My Favorite Word

Oh boy... Today I have the perfect subject. Are you ready for this? Ready? READY? Awkwardness.

Yes. That is my topic. It's one of my favorite words! To me, (an extremely awkward guy) the word "awkward" means a bunch of different things that vary in every situation. It can mean uncomfortable, embarrassing, weird, silence, or my personal favorite, when someone gets totally owned... (best read in a high-pitched voice) Awkward!

You've probably been in an awkward moment before. I imagine that everyone has. Soooo assuming that you (the reader) have experienced awkwardness before and understand what it's like, I want to share some of my favorite awkward moments with you...

The babysitter... and her husband

Ummmmmm.... Let's go with a really awkward one... Sooooo when I was a baby, like most of us were, I had a babysitter... And it's really super awkward when you're older and some random girl comes up to you and says "I use to babysit you when you were a baby! Oh yeah, and I changed your diapers too!" *awkward!* "It's ok. All guys look the same without any pants on!" *double awkward!*


Here's another awkward moment.. When you're sitting at a table at ihop with Andy Chrisman (my role model) and his daughter, and he says, "Here's a seat. Just scoot on in here. Real close. Closer. Cloooossser..." And the sticks his arm around you and says, "That's better. Are you comfortable?" I reply "suuuure..." and he comes back with, "Good. You better get used to it! We're a close family..." *awkward!*

Or when you're talking to someone and they keep staring at your pants, which are screaming, "Hey! I'm unzipped!"

(best read in a high voice) Awkward!

What's your awkward moment?

Rufus

Hmmmmmm what should I write about today?

I have no idea.... But onthebrightside, I might come up with something cleverly random....

So, I went to a leadership conference this past weekend with my church, and that was pretty fun. I have three words to echo to you all. Push. The. Limits.

Yes. That's right. Push the limits. Like, raising the bar. Going the extra mile. Being outrageous. Living on the edge. Oh yeah, this is what makes my life exciting. Let me tell you a story...

Once upon a time, I was at an orphanage with my youth group. We were having a good time playing apples-to-apples and foosball and stuff, and one of the kids even decided to name me "Rufus" (I'm not sure why though...) ...Anyways, in the corner of the room, there was a table of assorted food and candy. And on that table was a bag of oranges... Oranges? Really? No kid under the age of 18 is going to want an orange for a snack.

But regardless, they were on the table, and (obviously) no one was eating them. Being the macho man that I am, I eyed the bag of brightly colored oranges and asked, "How many oranges do you think I can eat?" I immediately got responses from the kids shouting "10!" or "11!" or even "5!"

I counted the number of oranges in the bag... 15?!? What had I gotten myself into? I set the timer for 1 minute, and began peeling my first orange. Oh, this is making me sick just remembering. I ate about two oranges and asked for a can of Mountain Dew... (like that would make it better?) I kept peeling and eating, peeling and eating, and occasionally chugging Mountain Dew... And then continued to shove oranges into my mouth... Thankfully they were seedless. But they were still oranges... ewww... I don't even like oranges.... 60 seconds went by and I had finished 11 oranges.

Ok, the bet was up. I had finished 11 oranges. But was that enough? Nope! I kept going. Pushing my limits... The kids were chanting "Rufus! Rufus!" So, that kinda encouraged me. It took me an extra 40 seconds to finish those last 4 oranges, but in the end, it was totally worth it. I felt soooooo sick. It was like I was pregnant... Not really, but I definitely felt like a girl... *awkward*

... I needed to puke SOOOOO bad! I was lying on the floor... About to die. Seriously, I still have no idea how 15 oranges pushed their way into my tiny stomach... Have you seen how small I am lately?!? Anyways... I ended up discovering something. Oranges make you pee like nobody's business.

Moral: If you push the limits, you end up with lots of experience and lots of stories to tell.

(Sorry I don't have any pictures... we weren't allowed to take any... although I think there's a video out there somewhere...)

You Really Wanna Know??

Well, today I'm going to answer a question that I've been asked over and over again from various people. It's actually a funny (and slightly random) story.

Once upon a time, about a year ago, Nick Blaylock was at my house. (if you don't know Nick, click here) Yeeeeah... and it was really cold outside. So, being the smart guys that we are, we stayed inside and played video games. Not really... We're both adventurous guys, so we messed around in the backyard. It was super cold, and we really weren't dressed properly for outdoor fun.

We found a couple of huge walking sticks that were just conveniently sitting outside. When we saw these sticks and a tether-ball pole, we got a great idea. This is where things started to go wrong.

Tether-ball is an extreme sport. It's a rubber ball tied to a rope and attached to the top of a pole. The pole is lodged into the ground like a flagpole, and the two opponents stand facing each other with the pole in between them. One person would hit the ball in one direction, while the other person would hit it in the opposite direction. The first person to get the rope wrapped around the pole in their direction would win.

Normally, you would use your hands to hit the tether-ball. But since Nick and I are so hardcore, we used thick, wooden, walking sticks. That's wassup.

Nick has about 5x the muscle that I didn't have. So when Nick inevitably hit the pole with his walking stick, we heard a massive crack, and saw half of the walking stick go flying into the yard.

With his former 7ft limb, now shortened to a 4ft chunk, Nick continued hitting the tether-ball repeatedly until he hit the pole again. The walking stick shrunk once more. He wielded this 2ft log like a club clenched in his fist. This was great. This was the most intense game of tether-ball I had ever played.

As the game went on, we got closer and closer to the pole. Nick was winning, of course, and our competitive edges were showing their teeth. The game was almost over, and I was this close to being defeated. All that Nick needed to win the game was one last blow to that tether-ball and it would've been finished. But instead of hitting the tether-ball, Nick, standing closer than an arms-length away, delivered one very solid blow... Straight to my face.

