. The bottle was neatly broken, by which I say its bottom was flat on the bottom of the river. The top half had been broken off the bottle, and so the jagged edges of the broken bottle faced straight up in the river. And I couldn't see it because it was clear. So I came down full weight with my right foot on that stupid jagged bottle and immediately started screaming in pain. I lifted my foot up, and there was blood dripping everywhere. It had managed to cut a bottle-sized hole in my foot, some places deeper than the other. And blood was just running, so I I was panicking. Well, these two boys, they came right over and lifted me up and carried me up the side of the river, which was no small feat because it was steep and covered with branches and slippery rocks, but they managed to get me to the car. I don't remember how, but we must have had some kind of bandages. I don't remember precisely, but I think somebody took their t-shirt off and wrapped it around my foot, and by then I was so embarrassed at having stepped on this bottle. It did kind of ruin the day. But eventually the bleeding stopped, and my foot bound in a t-shirt didn't slow us down for the rest of the day. But it did put a damper on our plants. I don't remember the rest of it, except later when this boy took me home. I have to tell you the way our family house was built. There was a slant up the driveway, a slant in the yard, so that when people pulled up, like to drop me off, you were parked facing into the living room, which had a big picture window in it, which had the draperies open at all times, which had a giant light shining. Even though it was a table lamp, I'm sure it was at least a hundred watts. So it brightened everything in the driveway. This boy and I snuggled up in the corner of the car. Because we truly had a bonding day. As I said, we weren't close, we were friends, we were acquaintances mostly. We shared classes, and all of a sudden, we were in mid-swoon. I don't know how that happened. I don't know why that happened. And I think of it now. It was just a moment that kind of engulfed us both. But that light shining from the living room shined right into the car where we were. And so this boy and I kept scrooching down farther and farther to be out of the light. Because for certain, if somebody had walked by the window and looked out into the car, they would have seen us there. Not that we were doing anything that couldn't be seen. And it was just a moment, or maybe a few minutes. But I just remember this is what it feels like to be safe. To be safe in somebody's arms. It's just for a minute. Just for a few minutes. And kind of loved and adored. Just for a few minutes. And eventually we said good night. I got out of the car, went into the house, turned off that damn light, went to bed. Well, school didn't start for another few weeks. And I had no occasion to see this boy again. He didn't call me. In those days in the sixties, people didn't really do dates. We did group activities. And when we came back to school in a few weeks, and I saw him in the hall near the lockers. We said hi to each other. And we never spoke of that day again. Now I'm I'm sure as the day is long, God gave me that perfect day. Maybe I only remember it because of the incident with the bottle. But maybe that was a wake-up call. Wake up, look around. This is your life. It is full of possibilities, and people are good and are kind. Even if they never call you again.