Five

Andrew celebrated his fifth birthday this past week, and it got me to thinking about birthdays.

I don't remember most of my birthdays; I remember one when I was sick and I got a woolly mammoth model, but I don't even remember what year that was. I remember one in college when my sister woke me up at approximately 12:01 to be "the first" to wish me a happy birthday... and shortly after we hung up, my roommate came in and was on the phone until 2:30 or so, and the next day I got some birthday cards in the mail and a fraternity brother asked, "What is it, your birthday?" and when I said "yes, as a matter of fact, it is" he didn't even respond with an obligatory "happy birthday."

But I do remember my fifth birthday. For several reasons. One was that I remember feeling like five years old was big stuff. I finally reached the big time.

The second reason I remember my fifth birthday was the unique "present" I got on my fifth birthday. My brother and sister and I woke up earlier than our parents (think "crack of dawn") and went downstairs to play, and we were surprised to find an indoor pool to play in! The sewers had backed up and our entire basement was filled with an inch or two of, well, sewage. Being little kids, we played in it, floating bottle caps and so forth. When my parents got up, they were shocked and not in a good way. We spent the rest of my birthday at grandma's house.

The third reason I remember my fifth birthday was what I got. As a little boy, I would get fixated on one thing and one thing only when it came to gifts. Sure, I'd mark up the toy catalog with everything I wanted, like Hulk Instant Muscles, but I generally only wanted one thing. That particular year, the "one thing" was a Big Wheel. The only problem was that my parents couldn't afford one.

No problem, I thought. I'd pray for one.

So after I'd been praying for a Big Wheel, my dad was out getting the word out about my mom's new preschool, and he found someone's discarded little Big Wheel (toddler size) that he thought maybe he could somehow fix up for me, so he strapped it to the back of his bike and rode on. Sometime later, he was stopped by someone driving a truck. "You want some more of those?" - In the back of his truck (among other things), the guy had parts from Big Wheels and he was on his way to the dump with them.

When my dad got finished with the parts, he had enough, not only for a Big Wheel for me, but also one each for my brother and sister!

(and since we were at Grandma's house, where there was no sidewalk, I got to ride it inside)

My fifth birthday was big time. I remember it and God's provision whenever things seem scarce.

Final Reunion Thoughts

Sunday morning came early after a late (for me) night Saturday - after spending 6 hours on my feet at the reunion, it was time to run.  Literally.  My training plan had me scheduled for 20 miles on the weekend, so I mapped out a route from Kokomo High School through Highland Park - it was a 2.5 mile course, so I figured I'd run it out-and-back 4 times.  It worked out well; I could keep Gatorade and Gu Chomps in the car and also hit the water fountains in the park.  An added bonus: I'd get to run through my old neighborhood as well as the park where I spent much of my formative years.

You wouldn't believe how many memories flooded back as I ran back and forth.  Though there have been changes since I was there, much was still the same.  I saw the various trees I spent time in. I especially enjoyed seeing the other runners in the park (I counted 16 - including one guy who was running 9 miles who I saw multiple times).  As I finished running, there was an older guy on a bike going the same direction.  He had to have thought I was extremely strange (at best) as I sprinted to "beat" him to my "finish line."

I cleaned up, had breakfast (prepared by Suzanne Carey), and headed for church.  I had decided to go to Chapel Hill Christian Church's 10:30 service, which was really good timing - I was able to get cleaned up, eat breakfast, and get to church on time.  There, the coolest thing happened: as I went into the church, the first person I saw was my old friend Darrell.  I had been e-mailing with Darrell and was bummed that he wasn't going to be at our reunion (family vacation took priority) - so I was super excited to see him.  It was great to get a chance to worship with him, to have him take me on the "tour" of the building (they've built a new sanctuary since I was there - and renovated most of the old), and to go out for lunch together after church.  We laughed so hard at all the old stories - most of which hadn't been told in years. I hadn't seen Darrell or his wife since they made their way to Chicago for my wedding, over 13 years ago...

