Jingle bricks

“Jingle bricks, jingle bricks,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to drive
My Caliber today-ay.”

I know. You’re thinking I have a hit single on my hands. But this song just emerged.

My husband started the brick rolling. He came home midday to pick up some papers. Driving back to work, he saw bricks lying streetside in front of a house being built near ours. A scavenger at heart, he stopped and asked the crew foreman, “May I have a few of these?”

“You can have them all,” the foreman answered.

Visions of cool brick projects danced in my husband’s head. Short on time, he picked up some bricks – 24, to be exact – brought them home and unloaded them in the grass near our garage. “If you want,” he told me, “you could drive down there this afternoon and get the rest of the bricks. They’re going to throw them away at the end of the day.”

One, two, buckle my shoe;
Three, four, shut the door;
Five, six, pick up – bricks!
Seven, eight, lay them straight.

That rhyme also emerged, as I opened the tailgate of my Dodge Caliber near a pile of red-brown bricks. Picking up two bricks at a time, neatly placing two layers of bricks in my vehicle’s back end, I felt like a cross between a homeless person plundering a garbage bin and a child stacking blocks.

Visions danced in my head, too – visions of bricks piled randomly in our side yard until the day brick projects materialized. Having errands to run, I took the bricks with me, thinking they could lie neatly in my car until I found a suitable spot to store them and time and energy to put them there.

Ah, but the bricks did not come neatly. Nor did they come quietly. Instead, they jingled like Christmas bells. Whenever I turned corners, they thudded like Santa landing rooftop. It being February, I did not say, “Ho ho ho.” I tried to maintain my composure amid incessant and annoying jingling punctuated by abrupt and violent thuds.

As soon as possible, I stopped to investigate, opening the tailgate curiously, cautiously. Thankfully, toppling bricks had done no visible damage while thudding around in my vehicle. Mysteriously, the jingle-bell noise seemed to have no other source than the bricks themselves. I found nothing metallic that might be bumping against the bricks or itself rattling or shaking.

Abandoning my errands, I drove home, jingling all the way. I backed the car into the driveway, opened the tailgate and spent the next hour hauling 60 bricks, two by two, from the back of my car to a discreet location behind the house and relocating in like manner the 24 bricks my husband had deposited on the grass beside the garage.

Amazing how a little distress goaded me into action, completely rearranging my priorities, producing time, energy and insight for a task I previously had no inclination to tackle.

Once a man named Paul wrote a letter that distressed its recipients. Later, Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 7:9, “Now I’m glad – not that you were upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. . . .The result was all gain, no loss” (MSG).

If something is creating distress and havoc in your life, why not let that distress spur you to action? Let it jar you into turning things around.

Instead of stewing, try singing:
“Jingle bricks, jingle bricks,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to leap
To action in this way.”

© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.