Rose: A cautionary tale

~Dedicated to Sarcy: Thank you for the insperation~

The flower, rose, is a beautiful thing, but with the beauty comes thorns. In the case of this perticular rose, there were a lot more thorns than beauty, as I found out in Guatamala...

It was late May, and I could tell immediately after stepping off the plane that this was no typicall winter weather. It was about 90 degrees, and extremely humid. The missionaries that we were to be working with during our time in Central America were nowhere to be found. So while us womenfolk went to the bathroom to freshen up, my dad and Jonathan went to find the missionaries, and the other missions team we were going to work with.
Once me, Joycee, Lisa and Rubeena (the girls on our missions team) were finished in the bathroom, we were met by Jonathan, who then led us to the 'lost' missionaries, who had just been waiting outside. It was there that we were all introduced. After smiling and offering greetings to the group of sweaty-but-otherwise-normal looking people, I realized they had left one out.

"Oh," said Steve, the head missionary, "And this is Rose." I suddenly noticed the small old woman at my side. She was slightly orange, had bad teeth, and looked annoying, but I decided not to let that get in the way. I would try to be nice to everyone on this trip.


The bus ride to Zacapa (the main village where the missionaries lived), all she did was talk, and look annoying, but I still wouldn't let that bother me.


It was the second night in Zacapa that my good spirits were slightly punctured. We were having our nightly prayer/bible reading meeting, when Steve asked if anybody wanted to comment on the portion of scripture he had just read. Rose did, and thus launched into the longest, most irrelevant to the scripture, most annoying tale about her life, and how it was SOMEHOW connected. Jonathan and I exchanged looks, as if to say, "Oh great; another old lady with hour long sob/prayer-stories." Oh yes, but it would only get worse...


It was hot, I was filthy, I was thirsty, and I was heaving/throwing huge rocks into a dam we were building. Joycee had just handed me the biggest rock yet, but I sighed with relief as I noticed I was quite close to the pit, and could the throw it in. I turned, preparing to chuck it, when I saw that Rose stood in my way, arms open; ready to recieve the rock,

"Rose, could you move?" I grunted.

"Well, see, what I was thinking was that you could hand it to me and I could throw it in."

"Rose, this is extremely heavy, I just want to throw it." I was sweating right now, and getting quite anrgy.

"Well," she said calmly, looking at me with those horse-ish eyes, "If you could just hand it to me..."

"Rose, PLEASE MOVE! If I hand it to you, I'm going to drop it and hurt both of us!"

"Ok, Joy, hand it to me." A tear of anger trickled down my cheek, but I handed the rock to her anyway. In the process of doing so, she almost dropped it on my foot, as I had suspected.


A bit later, two of the village boys had come to help us move the rocks. They were around 12 or 13, and much stronger than I. They joined the assembly line, and had just handed me a medium sized rock. I turned to toss it to the next person in line...and it was Rose, of course. I had already learned my lesson with the dam, so I tossed it without further event. In catching it, she made one of the strangest grunts I have ever heard. The two boys and I exchanged glances and almost burst out laughing. I had the greatest urge to point to my head and make small circles with my finger, signaling she was crazy.


My next horror story happened in the 2nd village we visited, Likidombo. It was once again stifling, and I saw Rose wetting something with her water bottle. It turned out to be a bandana, and she proceeded to tye it around her neck.

"Rose, what's that for?"

"Oh, this is something to keep me cool. The cold water on my neck makes me less hot. Would you like one?" Feeling like I had died from heat-stroke already, I accepted one of her bandanas. After wearing it around my neck for about an hour, it started to itch. I took it off, and realized there was a faint red ring around my neck. Though this may seem like a small trail, it's just one more of Rose's evil schemes to hurt me.


Here is one of the last, and probably one of the worst stories ever:
I had been waiting for a while for the shower to be free (the other girls took an insanely long time to wash), when I came across Rose in the front room. She was sanding at the sink with a horse scrub brush, a towel, and a cup for holding water. I noticed that she was scrubbing herself, so I asked,

"Rose, aren't you going to take a shower?"

"Oh no, I haven't taken a soap and water shower in 30 years." Now I have to say that I did a pretty darn good job of stifling my shock and absolute mirth,

"Oh, so what do you do to get clean?"

"Well see, I use a method called 'Dry-brush Massage.' It's where I take this scrub brush and scrub all the dirt and dry skin off my body, then rinse it off with water."

I sort of nodded my head and shied away from her...that place...that brush...


Now the last story I'll bore you with (but there are more. Oh yeah, baby. There are more.) is this one:
We had just eaten dinner with some of the missionary's friends, and the food had been burritos. Upon discovering that the burritos had some sort of mayonnaise in them, Rose informed us that she was alergic. She however, continued to eat. Afterwards, as everyone expected, she got quite sick. Me being a caring soul, and not letting the past stand in the way of kindness and humanity, I asked her how she was feeling. She relplied with a very annoyed look on her face,

"Joy, let go and let God."


Ok Rose, I'll be sure to do that.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my very-long-and-probably-one-of-the-most-boring-and-dissapointing stories you've ver heard, but I just had to get it out, you know?

NOTE TO ROSE IF YOU FOUND THIS BLOG SOMEHOW AND WERE HURT BY IT: I just had to do it.


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