The other day, I came across one of my old manuscripts and just had to smile, my “blog” before blogs existed.  I had planned since high school to write a book about the more random occurrences in life and what they teach us – like when your underwear catches on fire.

What more fitting of a title for such a book than “My Flaming Undies & Other Deep Thoughts”?  I’m glad now that I’ve outgrown my underwear catching on fire and moved on to more sophisticated subjects like public urination in Home Depot by my four-year-old.

But it’s time.  If you and I, Dear Reader, are to have any kind of relationship, it’s time you know the underwear story.  It’s time you know why they called me “Hot Pants” in my youth group, and not in a sexy sort of way.

Like most 16-year-olds, I was incredibly eager to drive.  I was a fiercely independent teenager who loved to drive lonely stretches of the highway with my parents before I was old enough to get my license.  I worked three jobs saving up to buy my first love – my own car.  The week that I turned 16, I left the California DMV with my license, all shiny and official, not at all feeling like I’d just enrolled in the State’s tracking system for the subservient cattle-masses.  I was proud and exhilarated.  And ready to go buy a car.

My parents called a family friend who was a used car salesman.  He knew all I had was $800, and all my parents wanted was a tank to keep me safe.  He obliged.  He came to our apartment one afternoon with a beast of a station wagon – primer gray, no hub-caps and with smoke puffing out of the exhaust pipe.  It was a minor let-down; all that work I’d been putting in – convincing a clothing store manager to hire me at the illegal working age of 15 instead of 16, riding my bike to my second job at the grocery store bagging groceries until 11 p.m. on school nights, and cleaning houses for several elderly people on social security budgets.  I saved 80% of my money, and yet all it could get me was an old, curmudgeon-y elephant of a car.

But I wasn’t too full of pride to turn down the seeming only offer of being able to drive – drive myself to school, drive myself to work, drive myself to youth group and the beach and the mall and wherever else I could get to on my gas budget.  And thus, the gray elephant was mine.

I was a safe and skillful driver, so it surprised me one day when a lady cop pulled me over.  I was sweating profusely and terrified that my license was about to be revoked, my car impounded and myself put in jail for violating an unbeknownst-to-me law.  But it was merely a fix-it ticket that she issued for having a broken brake-light.  She said that it needed to be covered in something red – and she left it at that.  As soon as I got home, I began rummaging around the house for something red with which to cover the light.  I was an industrious girl after all, I didn’t need a mechanic.

Of course, the only red item I found in my entire apartment was a red pair of panties.  With three rubber bands and that pair of red panties, I was able to fashion a perfectly acceptable brake-light on a car that wasn’t worth the investment of a real brake-light.  I was quite proud of my ingenuity.

So far, I was the only driver amongst all of my friends, so naturally, I became the willing taxi driver for my friends who rightfully dreaded taking the bus.  It was Jason on That Day who was riding with me.  We went to school and youth group together and he lived nearby, so I often gave him rides home from school.  I took Jefferson Avenue, which was a windy, downhill road with fairly heavy traffic – in other words, a street that required a lot of braking.

Jason was the first to notice flames shooting out the back of my car.  He yelled and pointed and hollered for me to pull over.  With our windows already down, smoke was filling the car and we were terrified that the whole car was going to blow.  I swerved into the nearest parking lot and we jumped out of the fiery beast as fast as we could in action-hero style.

And then I heard Jason laughing.  Laughing like I’d never seen anyone laugh before:  tears streaming down his cheeks and rolling on the pavement – with a pair of red, flaming panties dangling from his fingers.  He had immediately discerned my brake-light solution, but still couldn’t believe his eyes.  “I thought you were cute, but clearly, you’re smokin’!” he said.  All of that braking on Jefferson Avenue had left the brake light on long enough to ignite my underwear.

Even though I could barely stop laughing myself, it wasn’t exactly something I wanted everyone to know, but for the life of me, he wasn’t willing to be sworn to secrecy.  For months afterwards, I was known as “Hot Pants” at youth group.

As if that weren’t enough.  Apparently, the universe thought me much in need of humbling during my teen years.  I was a good girl, I even served my church faithfully, but it wasn’t enough.

I was late for play rehearsal at my church and waiting for our laundry to dry so I could retrieve a clean bra.  I grew impatient and grabbed a wet bra from the load, thinking it would dry in time.  By the time I got to church, it was still quite damp, and of all the cheap costumes that churches rummage up, mine was a white T-shirt and jeans.  I had to have a dry bra.

Everyone was in the sanctuary already, so I snuck through the small lobby with the bright idea that I’d dry my bra in the microwave while hiding out in the nearby bathroom.  I set it on high for 2 minutes, sure that would be enough, and took my indecent self to the bathroom.

The cracking and the popping that ensued were shockingly loud.  It took me a few moments to figure out what could possibly be making such a noise, and then, it dawned on me:  my bra had metal underwire and metal hooks on it!  I threw open the bathroom door, ran full-speed to my doom, only to see my bra, much like the panties, dangling from a boy’s fingers.  Except it wasn’t any boy, or a friend boy: it was a boy that I’d had a big crush on, a boy that knew I had a crush on him, a boy that did not return crushes on clumsy, awkward girls like me.  He grinned as I melted into a pool of shame, and said, “Is this yours?”