This was probably my highlight of the weekend - getting to hang out with an old friend for as long as we wanted, talking, laughing, sharing.  And I hope to not wait 20 years to do it again.

Reunion Thoughts, Part 4: Friday & Saturday

Though the focal point of the reunion was the reunion itself, there was a whole lot more to the weekend than just the major events.  The first part was having dinner at my sister's and getting to hang out with my nephews.  A highlight of that visit was sitting with Mark (who is almost 6), telling him stories of things his mom and I had done when we were little.  I had never gotten to have that kind of quality time with Mark (he's much more interested in playing with Jonathan than listening to Uncle Brian tell stories).

When I got to Kokomo, I stayed at David Carey's house.  David became my best friend approximately the first time I met him.  Actually we talked once on the soccer field when we were in 5th grade, but on the first day of 6th grade, we were instant best friends.  He wasn't able to make it to the reunion, but I stayed at his house anyway - his mom has always been my "second mom" to the extent that she (like my real mom) cries when I leave.  It was good to hang out with her a little bit (even if her dog doesn't like me), and it made things convenient for the reunion.

On Saturday morning, I went out to Converse, IN for the 5K run (I'm going with my watch time instead of theirs; it took me several seconds to actually get started with the disorganized start) - but I already blogged about that here. A highlight of the run was hanging out with some friends, but I thought "if I'm already in Converse, I ought to drop by Rainbow Christian Camp, where I went to church camp every year."  I pulled through, and I guess I was a little too spooked by all the old ghosts I'd left there, so I didn't get out of my car.  I thought the "old" section (which was the "only" section when I was there) was a little shabby - overgrown bushes and so forth - I don't know how much they use the old dining hall.  I was disappointed that the old Coke machine was gone.  Not surprised, as it was the kind that held glass bottles, but I remember it being a rite of passage into highschoolhood to be allowed to use the Coke machine.

On the way home, I stopped by Macedonia Christian Church, where I grew up. I hadn't been there in over 20 years, and I was happy to find a door open (a women's group was meeting) so I could go in and explore.  I found the old puppet stage we used for years back in the day, and I got to go through the "new" section (where the "old, old building" used to be.  It was also good to see some of our dear family friends.

Then on the way back to Kokomo, I had a chance encounter with the husband of one of my favorite teachers (actually I never had her class; she was our cheerleading sponsor) at a garage sale in Greentown. After lunch I went to Northwest Park to see a friend (whose husband was playing in a softball tournament).  It was a really relaxed way to hang out and remember... plus it was fun to meet her kids.  And as a bonus, I ran into my second cousin and his family when I was there!!!

Reunion Thoughts, part 3, the Actual Reunion

On Saturday evening, we had the "actual" reunion function. It was held at the Booster Club of Kokomo, a general reception hall. They had food and drinks available (I stuck to the lemonade, which was very tasty - you can never be too sure what the lemonade will taste like. Church lemonade is often on the, well, Crystal Lite side).

Someone came up with the clever idea to have our senior pictures on our nametags. I say "clever" because there were plenty of people who had changed significantly enough that I needed some extra help remembering who they were. So at least I could look and see what they used to look like (and possibly jog my memory as to who they were).

The biggest disappointment about Saturday evening is who *wasn't* there. When you've got a class of 500, there will be some no-shows. Some couldn't attend because they had other obligations, other couldn't afford to make the trip, and others just didn't want to go (for various reasons, good or bad). But seeing all of their nametags there was kind of sad. And then there were the ones who had died since 1990. Though I had been friends with several of our deceased classmates, it was saddest to see Joe Kratzer's picture on that board. He had been a good friend, and I know he would have had a good time there.

I mostly spent my time talking, sharing the same story multiple times with multiple people. Sometimes I forgot who knew that we had foster kids. The music was (at times) too loud for good conversation (I got over that "shout over the music" attitude when I was in college), but the DJ played lots of good 80s/early 90s music, and I enjoyed that.

I did end up having some really meaningful conversations that I never expected to have, and that was a highlight of my evening. The entire weekend was worth it just for those moments.

