September 8, 2018
The Big Wave
Football season started…
Yes, we watch lots of college football and I have one daughter determined to be a Gator cheerleader for at least one season.
Becky and I are watching Ben-Hur and we start talking about Biblical families and eventually trace back to the origin of the Ishmaelites and Israelites. Sheik Ilderim is one of Becky’s favorite characters in Ben-Hur and she’s making the case that his culture appears to follow nomadic Jewish teachings. (This was another hypothetical history, culture, and religion play debate. I love to make their brains work by asking questions and playing “defense attorney” when they choose to lay a case for something.)
During this discussion, Becky says “well, Ishmaelites are technically all family; sons of Ishmael like Israelites are all sons of Israel.”
I said, you could go to say we are all descendents of Noah. She replies with “Adam,” pauses, “oh, yeah, Noah and his family were the only ones living after the big wave.”
And I, with my over-active imagination, get a hilarious mental picture:
I see cartoon water as “wavelets” all lining up and “doing the wave” around the Earth like football fans around a stadium. Little wavelets rise up on top of each other like cheerleaders in a pyramid as they shout, “we’ve got to cover all those mountains!” There’s a dolphin with flippers up shouting, “roller coaster!” A few hammerhead sharks try to ride the wave (my Daddy tells a story of surfing into the Savannah River & seeing hammerhead sharks surfing next to him).
I will never think of the Great Flood without hearing Becky’s voice say “big wave” and seeing that mental picture. (Used to be, when I heard “Noah” and “ark,” my brain replayed the 50s cartoon Noah where everyone is singing and this line always sings through my mind: “I’m Mother Noah, Captain Noah’s wife, I wear the pants aboard this boat, you bet your life.”) I like the wave-surfing sharks and roller coaster loving dolphin picture better.
Sometimes the over-active imagination of a writer is a strange thing…
Thanks for reading!
Type at you later…
~Nancy Tart