The other day, as my lunch crew was leaving the restaurant, I got in my truck and noticed the rest of the bunch standing by their cars looking up at the sky. I pulled alongside them and rolled down my window. “What are you looking at?” I asked. Alice turned to me and said, “We are watching these two hawks circling around. They are beautiful!”
I looked up at a gorgeous blue sky, totally empty of clouds, birds, airplanes, or any other objects. “They were there!” Alice said. I just shook my head.
As I drove away, I thought about the times I have been on the other side of the story. Especially in my horse friend circle, I am famous for seeing things no one else sees. The first happened in South Carolina, in the darkness of early morning at the end of an all-night drive to a horse show. My friend Carol and I were traveling with the Gernt family, and we had left Cookeville at 10:00 p.m. to get to the show early the next morning. Vic was driving and I was in the back seat of the truck by the window. At some point I looked out the window and saw an enormous chair sitting in front of a building. “Look at that big chair,” I said. No one else saw the chair. But they told everyone at the show about the big chair I claimed to have seen. No one knew anything about a big chair in the area, or so they said. For the next couple of years, I was teased at every opportunity about big chairs. But I knew I saw it. Then, one day I received a picture from Mary Helen, who had been at the show and actually lived in the area. She had found my big chair.
The second big occurrence was also at a horse show, this time in Murfreesboro. This was a week-long show, when we all moved most of our worldly goods into stalls on the backside of the big barn on the MTSU campus. Just on the other side of a chain link fence was a public street, which brought occasional visitors who would see the horses and come inside to see what was going on. I was alone at the stalls one morning, puttering around while everyone else was off on errands, when three children rode up on bicycles. They asked some questions about the horses, petted the horses and talked about the things children talk about. The little girl in the group said, “I have ducks.”
“That’s nice,” I replied, whereupon she unzipped her backpack and, I swear, three little duck heads popped up and looked around. She had baby ducks in her backpack! I stared for a minute, speechless, then asked, “And you carry them around with you?”
“They like it,” she said earnestly. We talked a little more, then she zipped up her backpack and they pedaled away.
When my friends, Carol and the Gernts returned (it always seemed to be with them that these things happened), I said, “Y’all aren’t going to believe what just happened.” Truer words were never spoken. “This little girl was here and she had three little ducks in her backpack.” I obviously did not learn any lessons from the big chair episode.
They just looked at me. Then someone said, “Were they sitting in a big chair?” I spent the rest of the afternoon swearing to everyone that I did see ducks in a backpack. This was in the days before cell phones with cameras, so I had no proof.
The next day, we were all at the barn, getting ready for the show, when I looked up and saw three children riding their bicycles down the street. I dropped what I was doing and ran out to wave them down. “It’s them!” I shouted. “The girl with the ducks!” They drove through the gate and got off their bicycles. “Show them your ducks,” I ordered. I was about to be vindicated.
“I don’t have them today,” she said. Talk about a letdown! She must have seen my disappointment and noticed the looks on everyone’s face because she explained, “I had them yesterday but I didn’t bring them today.”
“Sure,” said Vic. “Honey, you don’t have to try to make her believe she saw ducks.” We didn’t see the children again for the rest of the week. I don’t know where they came from or where they went. But I promise, she did have ducks in her backpack. And I believe Alice when she says they were watching hawks in the sky in front of Papa Kayjoes that day.
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