The Earring

Book 4 Part 10

You Can't Control Your Memory Legacy

BY SYDNEY LANDER

We all like to think we'll be remembered for our charitable acts or outstanding contributions to society, but in my experience, it's our human foibles that endear us to others.

This was brought home to me recently when I met a pastor's wife who moved to our community. Since I graduated from the seminary where her father was a teacher who had taught my Old Testament class, she asked her parents if they remembered me. I would like to say that her Dad remembered me as a brilliant scholar, but he was not the one who remembered me at all. Instead, her mother said she recalled my name vividly.

It seems that during the height of a New Orleans flood, I made a call to the seminary and got her mother on the phone. I was headed for the seminary from downtown and had to travel through some deep water. My car made it through the water, but quit on the Interstate when I headed up hill.

I walked through the rain and down an off ramp into a fairly sleazy-looking neighborhood. I located a pay phone hooked to the outside of a closed bar. A few blocks away I could see a major intersection full of stalled cars abandoned in the deepening water. No one stirred on the side street where I stood, except a lone mailman trudging his way through the deluge. I guess he took his postal oath seriously, "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow. . ."

When I got Mrs. Smith on the phone at the seminary, I explained that my husband was in class, having preceded me to school. I described the rundown neighborhood in which I was stranded, adding that I was pregnant and my car was broken down.

She remembers me because she ventured out into the downpour to find my husband and send him to my rescue. The female Sydney is forever branded in her memory as the poor pregnant girl standing in the rain hoping for a knight in shining armor.

Another incident that endured me to strangers was a three-minute testimony I gave before I was sent out as a summer missionary. A commissioning service was held at the state convention for all of the Louisiana students who would serve that summer. I wish I could say that I said something so profound that people were unable to erase it from their memory. Unfortunately this is not the case.

When I called the state convention office several years later and identified myself to the receptionist, she said, "Oh, I remember you. You went to Alaska as a summer missionary." She admitted, though, that she remembered me because of the levity I provided at the commissioning service.

Since so many of us were being sent out, several of us were chosen to give three-minute testimonies. The others simply gave the basic information: their name and the place they were being sent.

Why they asked me to talk for three minutes, someone who was petrified to speak in front of groups, is anyone's guess, but they did. I had to submit a written copy of what I planned to say. I memorized the written testimony before I tendered it. The person who reviewed it suggested one change. I inserted the recommended statement and committed it to memory.

Before the service, we were told that it was not unusual for novice speakers to have lapses in memory and that under no circumstances were we to go back to the beginning. The first speaker from each school would tell what school was represented and how many students were going as summer missionaries. David was going that summer too, and he was in front of me. He introduced Louisiana College.

"I am David Lander from Louisiana College," he said. "There are five of us going out this summer. I will be going to the Philippines."

I was next. I gave my name and destination and began my memorized testimony. When I came to the place where I made the change, my mind went absolutely blank. I looked over at David in desperation with a mute plea for help. He leaned over to the mike and did just what we had been told not to do. He went back to the beginning.