Reunion Thoughts, part 2, in which I ran a 5K race

 After a late Friday night, I got up early in the morning to head out to Converse, Indiana, for a 5K race.  I had decided it would be fun to run a local race and invite fellow classmates to join me.  Three of them actually took me up on the offer, and it was great to see Matt and Holly and Nancy (and to meet Nancy's husband, John).

The race itself was the most disorganized race I've ever run in.  To be fair, it was also the cheapest race, so perhaps some of the disorganization came from the fact that "you get what you pay for." I had preregistered, but they didn't have my race packet.  They were nice about it and gave me a bib and found me a t-shirt (though they'd run out of the blue ones that they were giving out and gave me a choice of a left-over white or orange one).  The race was sponsored by an insurance company, and they have four races yearly, so I think they save cost by just printing up one (generic) shirt for all of them.  No big deal.

I got a chance to talk to my friends and also saw my old cross country coach.  Now, to appreciate this, you have to know that we had a "falling out" at the beginning of my sophomore year.  I was playing soccer (had been named captain of the team) and was running cross country.  Having earned my varsity letter as a freshman, I had committed to the cross country team as my first priority (even over soccer, which was only a club sport at the time), but because I missed practices to go to church camp, I wasn't eligible for the first meet, and so I went to a soccer game instead and the coach didn't like that and called my house and shouted at my sister.  So I quit the team.  Anyway, I found him and talked to him, and it was really good.  I had long since forgiven him, but it was great to talk as peers.  I remembered when I was in 8th grade and he came to me and encouraged me to run in high school, telling me I'd make a good high school cross country runner - I told him that was important to me.  He still remembered and remarked, "yeah, you were a good runner. You were really fast in middle school." I was impressed that he didn't remember me as the trouble-maker who quit the team but as the really fast middle school runner.  It was a good conversation, and I was glad to connect with him in that way.


So just before 8:00, the scheduled start time we all moved up the street to the start area and found my place just behind those really fast guys who you can tell right away by their 0% body fat and racing flats and sprint-out warm-ups.  I waited and stretched a little and waited some more. 

... and waited... and waited...

Then I went back and talked to my friends for a while.  Then some race organizers came and told us to move back behind the line (I guess we were in front of it; there wasn't really a "line" - just the idea of one, I guess). So we moved back and as we were milling around, there was a whistle and the runners in front started.

There was no introduction or thank you.  There was no "runners set",  and no race directions.  There was just a whistle. And I found myself behind some slow people. So after dodging between several and almost stepping on another, I jumped out onto the grass and sprinted around to get a better start.

I didn't have any complaints about the race course; though I didn't know exactly where it was going, it was a simple course.  There was one surprise - that we went through the fairgrounds and around alongside the track, where some horses were practicing (I remembered the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon, where we went through Churchill Downs - just a slightly bigger scale).  I didn't mind the smell (I run through farms all the time), but the dust cloud was a little less than ideal.

The course was minimally marked, but that's no complaint; it was marked as well as it needed to be.  There were signs marking every turn and the mile markers were clear (and they had someone at each marker calling out times).  My first mile was a little fast: 5:56(!), but my second mile was more where I wanted to run (6:27), and my third mile was 6:35 (with a last .1 in :38).

At times it felt hard to maintain competitveness, as the elite runners were all out ahead and there was a huge gap (in which I found myself) between them and the next group. But I finished in 19:38, 3 seconds off my PR (set this week last year). I was happy with that, and with 4th place in my age group (18th overall).

It is always fun to run local 5K races, and it was nice to see some old friends there.

Reunion Thoughts, part 1

This weekend I went to my 20th high school reunion. I had been back in town a couple of times since then, but hadn't seen many people since I left, so I was excited to go back. On Friday night, I spent most of my time talking to two people.

The first was Richard, who I used to run with in middle school and high school. He doesn't run much anymore, but he looks like he could jump out and start right back where he left off. I hadn't seen Richard since graduation, and though it was good to see him, it was tough, as he's going through a rough time.

