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.
