Office Space

I bet you thought I was going to talk about ANOTHER movie. Nope. 

I've actually lived in office space. 

 

My parents were gypsies back in the day, except my dad wore business clothes and my mom had short hair. We moved across the country more times than I could count as a wee one. Back and forth, back and forth. Moving trucks felt more familiar and oddly comforting than any of the places we lived. But, each house (or otherwise) holds a piece of my story that I treasure.

 

Lately I can't stop thinking about a year of my life that we lived in an office building. It resembled a house except that our back yard was a black top parking lot that could house about 30 cars. All of our bed rooms had dry erase boards on the walls, which to me as a 10- year-old-wanna-be-artist, was the best room accessory EVER. We would draw on those things until our rooms were full of marker fumes then we'd take a break and go ride bikes in our back yard parking lot.

 

One of my brothers learned to ride a big kid bike on that black top. He was about six years old at the time and us older kids watched in horror as my dad pushed then let go of the back of his bike. It was summer time in Mesa, Arizona and the asphaslt could easily fry an egg. The stakes were high for my little bro. If the poor kid lost his balance and the bike went down he would be burned. Now that I'm typing the words it sounds rather awful, but I remember watching as though I was witnessing a gladiator event. My brother never fell and he became a bit of a hero that day.

 

I remember watching the OJ Simpson car chase in our office/house, mostly irritated that the breaking news was trumping my favorite show Diagnosis Murder (anybody else remember that show? Dick Van Dyke...anybody??). My mom was pregnant with my sixth sibling and our neighbors had a large trampoline in their back yard with a huge hole in the middle. We jumped anyway. My rag tag siblings and I were regulars at the Hostess Outlet down the street. You can find another story about our favorite Hostess store here.

 

I love the quirkyness of it all. Our stories no matter how weird, or normal, funny, or hard; hold value. We mean something no matter what our pasts hold. I love the depth of human beings, which reflects the depth of God. I know pain can rear it's ugly head as some of us think back on our childhoods, but I hope we all have places to go to share our pasts and feel some hope in each new day. We are God's art, even if we ate a disturbing amount of Twinkies while living in office buildings :)