I also talked to Tony, who I *have* seen since graduation, and we did plenty of laughing.

Some random thoughts on the Friday night mixer:

*I'm not into the bar scene. I was rather surprised at how many people were smoking (and living in Ohio, I'd forgotten that some places still allow smoking in public buildings). Not so pleasant.

*I was surprised at how many people I *didn't* know. There were some people who didn't look any different than they did in high school, but there were others who I didn't recognize at all. Some of my classmates looked old and tired. Some seemed like they've given up on life. Others were drinking to excess, which doesn't necessarily say anything about their daily lives but maybe more about the company.

*People often talk about the cliques and how "those people still don't talk to anyone who wasn't in their clique." It's not that simple & not that black and white. Of course they primarily talk to their "clique" - those are the people they *knew* and the ones they were looking forward to seeing. It's just like me spending my time with Richard and Tony. I wasn't trying to exclude everyone else; I just wanted to catch up with old friends.

*Facebook has been a great facilitator of relationships. I specifically looked for some of my FB "friends" at the reunion (and was disappointed that I didn't get to reconnect with several). It's nowhere near as good as face-to-face communication, but it beats no communication.

My Running History: Chapter 4

Chapter four is a gloomy chapter in my running history.  It's where I ran away from running.  It started with playing two sports in the same season (cross country and soccer).  Because I had earned a varsity letter in cross country, I had decided that, were there a conflict, I would choose running.  I preferred soccer, and I had been named the captain of the team, but I had decided that I had a responsibility to the cross country team as a varsity letter winner.  Unfortunately the conflict came to a head, not between soccer and cross country, but between church camp and cross country.  Every year I went to church camp, but this particular year it conflicted with cross country practice.  I asked the coach if he wanted a camp counselor to verify my miles (I woke up early every morning to run 5-6 miles, which was quite the accomplishment, considering how much sleep I got (or not) that week). As it turned out, I wasn't eligible for the first meet, so I went to a soccer game instead.  The coach was extremely unhappy, and he called my house.  I wasn't home, but instead of asking me to call him back (or waiting until practice the next day), he cussed my sister out.  And suspended me for 3 days.  I didn't care about the suspension; but here's the thing: nobody treated my sister like that (I didn't even treat her like that, and this was in the height of the days in which we didn't get along).

So I quit.

I continued to run track - I loved running track. I even loved the speed workouts, usually trying to run all of my splits faster than I was supposed to (if I was supposed to run a 75 second 400, I'd run 72). I ran the 3200m, the 1600m, and the 800m, and the long jump.  I wasn't very good at the long jump (I was in the mid 15 feet).  I wasn't very fast in the 800m (my fastest time was in the 2:08 range - not fast enough to make our 4x800 relay team).  As a junior, I primarily ran the 3200 (not all that fast, but fast enough to score 1 point in our conference meet... which we won by 1 point - running as our #2 3200m runner all season and scoring in the conference meet was enough for my varsity letter).  My fastest time, if I recall correctly, was 11:20. I liked the mile best, but we had some really strong mile runners, so my fastest time of 4:40 wasn't fast enough for varsity.

As a senior, I was involved in a minor discipline infraction (some of us were goofing around in practice and got in trouble for it), but the way the head coach chose to deal with it really upset me.  Instead of talking about the infraction (or even on the need for a little maturity from me, as a senior), he got personal.  He focused on my times not dropping (mostly because of how hard I was working - I was confident that my times would drop significantly when I began to taper for the important meets), and he told me the team didn't need me.

So I quit. I told him that if my times weren't dropping and if the team didn't need me, and since I wasn't going to run track in college, maybe my time would be better spent playing soccer and hanging out with my friends.

And that pretty much summed up my running history for the next seven years.  I ran one 5K race when I was in college (disaster - I fell on a patch of ice and took two runners out), but it wasn't until seminary when I started running with any sort of regularity.

My Running History, Chapter 3

By seventh grade, I had become the long distance runner of my school. Cross country season could be boiled down to one word: undefeated.  During track season, the only time I didn't win the mile run was in a huge invitational, in which I was running against 7th and 8th graders.  All season I was running in the mid 5:25 range, and the day of the city meet, I found out that the city record was 5:25.3.  I had been running less than 1 second over the record all year with my race strategy of running with the other team's top runner for 3 laps and smoking him on the final lap. As an aside, that strategy helped me make friends with the top runners from all of the other middle schools, which helped as we all joined together in 8th grade as part of the same team.  I remember the city meet 1600m run vividly; someone (a fan? a parent? I'd never seen him before) was standing just past the start line, and at the 400m mark, he shouted to me that I had 20 yards on the next guy: go for it!  Then he called out my splits, telling me that the record was within my grasp.  I finished in 5:14 flat, shattering the old record by 11.3 seconds!

Things changed a bit when I went "downtown" - all of the middle schools were consolidated into one school.  So my former competitors became my teammates. Those were good times, being pushed by Tim and Richard to run my fastest, setting the course record at the Highland Park course (I loved that course, mostly because of the numerous uphill climbs - I was always good at hills).

There was so much drama in middle school, and running was a welcome escape. We would run all over downtown Kokomo - to parks (Summers Park, and it's infamous hill workout), and frequently through the cemetery, where our coach would have us search for certain gravestones or see who could find the oldest one, where we would end up our workouts by running "pete and repeat" laps (trying to beat our time).

I experienced my first running injury during my eight grade year; we were running in Summers Park and on the way down the hill, I fell on a root, twisting my ankle. I just lay there on the ground, mostly because I was tired, not because my ankle hurt that much.  By the time the coach got there, though, it had started swelling... the doctor diagnosed a bad sprain. I missed a big meet and a big soccer game for that injury.

Probably the biggest moment for me was when the high school cross-country coach approached me at a meet.  He encouraged me to come out for the high school team the next year, that I would be a good addition to the team.  I definitely looked up to the high school runners... and so as a freshman, I found myself running with them.  I was our #1 junior varsity runner - all the while playing soccer (in the same season) for our newly started Kokomo Soccer Club.

I loved being part of the cross country team; I liked the camaraderie we shared and the fun we had while running.  I liked the parties we had - the pool party at one team member's house and impromptu pizza party/TP session the night before a big meet.

At the end of the season, we went to the tournament.  But one important thing had happened; there had been some discipline infractions, and several team members were suspended.  They returned from suspension right before the Sectional meet, and they competed.  One of them, however, hadn't trained, and he tanked.  So, for the Regional meet, the team needed a seventh runner, so the top two JV runners had a run-off to determine who would run in the Regional.

I had a cold, but I ran the best race of my life.  16:57 over a 3 mile road course (which would adjust to about a 17:30 for a true 5K).  I got the honor of running as seventh man for the team on the Regional champion team, earning me my first varsity letter.

I got to go on to the Semi-State race, and I made my first (and biggest) running mistake ever: I went out wayyyy too fast.  At about the 800m mark, I looked around and saw the elite runners of the state.  Only.  It was then that I realized I was running too fast.  Shortly thereafter, I felt a burning pain in my hips, like nothing I had ever experienced, and I knew my race was over.  I finished in about 100th place (out of something like 125 runners) - in my slowest time ever (though probably around what I run now as a PR!!!).

My Running History, Part 2

Starting middle school was a big deal; no longer would I attend the school just down the street from my house. No longer would I be in one class with one teacher all day.  And no longer would I be guaranteed to see (my best friends) Jeremy and Darrell every day. On the first day of school, I met my new classmates.  One classmate (David C) I had already met on the soccer field, and we immediately became best friends. As we were walking upstairs one day that first week, we saw a sign advertising call-outs for the cross-country team.  David asked me, "Are you going to run cross-country?" I said, "Yes."  And we did.

Cross country practice on the first day consisted of me, wearing my clunky basketball high top shoes, running around the school yard.  I quickly realized that these were not the shoes to wear for long distance running!

