The Witmer Trio Hits the Stage

THE WITMER TRIO HITS THE STAGE

Many, many years ago, when I was a sixth grader at Manheim Christian (yes, the same school in which I now teach music), plans were in progress for the annual Christmas program. My sisters, Barb (2nd grade) and Doris (3rd grade), and I were beginning to sing together in three-part harmony, so it was decided that we would sing Away in a Manger prefaced by a little poem of which we each would say a few lines. The year before, I had wowed everyone with my dramatic rendition of a very lengthy narration for a play. So I was eager to equally wow them with our amazing little trio. Certainly I was a rising star!

Keep in mind that in those days MCDS did not believe in instrumental accompaniment, so to get a song started correctly a pitch pipe was used. Every time we practiced, one of the teachers would blow the correct pitch and we were able to find our starting notes from there. Also, every time we practiced, we used a song book.

HOWEVER, as we practiced one final time at home (I can still see us standing in the upstairs hallway at home), we discovered that we could easily do it without the book. And for that matter, I was quite proficient with blowing the correct pitch on my dad's pitch pipe. Who needed a book? And who needed a teacher to blow the correct pitch? Certainly not us!!

So off to the program we went. As we waited backstage (which was just a stairwell), an eighth grade boy began to tease me when he saw me holding my dad's pitch pipe. "You're going to blow the wrong pitch," he playfully taunted. With great indignation I retorted that I KNEW how to do it.

Of course I knew how to do it, and I was about to prove my point. As soon as we hit that stage I blew the pitch. Doris jabbed me with her elbow and whispered, "We have to say our parts!" Oh, that's right! We were to say our little poetry lines first. So Barb said her few lines, then Doris said hers. And I blew the pitch. Again Doris jabbed me with her elbow. "You have to say your part," she whispered. Oh, that's right! I hadn't said my lines yet. Now I was beginning to feel pretty stupid, but I said my lines, or so I thought. AGAIN Doris jabbed me with her elbow. "You said MY part!" she practically hissed. By then people were beginning to giggle. I can still clearly see two women, one was my best friend's mother, and the other was the mother of a missionary boy in my grade who was at our school while they were home on furlough, and I liked him a lot. Those two women were almost bending over with laughter. Somehow I managed to say my correct part, then blow the correct pitch, but as we sang WITHOUT THE BOOK I got my words mixed up, I lost my high tenor part and began singing an octave above Barb's alto, which sounded absolutely horrible. The song seemed to last forever as we plundered through all three verses. As we left the stage, there was the middle school chorus, all lined up and ready to go on. I had to quickly get into my place in the FRONT row, go out there, and face those laughing ladies again. Needless to say, all thoughts of stardom were dashed that night!


One added note to this story. A few years ago I created a musical entitled "A Trip Down Memory Lane" for our school's 50th anniversary. I included the above event in the musical and had three girls, sisters Megan and Kelsey Harley, and their cousin Hannah Metzler, reenact this sad, but now funny experience. We dressed them up like little Mennonite girls, and they REALLY hammed it up. This time, because they knew it was a reenactment, the audience just screamed laughing. There was one sensitive older gentleman in the audience who was shocked at how people were laughing, because he thought their mistakes were genuine, instead of planned.

Thankfully, that experience did not ruin my life, or that of the Witmer trio. We had many years of singing and ministering together, both a capella and with guitar and keyboard accompaniment. In fact, listeners to WDAC in this area can still occasionally hear our songs on the Sunday School Meditations radio program for whom we recorded about 100 songs back in the day.

A Messy Day at the Optometrist

Today's story is both funny and gross. So if you have a weak stomach, maybe you don't want to read it. I have to preface this story with the fact that I am EXTREMELY near-sighted, and I do mean extremely. (I think my contact lens prescription is a minus 10.5). Contact lenses are the best invention ever, in my mind. However, before I started wearing them in 1985 I wore coke-bottle glasses, and occasionally they needed repairs......

A MESSY DAY AT THE OPTOMETRIST

It was a mild day in February or March, Lisa and Anthony had a day off school for some reason, and my glasses were broken. So I packed the three children into the car and off we went to the optometrist. I was feeling particularly optimistic because Jeremy had just had a very successful week of remembering to use the potty EVERY time for EVERY function. I smugly took just my purse - no bag with diapers or change of clothes. Whew!! Those days were OVER!!

