A Better Story

Write a Better Story

(especially when I know nothing, which is honestly most of the time)

I dropped some bags off at Goodwill the other day. Our local Goodwill store accepts items at the rear of the store. There’s a door there and workers who wheel out big bins and hand out receipts. They also tell you when they do not want your items, which is necessary, I guess, but sometimes a little hurtful. They will not take clothes hangers. Lightbulbs. Even the not so terrible golf clubs that I was offering up the other day. Because the worker said, apologetically, that they had some in the store already that were in better shape than mine.

Anyway. At this Goodwill, you pull into a single file line, one car at a time, wait for the car in front of you to unload, then drive up and drop off your items. The car unloading in front of me was a newish SUV with a specialty license plate that said something like “Grammers,” which was a cutesie way of saying “Grandma,” I decided.

Grammer’s car was full of boxes and bags. The woman unloading that car did not look like a grandma. At all. She hefted the boxes and bags into the Goodwill’s wheelie bins. Then, as she neared the end of the load, she reached in and carefully pulled out a large doll. It was close to the size of a toddler boy. He was wearing overalls and had a fishing pole in his hand. He also had a straw hat that fell off when she took him out of the back of the SUV. She set the doll down on the pavement, carefully put his little hat back on his head, and drove away.

This ruined me.

I had an entire movie running through my head as I pulled into the loading zone to drop off my bag of linens (a gently used pink blanket that my daughter didn’t need anymore. Also some nice sheet sets, because how many sheet sets do you need when you only have one twin bed in your house? Really! You do not need five sets of twin sheets for one bed! And the golf clubs! But I had to take those back home, because apparently they were not up to Goodwill’s standards.)

The woman who gently (lovingly!) set down the doll with the straw hat was clearly too young to be a Grandma, so I figured that she was probably the Grandma’s granddaughter and Grandma had passed away so she had been delegated to drive Grammer’s car to Goodwill to unload the cherished possessions that nobody in the family wanted. Sad! Grandma loved that little fishing boy doll! It reminded her of her son! It reminded her of her youth! But nobody else had room for it. So away it went to the Goodwill.

That’s the story I made up.

Devastating!

But what if?

What if I changed the story? If only to make myself feel better?

Because maybe Grammer isn’t dead? Maybe she is downsizing!  She asked her granddaughter to help her get all of the crap out of her house (Grammer’s words. Not mine). Grammer is sick of the stuff. Sick of the knickknacks and baubles, the trinkets and souvenirs. Grammer sold her house. She bought a small trailer that she can pull with that small SUV. She is heading out to travel around the country. She might even caravan down to Baja with other retired Grandmas. She is going to sit on the beach and drink margaritas. But she could never do that without getting rid of that blasted doll.

That could also be true.

I spend so much time making judgments about people and situations that I truly know nothing about. Often, it’s such a waste of time, epecially if the stories I create only depress me. But maybe I can try to change that? I can challenge myself to put a positive, redemptive spin on situations that I encounter out in the world, the moments that stay with me. A little random optimism is never a bad thing.

So? My new story: Grammer isn’t dead. She’s actually out in the world, living her best life.