Joy Preferred !

Sen. John McCain, who once parlayed his choice of Sarah Palin to run as his vice presidential candidate in 2008 into a stumbling, bumble-footted loss to our first black candidate for president, Barack Hussein Obama, had to face a rude truth Tuesday, December 5.

He had more than 2,999,983 Twitter followers so he thought, before he got any sicker from brain cancer, or more fatigued from his hopscotching between the Republican Party and the "Gang of Eight", he might pick up enough new followers to make the number a "round"  3 million !

So he went online and asked for his followers to help add 13 or 14.

The result was rather rude. Within a few minutes, 11,000 or more had resigned or rescinded (or whatever) their  "followingship".

It made me remember some times when I didn't ask for it, but got the truth that conceivably saved my life later on.

The earliest was when I had "sent off"   for a ventriloquist dummy, and it didn't come when I thought it should.  The dearest person next to my mother in our house, tapped me on the shoulder and said "I think Mr. Glosson is  at the door." (Hosea Glosson brought the mail.)

I ran to the front porch which was empty, just as my next best favorite person in the whole world laughed and gurgled "April's  Fool"!!!  I've hated that day ever since... And particularly love the vigor behind the words "April is the cruelest month of all....."

Another time was when I was about 12 and a boy from Virginia at our Boy Scout camp in the Rabun County mountains, taught me about Foxfire--- where and when to find it and how to use it to scare younger scouts in pitch black dark, when two chips of the phosphorescent rotten would shows like the eyes of a nightmare Panther!! 

I didn't get to use the knowledge until I was a scoutmaster in Buford, and when I did use it, John Ray Roebuck pitched  pail of water all over me. 

I'm sure Sen. McCain is impervious to psychic pain by now.  As a naval flyer, he ditched in the ocean.  Then he was tortured by his communist Vietnamese captors. Those  "occurrences"  were certainly more than disappointments. He had probably had interruptions of his life as the son of an admiral that  prepared him for the big hurts. But toward the end, one would--- one does--- prefer acceptance to rejection.

I've read a lot of biography and no man that I can remember had closer, faster bonds with family and the kind of communication with friends that is so open that it seems to contain no pauses and no "secrets".   The wisest words a living man ever offered me were: "If you got a secret... You've got a Problem !"

But, it is painful to experience desertion by a close  friend and never know why.  In the bad old days of my midlife, I missed many appointments, reneged on flimsy agreements and was never conscious of, much less affected by brashness and acting out... not mine and not others'.

But something a lot more life-changing than John Ray Roebuck's bucket of water was handed to me when I did not even know how to ask for it.

I hope Sen. McCain and that everyone else who is disappointed by "desertions" or negative responses has the chance to expand, and learn it is never too late to be, as CS Lewis so handsomely described it:  Surprised By Joy.