Beware The Naysayer

A Word about Naysayers.

Are you prone to frequent illness? Are you clumsy?  Do you habitually fail at tests that you have studied for?

 

Do you do poorly at tasks that you have prepared for tremendously no matter what positive thinking tactics you attempt to use?  Do you have trouble focusing and paying attention?

Do you have streaks of bad luck that never seem to end?  Do things around you perpetually break?

Then you very well have a naysayer in your life.  It could be you.  It could be some lady in the PTA who overheard you talking about the new wood floor you’ve just installed in your vacation home and they are jealous.  Or worse yet.  It could be your grandmother.  It could be anybody. 

I know who my naysayer is.  It’s my very own grandmother. 

My grandmother is the lady on the left.  The lady on the right tragically died shortly after this picture was taken.  She tripped and fell on a knife that was sticking point up in the dishwasher.

When I was 5, I wanted to do handstands and cartwheels.  I practiced all day and night and finally I could do a perfect cartwheel.  I said “Hey Meemaw, look at me, I can do a cartwheel.”
She looked at me, and with her look came the evil eye.  My back bent the wrong direction and my hands landed in the only clump of briars in that grassy meadow.  And I hit my head on a very sharp rock that caused me to bleed so much that my mother forbade me to do gymnastics ever again.

This is not the only incident.  In fact, I have spent years making charts and analyzing the misfortunes of my life using the scientific method and other science things like petrie dishes and litmus paper and I have gathered loads of evidence to support this theory, which I now believe is fact. 

I am usually a wonderful cook, but when I cook anything when my grandmother is around it magically gets burned or too salty or the crust on the bread is too tough.  And then she says “Well, you’ll learn.”  Oh yeah?  I’ll learn.  That’s just great.  And then she makes fun of me because I can’t cook and compares me to Lucy Ricardo!

Whenever I am around my grandma, I trip over things, or get bad burns.  One time, I lived with her when I was taking some college classes.  I studied my brains out every night for hours and barely scraped by with 70 percent. 

There is some circuit in her brain that is is malfunctioning and causing bad things to happen. 

Now she’s in a nursing home.  She wants me to visit all the time.  I used to bring all my kids for a visit.  But my kids were nearly attacked by some old lady’s dog. (They let the old people have their animals at this home) and on the way back home, I got a speeding ticket because of this speed trap that I completely forgot about.  I never forget about that speed trap.  I am a slow driver. 

And the last time I visited her, I got a flat tire on the road as I left.  So I stopped visiting her.  But it’s not over.  I dream about her at night.  She comes to me in my sleep and gives me guilt trips.

 

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