Out of Sight

I have a shortcoming. Okay, I have lots of shortcomings. This just happens to one of the few that I recognize. I suffer from a seeing disorder. I have a bad case of out of sight; out of mind.

I hate that about me and it does not serve me well as a church pastor. For some odd reason I do not understand, people who have been absent from church want to be missed. I am supposed to check up on them and see why they were absent; if anything is wrong. Gee, skip worship and perhaps you should call in, tell us your reason for missing and ask for an excused absence. Instead of wanting to be missed, perhaps we should be embarrassed about our absence and just hope no one noticed.

Anyway, I have noticed that out of sight; out of mind doesn’t just apply to people who are missing from our social mix. We can lose sight of things and forget they exist. I am especially thinking of upkeep and maintenance. A car would be a good example. If I didn’t have a reminder on my windshield there is little chance I would remember to change the oil as regularly as I should. That whole engine thing remains well hidden under the hood. Because there is no notice staring me in the face, the fate of the tires is much iffier. It takes a bit of a skid on a rainy or snowy day to remind me that it may be time to replace the tires. I did better with my windshield. It had a small crack in it on the passenger side that I lived with for over a year. Then I took it in for a wash and the crack spread clear across to my side and I remembered that I needed the windshield replaced. Did it that week. In sight; in mind.

Before I give my next OOS-OOM illustration, let me harken back to a very funny television show – Hollywood Squares. If you are too young to remember it, I’ll explain it to you. The set was a large tic-tac-toe board of X’s and O’s. Hollywood notables (I wouldn’t call them stars.) sat in boxes marked with X’s and O’s. A star was chosen by a contestant to answer some goofy question, the contestant would decide if the answer given was right or wrong and if the contestant chose correctly, he or she won the square. Three X’s or O’s in a row won the game. The questions were weird and the answers were almost universally hilarious.

I clearly remember the day one contestant chose Charlie Weaver to answer a question. One could never be sure what would come out of old Charlie’s mouth. He was often bleeped. This time the question was, “Though he has never seen one, Jackie Gleason believes they exist.” The correct answer was, “Flying saucers.” Charlie Weaver’s answer was, “His shoes.” I’m pretty sure Charlie was referring to Gleason’s great girth. I thought about that the other day when in a store observing people. That is what I do when I go to the story because I hate to shop so I am certainly not in the store to shop.

Again, let me take a moment to explain something. I am a large fellow. I am not husky. I am not big and tall. I am not over weight. I am fat. While observing the folks in the store I started to notice a common factor among we large folk. You can call it profiling if you like, but I did it. We all had something in common. Our shoes didn’t look all that good. Every shoe I checked out needed some cleaning and a good coat of polish. Some needed new shoe strings. And some flat out needed replacing. All of us seemed happily oblivious to the disrepair of our shoes. Like Jackie Gleason, it seems that our shoes were out of sight; out of mind.

Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved