Cribs: Little Kid Edition

I lead a bible study of sixteen year olds. They're getting ready to graduate 10th grade. For the end of the year celebration, the church has asked each group (divided by age, gender, and city) to make a funny video. It's a competition. I was sure we wouldn't even place.

Two days before the video was due, my guys called me. They wanted me to make the video for them. I said I would help them.  They wanted to make a music video based off a song from High School Musical 2. I hung up, and when they called back, I said they had to do whatever I wanted. That's where most of my friendships end.

We made a Cribs video at one of their houses. We shot it in an hour and a half; basically, we'd get to a room, they'd ask me what to say, and without thinking I would say whatever first came to mind. This is the result.



The part I was most worried about was when I say that my car (the Rocketship, which I bought used from NASA) had a dungeon that I keep kids in. I thought this would get the video banned. As it turns out, this was the youth minister's favorite line. I was told he showed the video this morning as an illustration of something in his talk (I have no idea what he could've been talking about). Apparently he even repeated the line, "Where I keep children."

(The original line was, "I call it the Rocketship because I took it to Mars one day when I was tripping balls on acid." The director called cut, and we talked and decided that was a little too inappropriate.)

My favorite line gets lost; in the bedroom with the trophies, Tyler Ho (the Asian - not Poomrata, who is the foreign exchange student living with the family of the house) picks up a trophy of an angel and says, "This is from my win at the X-Men Olympics when I used to have wings."

After he watched the video, my co-leader told me that I was just imitating Tracy Morgan. I didn't realize it at the time, but he is completely correct.

A Valentine's Memory I Found in Therapy

Today was Valentine's Day, and I didn't celebrate it. I had dinner with my 10th grade cell group. In exchange for food, all I do is recite rap lyrics with the sly ones. We really like the New Boyz. I was replaced long ago as the spiritual leader of the group.

In a conversation with a friend, I was reminded of a Valentine's Day two years ago. At the time, I was spending a semester in Rome. I kept a blog, called Lectio Difficilior, but I can't explain why. I think I wanted to make it difficult for my mom to find it. Below I've posted part of the Valentines entry for that blog, because it was an important day in my life.

After school, I was walking home from school when I popped into a chic boutique to peruse the new men's fashions, because, if you haven't been keeping up with my personal life, I have recently become fashionable (and not in the way that, women want to carry me in their purse. Well, actually, in that way too, but that's not the point). So, in a nameless clothing store, I was looking through the assorted blazers (by TOGS clothing, no less) when the owner/operator/only worker in the store Rion decided he wanted to help me. He kept handing me things to try on, and watching me flip through the stretchy pants. As I was leaving, he stopped me and struck up a conversation about my studies, complimenting me on my Italian. Then he said we should get coffee sometime. Eager to leave, I agreed, and then he said, "Okay, let's go."

I got asked out by a guy on Valentine's Day. After I had stopped running, I reflected and thought about how nice it is to be appreciated by someone, even if it's a guy. It's the thought that counts anyways, like Ned from Pushing Daisies says, "on a holiday created to sell greeting cards, it's still kind of nice to get a card."

During the four months I spent in Rome, I was propositioned by three different men. Rion was the first. The second was at an after party for a Shakespeare production in London; as to what happened, I cannot relate it here. Or anywhere. I am going to take it to my grave, and bury next to the body I used to fake my death. The third was the night I was robbed and forced to sleep on the streets of Florence. Let's just say I thought the coffee he offered was spelled r-a-p-e-c-o-f-f-e-e. Which still spells coffee.

I Would Have Gotten Away With It, If It Wasn't For Daylight Savings Time!

Yesterday, my alarm went off at six forty five and I got dressed. I brushed my teeth, put in my contacts, and ate some ice cream. Then I drove to Rick's Bakery, to meet with a couple tenth graders that I mentor.

When I arrived, not only did I realize that there was no one in the Rick's parking lot, or that Rick's itself was locked, but that the sky was uncharacteristically pitch black for seven in the morning. As I sat in my car, I tried to rationalize this with the explanation of Daylight Savings Time, but I'm still not exactly sure how that works (I know I'm supposed to move my clock, but the past two years I've put it under my bed and it's done nothing). It may have taken sixty long seconds for me to look at my phone and realize it was actually five in the morning.

For Christmas my senior year of high school, my parents bought me a semester spanning series of sessions with a personal trainer. Worst Christmas present ever, outside of the Batman shirt our foreign exchange student's parents sent me in the sixth grade. At the time, I was considering collegiate football, and so it made sense to train. But not like that. Not like that.