Oh the pain... I remember it well. Just mentioning, it was still cold outside. The chilly weather had taken the feeling from just about every part of my body. But as soon as that 2ft stick smashed into my face, a warm, burning sensation flooded in. All I could do was turn around, cover my nose, and say "Owwwwwwwwww...."

Nick stared in disbelief. And then, like every good friend would do, stood there and laughed like a jolly old man. That's right. Friends really do stand there and laugh. I removed my frozen hands away from my face to reveal a swollen, red nose, with blood dripping onto my shirt and shoes. Great. My first bloody nose.**

Nick and I got inside as fast as we could and ran to the kitchen sink. He tried to get my nose to stop bleeding. This was promptly followed by him backing away, staring, and busting out laughing again. Oh boy. What a friend.

** disclaimer. My nose wasn't broken, but something inside was broken. Which is why every now and then, my nose will just randomly start bleeding. If you were in mod lit class two weeks ago, you might've witnessed this. I know, right? Ewwww... Yuck fest.

Question:   Zeb, why is your nose bleeding?

Answer:   ... ... It's a long story. Read my blog.

The moral of this story is: There's a reason for everything. Amen.

Mattress Mischief

You want to know how this bed got up there? I'll tell you how.

It belonged to a man named Jimmer. Jimmer. Ohhhh boy. Jimmer was a... ummm... how do you put it? A character. I mean, if he was a cartoon character, he would probably be Bluto's second cousin.

Jimmer worked at the same summer camp I did in Oklahoma. I have too many stories from that place... Anyways, he was there when I first showed up on campus. Only five other guys were there so far, and he happened to be one of them... How unfortunate.  I hadn't made up my own opinion on him yet, but everyone else seemed to think that he was very annoying. My first encounter with him was the first night in our dorm. I was lying on my bed trying to get some sleep, when Jimmer, a tall, dark haired, bearded, and overweight 19yr old, crept into my room with a towel over his head and whispered "The ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42."

Can you say creepy?? Yeeeeah, exactly what I was thinking. (just a side note, I haven't seen that movie. So I had no idea what he was talking about.) Hopefully you can get a good mental image of what Jimmer acted like. But maybe not. Because, this was only the beginning. I put up with him for a while. I really could care less. That is, until he started arguments. Like I've said before, I worked in production. Sound, lights, backstage stuff. But Jimmer worked in the activities department. When he wanted to argue about whether digital sound boards are better than analog boards or not, (in layman's terms, it's just a petty subject) we got extremely annoyed.  It was pretty obvious to everyone that he didn't know what he was talking about. His persistence to argue was just begging for someone to stand up and spit out a few words to slap him in the face. What do you think happened? That's right. Hold your applause till the end. I did it. Oh yeah. I looked him straight in the eye, asked him a couple questions, and embarassed him like nobody's business.  That showed him who was boss.

Jimmer got on all of our nerves, and sooner or later, all of production was trash talking him. Jimmer couldn't say anything back. He had nothing to fight with. We were more knowledgeable on the subjects he brought up. So, to retaliate, Jimmer ended up putting my bed on the wall dividers in the room.

Yeah, this didn't make me very happy. And since everyone was already tired of him, this started the spiteful prank war between Production and Jimmer. We did a lot of stuff. Big things, small things, everything. I stuck bugs on his pillow every night, threw some TNT Pop-Its (those little paper snappers that you mess with on the 4th of July) over the wall divider into his room, sprayed an entire can of body spray on his bed...etc. One time I even cleaned his room for a prank. Because, since it was clean, he thought we had done something to it.

Although I just mentioned some really lame pranks, most of our pranks were big and hateful. For example, he rode around everywhere on his bike. So, we figured out the combination to his bike lock, stole it, changed the code, and would hang his bike around various places on the campgrounds. This went on for a long time before he got his bike back.

(I would put a picture here, but I don't have any...)

We also took his bed, along with some canoes, and put it in the pool.

These were really funny and entertaining for us! But the sad thing is, that by the end of the summer, he really wasn't that bad of a guy. He stopped arguing with us, he left us alone, he even matured and grew up to some extent. He was taking more responsibility, helping people without asking for something in return, and all that good stuff. Despite all this, we were still hanging onto the past. Just like Jimmer's bike was still hanging from a building next to the go-cart tracks.

Regardless of all that took place in Jimmer's personal life, we decided to pull one of our last pranks of the summer on him. We were like a gang of gold headed girls named Goldilocks and he was like a big nasty bear with a nice bed... And that's how his bed climbed onto the roof...

When I said that I embarrassed Jimmer like nobody's business earlier, I also really hurt something inside of him that was nobody's business. His pride. His ego. His emotions. His respect for me, and every part of his mind that told him that he was somebody, now told him that no one cared. This destroyed any possible way of communicating with Jimmer. It was a bad deal. It would've been more effective for me to just walk away, and control myself, than to hurt someone and live with a life-long enemy like I do now.

There are two morals in this story:

1. Be nice. Get on people's good sides. Don't suck up, but be genuinely nice. That way you don't end up like Jimmer and having everyone hate you. If you are disliked by someone, but now you've changed, talk to them about it. Seriously, I've done this before. It works. Period.

2. Forgive people. Don't hold on to what they have done in the past. Ask yourself. "Which is more important? Justice or Grace?" Plus, another big thing with this, is don't trash talk. Ever.

I know this story doesn't give an example of either of these principles, but I'm living proof that the results of not following them isn't fun. It actually kinda sucks.