Learning and Laughing

I’m teaching a co-worker to crochet. She has been admiring my work for months and asking me to teach her. I told her exactly what supplies she needed and that I would make myself available at her convenience during lunch. I even, after months of talking about it, took her to buy the supplies.

She’s hooked! (ha, little crocheting pun)

Today was day two of lessons. We eat quickly and whip out our projects. I’m working on a 63 square blanket that will probably take me 3-6 months to complete even with me working daily on it. She is learning the single crochet stitch, ten across sampler. Just to get the feel of it. She already dreams of what she’ll make when she “gets good”.

We chat and get to know each other. Her husband is a Baptist minister at a local Hispanic church so we have much in common. She is nearing retirement and says she can’t wait to have all day to crochet for her granddaughter. I warned her that once you get started people (especially the kids) start making requests (and sometimes demands) on what they would like you to make them.

So we are alike (co-workers, Christians, crocheters) but very different (Anglo, Hispanic, 20 years difference in age, different places in our family life). I’m enjoying her company and I’m betting she will teach me more than I teach her.

Her joke at lunch today had me rolling.

A man is dying and doesn’t have much longer to live. He smells his wife’s famous enchiladas coming from the kitchen. It takes all his strength but he manages to drag himself off his deathbed and into the kitchen. There on the table is a dish of enchiladas. He takes one bite and his wife smacks him on the head with a rolling pin. “You can’t eat those! They’re for your funeral!”