watch a weigh my sense

This morning at church a young lady I hardly know was baptized. I’d been upstairs helping out with the kids’ class, but we all headed back to the auditorium to watch. We crowded in at the front of the auditorium, and I had one kid on my lap and more all around me.

Just as the Chloe’s father was about to immerse her in the water, usually a quietly profound and moving moment for the congregation, the eight-year-old boy next to me leaned in and whispered, “Did you know she plays the bagpipes and she’s only in the second grade?”

“Really? That’s cool,” I said admiringly. Then she went under and then she came up clean. We all clapped and rejoiced.

After service, I ran into her as she and her mom were leaving. Her hair was still wet when I hugged her and congratulated her on becoming a Christian.

Then I said, “I hear you play the bagpipes.”

She looked at me the way most kids would look at me if I handed them a set of bagpipes.

Then her mother, who I’d also never spoken to before, caught wind of our conversation and said, “What?”

“Bagpipes,” I repeated, looking back and forth between Chloe and her mother. “Don’t you play the bagpipes? Jack Henderson told me you play the bagpipes…”

She shook her head and her mother laughed. “Oh, Jack. He just made that up.”

I babysit Jack a lot. He’s one of my favorites, so somehow I found myself defending him even in this preposterous situation. “He doesn’t usually lie,” I said, as if I believed there must have been some occasion when Chloe had at least pretended to play the bagpipes and Jack remembered it. I pictured her playing a Scot in a school play, kilted and winded. "You know, Jack Henderson, age eight, reliable source."

They both laughed. I blushed for having believed that a little girl could play pipes that take the air out of full-grown men, and for this being my very first conversation with Chloe or her mother. I suppose it was a good ice breaker.

I told her that next time I see Jack, I will tell him all about how much I enjoyed her recent bagpipe recital.