Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then my people, who are called by my name, will be sorry for what they have done. They will pray and obey me and stop their evil ways. If they do, I will hear them from heaven. I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.

• 2 Chronicles 7:14

Be very careful about what you think.
    Your thoughts run your life.

• Proverbs 4:23

I once was standing at the window of my house.
    I looked out through the shutters.
I saw some foolish, young men.
    I noticed one of them who had no wisdom.
He was walking down the street near the corner.
    He was on the road leading to her house.
It was the twilight of the evening.
    The darkness of the night was just beginning.
Then the woman approached him.
    She was dressed like a prostitute
    and was planning to trick him.

• Proverbs 7:6-10

Come, let’s make love until morning.
    Let’s enjoy each other’s love!
My husband is not home.
    He has gone on a long trip.
He took a lot of money with him.
    And he won’t be home for weeks.”
By her clever words she made him give in.
    By her pleasing words she led him into doing wrong.

• Proverbs 7:18-21

Now, my sons, listen to me.
    Pay attention to what I say.
Don’t let yourself be tricked by the woman who is guilty of adultery.
    Don’t join her in her evil actions.
She has ruined many good men.
    Many have died because of her.
Going to her house is like taking the road to death.
    That road leads down to where the dead are.

• Proverbs 7:24-27

The Lord says,
    “The women of Jerusalem are proud.
They walk around with their heads held high.
    They flirt with their eyes.
They take quick, short steps,
    making noise with their ankle bracelets.”
So the Lord will put sores on the heads of those women in Jerusalem.
    He will make them lose all their hair.

• Isaiah 3:16-17

“I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then, the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

When I come home at night, she will be waiting
She’ll be the truest doll in all this world
I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl

I guess I had a million dolls or more
I guess I’ve played the doll game over and over
I just quarrelled with Sue, that’s why I’m blue
She’s gone away, and left me, just like all dolls do

I’ll tell you, boys, it’s tough to be alone
And it’s tough to love a doll that’s not your own
I’m through with all of them, I’ll never fall again
Say boy, what you gonna do?

I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then, the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

When I come home at night, she will be waiting
She’ll be the truest doll in all this world
I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl”

• Johnny S. Black, Paper Doll

This song was a hit by the Mills Brothers.

But, a few years before her passing, my wife told me that she was too much like her father.  She would not live to see our fiftieth anniversary.  I do not know if it was a rare moment of pessimism or was she a prophet for a moment?  She died not long after our 48^th anniversary.  But her father died after becoming an open-heart surgery survivor at the age of 61.  My wife’s mother lived to be 91, I think.  But my wife barely got into her seventies.  Either she knew her body or God was telling her something.

But she said then, less than ten years before her passing but also before her medical decline that I should start thinking about trading her in on a younger model.  I joked that I could trade her in on two 30-year-olds, but I doubted if I could get along with one thirty-year-old.  I might not keep up with her, but when it came to cleaning the house, I could out do the two of them.  Maybe I was casting aspersions, but I had met too many young brides that had no idea which end of the mop was the business end.  Then again, if she used the pointed end in the man’s end, you can get him to do a lot of mopping.

When my wife got maudlin like that, I would come up with all my arguments on why she was the only girl for me.

And after she got too ill to do much of anything around the house, she quit starting the “what if” routine.  She was finally satisfied that I could cook, clean, wash, etc. all on my own.

But half the time we had these fantasy dating conversations with me looking for her replacement, all in fun, instead of taking her bait, I simply sang Paper Doll.

But here at roughly two and a half years since my wife passed away, I might have thought about being alone, but I have not been desperate enough to pick up the phone and call anyone.  I have not given it enough thought to figure out the top five that I would call.  Knowing my fifty plus year old history of asking girls out, the list should include at least 25.  I might have gotten that many “no” responses before my first date.

But my eyes were opened recently when I heard the Mills Brothers sing my favorite song of theirs on the television music channel.

I have already created a plethora of paper dolls without even noticing.  I started a fictional series about a homicide detective and his partner.  But then, I thought they had to have a home life.  And those others in the family had to have lives of their own.  And then with a homicide detective, you had to have a criminal element and there might be people trapped within that criminal element that wanted to be freed.

As it stands, my initial detective, Deviled Yeggs, has a wife and four children.  Little GiGi has not even gone to kindergarten yet, but Easter Yeggs is married, and he and Jemima have a baby girl.  The next two both have romantic friends.  Blaise’s girlfriend has others in the family that have yet to be developed, but Sophie’s boyfriend has two kid sisters and by the end of the year, they will both have boyfriends.

Of course, the flag ship series of stories is the Deviled Yeggs Mysteries, but Sophie has her mysteries and Deviled’s wife Naomi, nickname Glyce, short for nitroglycerine, explosive when shaken, has had a few standalone mysteries.  Dev’s confidential informant at the Hoity Toity club, frequented by the rich or rich wannabes has a short series, but Mashie Niblick’s wife, Pauline, has a robust series of misadventures.  But probably my go-to arc from the main storyline has it’s own main storyline, the Pink Lady Projects.  Having thought to be the next boss of organized crime, Pink Lady was in love with Deviled Yeggs’ brother, Scrambled.  She turned the crime family’s brothel into a hard cider operation, reforming the ladies.  And the younger of the ladies have found their boyfriends.

When you claim that these fictional stories are set in the big city of Tracy, there has to be people in the city for it to be big.  And those people are going to have romances of their own.  It is just natural.  Right?!

But, when a female patrol officer meets a handsome officer from the traffic division, they might go on a date.  That kind of thing happens in any big city.

And none of that speaks to the spin-off series of Babs and Harold Conversations.

But it was only a recent realization that all these fictional romances satisfied my longings for companionship.  It is not the same, but it mirrors the lyrics of the song.  I can leave those fickle-minded real live girls to flirty, flirty guys with the flirty, flirty eyes.

And who knows?  By the time this post comes out, I’ll get a knock on the door and a wee lassie might flirt with me, and all this changes.

But notice the Scriptures above.  Those from Proverbs 7 speak of the man being unwise and the woman being shrewd, but both were at fault.  Whether you are looking for companionship the right way or looking for an unwise fast hookup, both parties have to be looking.

So, I think it will take me a long time to get to that stage.

Here are the Mills Brothers, in a live performance on the Lawrence Welk show singing Paper Doll.  There may be better recordings, but this shows a little of their showmanship.

I do not leave the house much.  I do not have to come home at night for her (any one of several paper dolls) to be waiting for me.  Much of the time, I ask myself who in all these storylines have I not talked to in a while.  And somehow, they all have a story to tell.  And since my focus in life is to glorify God, each storyline touches on that topic, unless they simply totally embrace the glorification of God.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.