“No, of course not!  Who would put a bra in the microwave?  Ha ha.  Ha ha ha,” (arms crossing awkwardly).

At the time, I was utterly humiliated.  But I accepted solace in writing out the experience, submitting it to Seventeen magazine, and seeing it published amongst other true horror stories of embarrassment.  By then, I was hooked on writing, and honored my Flaming Undies in the title of my primitive manuscripts.

Ever since, Life has been teaching me important lessons through random and embarrassing happenings.  Lessons like:  “Learn to laugh at yourself before anyone else does”, “Stories to tell later are worth what it took to get them” and “If you ever put your bra in the microwave, make sure and push “stop” at 47 seconds, because at 48 seconds, all hell breaks loose.”

I’ve always placed great value on stories; big stories, little stories, but mostly true stories, and especially the true stories of the everyday happenings of life.  Stories are what link human beings together, not only as individuals but with humankind of old.  You meet someone and over time, they hear your story and you hear theirs.  Without that telling of the stories, there is nothing worthwhile between you.

Every now and then, however, I forget how much I love having a good story to tell, and instead of discovering the charming details in life that make good little anecdotes, I often allow myself to lose perspective and the ability to appreciate certain things that I otherwise find, well, annoying.

Like two schnauzers and a Chihuahua.

Once upon a time, there lived two schnauzers and a Chihuahua (at least that was the closest thing anyone could come up with to call it).  The black schnauzer’s name was Chauncey Marie, and the white schnauzer’s name was Wolfgang.  Apparently, the enormously bloated, diabetic, blind “Chihuahua’s” name was BooBoo (I know this because every morning, I hear these names yelled over and over and over again by my next door neighbor who demands that her babies come to their mama RIGHT NOW, which they never do).  These three dogs roamed freely about their neighborhood, caring little for socially accepted boundaries such as my rosebushes, my recycling bin, MY LIVINGROOM.  They chased bicycles down the street, picked fights with dogs eighteen times their size, yapped incessantly outside my window whenever they knew Taytem was taking a nap, and of course the obvious, did their business in my yard.  In fact, these little canine gangstas still do, without remorse.

I have hated those dogs from the moment we moved into this house, and wasn’t too fond of the neighbors either.  They are a live-in couple in their early 40’s(?) who only seem to have three things in common: their love of gardening, their periodic drug-use during the winter months (I guess when it’s too cold to be gardening?), and those dogs.  I had the hardest time the first several months we lived here not calling Lukus up everyday to tell him one more thing they did today that was just, “oh, my, gosh.” “She parked on our lawn again.”  “He took the fat one out for another stroller-ride.”  “They’re standing in the driveway cussing each other out again.”  I started looking for every opportunity to be annoyed yet again.  The dog pee killed all my rose bushes, he revved that rickety old truck for 20 minutes right outside my bedroom window, and on and on.  Never mind the fact that they gave us one of their lawn mowers, or a weed-eater, or a chiminea for our porch, or a $50 gift card to a nice Italian restaurant when Taytem was born so we could continue our date nights.  Never mind that she would pull our trash bins around front if it looked like we were going to miss trash day and then put them back once it was picked up.  Never mind that they would go ahead and ride over our lawn with their riding mower if they were out doing their own, or that they complimented Taytem on how beautiful or smart she was, or how quickly I had gotten back in shape after she was born.  None of that stuff mattered.

Then I remembered another story about a Man who once said to “love your neighbor.”  But that wasn’t the part of the story that hit me so hard.  It was when someone in the crowd asked, “who’s my neighbor?” that really got me one day.  We enjoy vague theology, but when you get down to simple questions with obvious answers, things get very awkward.  In theory, loving my neighbor could mean any number of people.  After all, in this global community it’s not hard to comprehend loving all those orphan children in Africa, or the storm victims of Hurricane Katrina.  But if I really allow the question to be asked, “Who is my neighbor?” I can’t deny that it’s the noisy, pot-smoking, schnauzer-loving, lawn-mowing couple next door.

So I gave it a try.  I didn’t race from my front door to my truck, but looked to see if there was anyone to wave to on the way out.  I went and bought plenty of pinion wood so we’d have enough to share between both our chimineas.  Then one day, I prayed for them in my own heart.  Then, at some point, the yelling outside stopped, the dogs stopped coming over to pee on my yard, and they started parking their truck on the street instead of by our bedroom window.  Either that, or I just stopped noticing any of those things that were so bothersome.  That was a few months ago…

Today, I was inside helping Lukus with some work on our house when I heard someone outside calling my name.  It was our neighbor.  He was showing me where he’d planted carrots and cucumbers in our new vegetable garden that’s on a strip between our houses.  He was amazed at how big my cilantro had gotten, so I went and cut some off for him.  He offered to take his chain-saw and cut some of the branches off of our tree that’s leaning on our roof so we’d have more light for our garden and our roof would be safer.  I’m starting to wonder if loving my neighbor isn’t a little selfish, as it makes one feel so good inside.

And they all lived happily ever after.

But forget the dogs.  Jesus never said I had to love my neighbor’s schnauzers or that other so-called “dog”, and I certainly won’t presume to commit heresy by elaborating on the Bible.