A Different Drum

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.
                                                                                                                   Henry David Thoreau


I love to watch the world meander through the calendar color wheel as we dutifully follow those preset color rules. The reds and greens of December give way to happy white snowmen on backgrounds of blue for January. July is colored with red, white, and blue. March is dyed green. February, of course, bursts forth in one huge scarlet explosion created by the domination of red with hints of pink here and there for contrast. It’s everywhere: red cards at the Hallmark, red hearts of candy, red balloons, bouquets of red roses, or red carnations, or red tulips arranged in their whimsical little red vases and tied with their red bows.

So I wonder what the florist thought when the husband ordered my valentine flowers this year. I wonder if he had to repeat himself for clarity…or if he was gently nudged by the order taker that he must have missed the memo… or if he was warned with a condescending smirk that he was making some sort of garish valentine faux pas.

Because in the midst of that beautiful scarlet explosion,

 my valentine flowers looked like this.

They arrived with a card that simply said, “I got that clue”.

"I got that clue” is familyspeak birthed when Miss Whimsy was a little girl. In the middle of a frustrated mommy rant over some chaos I’ve long forgotten, I looked at her and said, “Get… a… clue.” She schlumped off to attend to whatever had caused the commotion and muttered, “I got that clue. I didn’t like that clue.” The cuteness of the moment diffused the situation, as The Practical One and I fell into giggles. From that point on, “I got that clue” is our family’s way of saying, “I get it.”

Oddball though I might be, the husband gets me completely, and he knows what makes me smile. So he asked them to add a little yellow to the red and make it orange.

How pretty is that?

I got that clue too. Here’s my gift to him, which included, among other things, some dried orange fruit dipped in chocolate. (I gave him some dipped strawberries too, but they don’t fit with this post so...)

So we danced through Valentines Day to the beat of a different drummer. Next on deck is St. Patrick’s Day. I plan on following the rules then, though. After all, I work in an elementary school. And I don’t want to get pinched.