Keeping Both Feet On The Ground

I hung out with Jan again last night. I picked her up after her Thursday night engineering women's club meeting and we drove to Village Inn for some pie. This made for a much warmer date than the previous night's walk in the snow. I apologized for the flying incident, and for freaking out and not really talking to her after that. She told me she understood--she knows it's hard not to use your mutant powers, that sometimes it happens without you even realizing. She also understands why it freaked me out and why it took me a day to calm down enough to talk about it. She alluded to a time she used her power and ended up ruining her relationship with her dad. She didn't offer any more detail than that, and I respected her wish not to talk more about her power. She promised she'd do what she could to help me abstain from flying--that we could help each other resist the temptation to use our powers.

I started to tell her the latest about Lucy, but she stopped me because she'd already read about it here on the blog. She told me it's awfully egotistical of me to assume Lucy's illness has anything to do with me. This is Lucy's challenge, not mine. If I want to help Lucy, she said, I should stop thinking as if the world revolves around me and start thinking of things from Lucy's perspective: How is Lucy feeling now? What does she need from her friends? And, of course, Jan is right. I need to stop wallowing in self-pity and start worrying about others. Being a Mormon mutant has its challenges, but at least I have my whole life ahead of me. Thinking about what Lucy is going through now really puts everything in perspective.

Jan also told me that if I'm going to keep writing about her on my blog, I need to stop making her out to be some perfect angel. It's not fair to put her on a pedestal, she says, and it's sexist. So in an attempt to be more feminist, I will tell you that after she finished her French silk pie, Jan belched loud enough to make people all over the restaurant turn and look. She laughed and so did I, but I have to admit I felt pretty embarrassed. She also comes across as a know-it-all sometimes. And she snorts when she laughs. But I still think she's awesome. Sorry if that's sexist.

We talked until Village Inn closed, then I drove Jan home. It took us a good half-hour to... ahem... say good night, but I stayed safely buckled in my seat the whole time. It was like Flight Lite--same emotional high, zero guilt.