Upon arrival at the optometrist, I had to turn in my glasses for the needed repairs, and I was invited to sit in the waiting room until the glasses were ready. There was a very nice children's toy corner, so while my children enjoyed playing there I sat among the adults. Being nearly blind without glasses, I could not talk with anyone because I could not see if they were looking at me or not. So I just sat and stared into the blur. Meanwhile I listened to my children playing and I felt very proud. They were playing so nicely with each other and I just loved being a mother. Until......

Lisa said, "Mommy, Jeremy stinks." Right out loud. I could have died. I calmly walked over hoping maybe he had just passed gas. Wow, he really DID stink! I walked him to the rest room and discovered the unthinkable. He most certainly had not just passed gas. He didn't even have a nicely firm poop in those little training pants. He had runny poop up his back and down his legs. I could not believe it. Here I was with just my ladylike purse and absolutely NOTHING with which to clean up such a mess, less yet anything else to clothe him with. WHAT was I going to do????

So first of all it was off with all the clothes. Then I tackled the cleanup with wet paper towels - LOTS of them. I kept flushing the toilet in order to avoid clogging it with too many paper towels at once. Keep in mind that I did not have my glasses on, so I had to keep my face right up close to see what I was doing. Needless to say, the smell was horrendous, and I was trying to keep from choking. All the while my mind was racing to come up with some idea of what to do with a naked little boy after he and the clothes were all washed up. I DID wash everything, shirt, undershirt, corduroy pants, training pants, socks, probably shoes, little boy. It took a LONG time, and in that time I did come up with a plan. I would go out to the waiting room and get his little coat and my big coat, wrap him up in both, and take him to the car where Lisa (age 9) would wait with him. I washed and washed and washed my hands, trying desperately to get rid of the smell. Then I gathered up his washed clothes to take them to the car - shoes, socks, pants, shirt, undershirt, training pants..... the training pants, where were they? I looked again at everything I held in my hands, I looked in every corner of that rest room, I looked in the trash can, I looked EVERYWHERE. They were nowhere to be found. There was only one possibility left - I had apparently mistaken them for a wad of paper towels and flushed them down the toilet. I could feel a sense of total embarrassment come down over me from head to toe.

I would most certainly have walked out of that place right then and never returned, but for one thing - they had my glasses and I couldn't go anywhere until I had them back. I followed through with my plan, wrapped Jeremy up in the coats, took him and the wet clothes to the car, minus the training pants, solicited Lisa's (non too willing) help, and went back inside to wait for my glasses. I was glad I couldn't see any faces. The last thing I wanted to do was make eye contact. They called my name, and as I sat before the optometrist, a brother to one of my high school friends, I told him my sorry tale and apologized profusely. I offered to pay any damages or repairs their plumbing might need as result of my mistake. He found my story tremendously amusing.

A week later my sister Doris had to go to the same place to get her glasses repaired. He told her that they had had to call Roto-rooter to unclog their plumbing. I never got a bill for it, and believe me, I NEVER went there again! And I wasn't at all sure I loved being a mother after all!

The (Not So) Silent Prayer

Today my nephew Eric will be heading West in the big rig he bought. We got an email last night from my sister Barb asking for prayer. At this time of year weather is such a factor to consider, and 24-yr.-olds think they're so invincible. Barb said, "I know he's 24, but I'm his mom and I'm allowed to worry!" So when you see weather reports from across the country the next several days, lift Eric up in prayer.

My Uncle Bob Myers passed away on Thursday. He's the one I wrote about on Feb. 3rd who called the family meeting together. I just love to imagine my mom rejoicing with him that he's in Heaven. For that matter - HIS mother. He told us at that family meeting, "I don't know about the rest of you, but when our mother died, I lost my best friend." And he began to cry. I asked him how old he was, and he said, "Eight." He remembers of her saying to him one time, "What am I going to do, Bob? Here I am, so sick, and I have all these boys. I guess you'll have to be my doctor." We've been told that spending money on medical needs was not a priority for my grandfather. No wonder this dear mother of ten children, having a heart condition and no money for doctors, wondered what she was going to do. What a precious thing to imagine the reunion of Bob with his mother on Thursday. Pass the tissues, please!