My trainer was Jessica, the only woman ever to throw the shot put and discus in the same Olympics. She would laugh when I threw up, and the only conversation we ever ventured into outside of weight lifting was Gatorade flavors. I hated going there. Our sessions were at five in the morning, but I was so conflicted about attending that some mornings, I would wake up in a daze, dress, and drive to the Fayetteville Atheletic Club, only to realize it was three o'clock. Then I'd drive home, get back in bed with my shoes on and watch the clock travel from three to five.

At that time in the morning, reactions are sluggish enough that the obvious signs that it is not the time you think it is are hard to catch, like your favorite morning show isn't playing, or your car radio clock says three a.m. (mine actually said three a.m. yesterday. Like I said, I'm not exactly sure how Daylight Savings Time works). I think this may be what hangovers are like. You can stare at your hand for thirty seconds and not be able to tell if its the left or right hand of someone else, or yourself.

How My Grandparents Met

One more pause on this past weekend, if you don't mind, which I'm sure you won't, because you don't exist, person who I believe reads my blog. So I can pause without cause and still receive no applause. (EDITORS NOTE: that rhyme doesn't make sense).

I spent this past weekend with a group of fifteen year olds at a fall camp retreat (NOTE THE PRESENCE OF THE DEEP V IN THE INSET). We were extremely bored. There are only so many games of Ultimate Frisbee a man can withstand before his index finger begins to bleed. Plus, whenever the sun goes down, there isn't much to do except for sappy stuff.

In a related story that is too long to tell today, I once invented an alternate persona named Dragon Master. I promise to one day explain it, but all I can say is that with this persona came several stories of dragon fighting honor and valour. Originally, I told these stories to put seven year olds to bed. As it turns out, it works just as well, possibly better, with high schoolers.

I told my guys the story about my grandfather, a magnificent Dragon Master in his own right, behind enemy lines in World War II taking out a nest of dragons trained by the Third Reich. Dropped into Nazi occupied France, his team was completely obliterated mid-air by flak fire (this is why the story might work better with older kids: I was able to describe in detail entrails falling through the night sky, coming out of dead floating paratroopers). With only a British sniper, Sergeant Gladstone, and a mysterious Frenchman with perfect skin who they conscripted as a guide, my grandfather found the nest and destroyed it. In the end, Sergeant Gladstone had to sacrifice his life for the success of the mission, but the Dragon Master and the Frenchman survived (who turned out to be a woman, who later became my grandmother).

I told this story in installments, culminating in a late night finale, with half of the group sleeping. When it came time for the killing blow to the primary antagonist, a dragon named Ephialtes, I had my grandfather blow off the dragon's leg by wedging a grenade between a knife and the skin of the dragon it was stuck in. After the leg was gone, the dragon was still alive, but it was laying on the explosive charges that were meant to seal the cave and trap the dragons. My grandfather raised the detonator, but when it came time to say his final words to the dragon, hopefully in pun form, I blanked. I said, "And he said," and then there was a thirty second pause, and then I said the only thing that came to mind, "Way to go." And then he blew up the dragon.

A Deeper V

My roommate Blanton is a fashion aficionado - an afashionado. He dresses well. At his encouragement last spring, I bought two deep v-necks from American Apparel. These shirts are wonderfully comfortable, but when I wear them I feel like I'm naked.

Please understand - in the summer, you cannot beat a deep v-neck. I wore my two shirts at camp every day, to the extent that by the shirts I was defined. I became the guy with incredibly low necklines; the man with too much visible chest hair.

This past weekend I went with a group of fifteen year olds that I mentor in a cell group to a retreat at the camp where I worked this summer. In honor of the camp, and just to screw with my guys, I wore one of my deep v's. I didn't bring any other clothes (I'm not very motivated when it comes to hygene; I would rather spend the weekend in the same clothes and not pack a bag, than have a hundred percent assurance that I will not contract a fungus).

My guys became obsessed with the deepness of the v. A game was played, where these kids would try to sneak up on me, then yell, "Deep V Strike!" and try to stick their entire arm through the v, down my shirt, and out the other side. They strechted the neckline maybe two inches; I now have a Deeper V. And this game culminated when one of the guys, Sam, yelled, "Deep V Strike!" and jumped head first into the mummy style sleeping bag I was in. I thought I was going to be brought up on charges.

I was asked this weekend whether I wore the shirts for comfort, or because it was cool. In answer I told this story: when I first got my shirts in the mail, I put one on and went out with friends to dinner. After dinner, the sun had set and the air was a little cold. I put on a windbreaker, and when I zipped it up, I caught my open chest hair in the zipper. It was then I knew I was just wearing the shirt because it was cool.