Sometimes we have to let loose and do the unexpected. It makes life more interesting and sometimes more fun.
We’ve grown up in a manner that we’re set in our ways. We’ve done things throughout our lives that establish patterns and so there is always something “expected” of us. If we deviate, it sometimes throws things into chaos and other times, the unexpected can make things so much better.
The unexpected happened when I was babysitting my friend’s three boys. They came home from school and immediately disappeared to the backyard. They so quickly disappeared that I was like “where’s the boys”. Within a few minutes they came tromping into the house for a snack. Their jeans were covered in mud but they had the biggest smiles on their faces. When they went back outside they asked me to watch them. They took their tonka trucks up the hill in their back yard, planted their butts in the bed of the truck and came flying down the hill. They’d put their feet out to stop themselves before reaching the wall. Sometimes they’d launch from the truck when they hit the wall and fly a little before hitting the ground.
Then they asked me to join them. I looked at them with a raised eyebrow and the excuses started “I’m too big for the truck…I can’t sit in it”. Then the memories rolled in. Several years ago when the middle child was little and the youngest wasn’t born yet we used to go down the hill in the wagon. The only difference was that back then there wasn’t a wall that we could fall off of.
I eventually grabbed a truck and started heading up the hill. When I got up there and sat on the truck I said “what the heck” and quickly laid on it with my belly knowing full well that if I didn’t stop before I got to the wall I was gonna get royally jacked.
The boys and I must’ve spent 2-3 hours outside with those dump trucks going up and down the hill. It was a blast. There was some bruising and some scrapes but no one was complaining or whining. Doing the unexpected was awesome.
You’re probably wondering…how does this related to diabetes…that was almost a hard question to answer, but then it came to me… it’s not so much about us people with diabetes doing the unexpected (I mean, sure we can, we can do something our doctor didn’t tell us to do and shock them when we show up for our next appointment, like logging our numbers) but I think there’s greater room for the people in our lives to do the unexpected.
For example:
We expect that if we have dessert you’ll ask “should you be eating that”. Do the unexpected by sitting down and having some dessert with us.
We expect you to think that diabetes can be managed by a book…the same method for everyone. Do the unexpected by not telling how to do something but asking us how we handle that situation.
We expect you to get concerned when we slack off from our care…Do the unexpected by not expressing that concern and realizing that every now and then, a little vacation can go a long way.
We expect that you are most likely confused about the differences between type 1 and type 2 diabetes (as media breeds this confusion). Do the unexpected and either ask us a question about something you heard or do a little extra digging and find out if what you heard relates to the type of diabetes we have before you go rambling about something like…oh I dunno, the most common one “diet and exercise can help get you off your medications”.
If you’re a person that doesn’t have diabetes but you know someone that does, there’s a lot of little unexpected things that you could be doing that could really put a smile on a that person with diabetes in your life face 
.png)