And now on a lighter note, here is my story for this week:

THE (NOT SO) SILENT PRAYER

In March 1993 the music teacher at MCDS left to have a baby, not planning to return, and I had been hired to replace her. This was my third round of employment at this school - I had taken leaves when our children were young and again later when I tried to become a home school mom. So I felt quite familiar with everything and everybody that first morning back to work. As usual, the day started with staff devotions. On this particular day they were sharing prayer requests. There were quite a number of them. And then it was time to pray. Frank Rittenhouse, who was principal at that time, was in charge, and he said, "Let us pray for..." and he mentioned the first request. I expected someone to pray for that request, but we waited and waited and waited, and NOBODY prayed. The request was for someone on staff, and I began to feel very sorry for that person, that no one cared enough to pray over her request. So I gathered up my righteous indignation and decided I didn't care if I was the new kid on the block today, I would pray over that request, and I did. Then Frank mentioned the next request. Again, we waited and waited and waited, and NOBODY prayed. I could not believe it. What was wrong with these people? Had they all lost their courage to pray aloud? I almost prayed again, but my righteous indignation was not quite strong enough to do it a second time. I was stunned when Frank went ahead and mentioned the third request before anyone had even prayed for the second one. Again, SILENCE. And then it suddenly dawned on me - their custom was that the person in charge would mention the request and they would each SILENTLY pray for it. Where was a hole in the floor I could go through, please?

Frank (who has since gone back to his original position as third grade teacher and whose classroom is right across the hall from mine) and I have been laughing over that memory for fourteen years. And anyone who knows us can easily imagine what it sounds like when the two of us start laughing! I did think it was a stupid custom, and they soon changed it from silent to audible prayers! Thankgoodness!! At least no new teachers since then have had to make that mistake!

The Trip Home

As I look at other blogs, I have noticed that some have special days of the week for special posts. So I'm going to start Story Saturdays. I love to tell stories. I have lots of stories, it seems. I've been kindly accused by a co-worker that whenever someone tells a story, I top it with a better story. I've tried to catch myself when I notice myself doing that, but it's hard. Everything I hear reminds me of something I've done, or had done to me, or heard about..... And I just want to tell the story. I even find it hard to comment on people's blogs without telling a whole story that I was reminded of when I read that particular post. Pathetic, I know. I've often had people tell me, "You should write a book." So here's the first story in my book:

THE TRIP HOME

Many years ago, when the Witmer household consisted of the parents and the five youngest daughters, of which I was oldest, (the oldest of the youngest five, that is), we went on a Christmas vacation trip in the Ford station wagon to Mobile, Alabama, where older sister Mary Ellen lived. The entire trip and visit had been a great pleasure, and all that remained of it was the trip home. At some point we girls decided that sitting on seats was entirely too confining, so the back two seats were laid down, and we had a big area to lounge around in.

One of the greatest travel pleasures for us was a set of tall, color-coded Tupperware cups with lids. We had cleverly frozen water in them overnight, so all day long we sipped on the good, cold melting ice in our respective cups. We slept, read, wrote, sang, aggravated each other, laughed, played the alphabet game, anything to pass the time as we drove up the long, boring Interstate 95 toward PA.

Things were going along fine until Dad made a slight error and found himself driving IN the city of Baltimore instead of AROUND it, as planned. Things became tense. Mom got out the map as we found ourselves in rush hour traffic on streets we had never heard of before. Things became very tense, and we girls knew we had better calm down and behave. And then the unthinkable happened. Dad had to slam on the brakes just as one of the girls, who was leaning against the back of his seat, opened the lid of her Tupperware cup. The COLD melted ice went right down Dad’s back. In a VERY loud voice he said, “WHAT was that?” as he continued to navigate the car on the crowded, unfamiliar streets. My sister explained and apologized profusely, Mom tried to dry his back, and the rest of us hid our faces in our pillows as we tried not to SCREAM laughing. All the way through Baltimore our minds would replay that moment, we would look at each other, and the giggles would just try to explode out of our bodies, but we knew that Dad had not found it one bit amusing and he needed to be able to concentrate.

But now these many years later, he laughs along with us whenever we recall that moment. And to this day, the memory of it never fails to elicit all the giggles we kept inside that day!