My dad found me a pair of black Pony shoes (complete with orange stripe - my school colors) and I wore them proudly to top-ten finishes all year.  I think I still have the ribbons.  My proudest moments of sixth grade cross-country were finishing second to my teammate, the unbeatable Marc Dubbels and a fifth place finish in the city county meet.

Cross-country was never the big name or popular sport, but I loved running.  Practice was always just running around the school yard (which I always liked), and meets were fun.  Our team was good (we went 1-2-3-4-6 in the meet in which I placed 2nd), so I'm sure that helped. 

In the spring, I joined the track team. I got to run around that cinder track (again and again and again). We had a good team again - city meet winners (and I was a double winner, surprisingly taking the 400 and being on the winning 4x100 relay team).  During the season, I tried my hand at the 200m, 400m, 4x100 relay, 110m low hurdles, long jump, and shot put.  I was a terrible hurdler and shot-putter, and was OK in the long jump - though I never had a realistic chance to win, as Johnny Alsup was on my team, already jumping 18 feet), but I loved the running events (even the sprint relay!).

My Running History, part 1.

The first sport I remember wanting to participate in was running.  I remember riding past the local middle school and seeing the track and wishing my dad would stop the car so I could run on the track (though I don't remember ever actually asking him to stop).  This wasn't one of your super-nice all-weather tracks (like the one we recently got installed here in Millersport); this was an old cinder track.  But I wanted to run on it.

Every time we went to Scotty's Sandwich Junction (a Kokomo local chain burger restaurant that served great tenderloin sandwiches and always had good coupons) or Taco Grande ($.39 tacos and all-you-can-drink pop refills before anyone was doing that), we'd drive past Maple Crest Middle school, and I would wish to run on the track.

I eventually did get to run on that track - in sixth and seventh grade, I ran at Maple Crest.  I don't know how many miles I put in on that track - my track practice usually consisted of me hitting the track and running laps until practice was done.  In 7th grade, I consistently ran miles in the mid 5:25s on that track (I found out the day of the city meet that all season I was less than a second off the city record - in the city meet, I broke the record by running 5:14, but that was on the all-weather track at the high school).  These many years later, I just wish I could run that fast!

Another Good-Bye

On the very first day of my very first seminary class, I met him. Many of my colleagues had told their various horror stories of seminary Greek - they waited as long as they could to take it, but being a contrarian by nature, I set out to take it first.

I entered the classroom and scanned the scene, and found the seat nearest the back left corner (by the chalkboard). The corner seat was already taken by a blonde guy with as big a head as I have. Maybe even bigger. His name was Chad Max Miller, and we became instant friends.

As Greek class went on, we found out that it was really pretty easy. Bordering on simple, actually. Especially if you had been a foreign language major in college. As Chad and I had both majored in German in college, we found that we were simply tasked with memorizing new word endings and vocabulary. Thus the back corner of this particular Greek class resembled the back of another classroom.

Chad and I were instant friends, not just because we were good at Greek. We had a lot more in common than that. We played pick-up soccer frequently - besides a couple of people I knew from being in class with, pretty much everyone I knew in seminary was someone I played sports with. Chad was no exception. We could always be found playing soccer together. He used to joke that when we started playing pick-up soccer, he was one of the best players, but by the time we graduated, he was one of the worst. And through that time, he had improved his game a lot! It was just that the level of competition went through the roof during our time there.

Chad was an intense guy. We lifted weights together in the seminary's (sad little) weight room - when the sewer backed up and flooded the (downstairs) weight room with raw sewage, Chad and I brought all the equipment upstairs and washed it thoroughly. We stuck a nametag on the door of the (old) weight room naming it "The Outhouse Basement." But here's a little picture of Chad's character: When the student life people tasked one of their employees to move the equipment back downstairs (and were paying her to do so), she came in and asked for some help doing it (there was no way she could do it on her own). We told her the situation and about the smell in the downstairs room, and the student life people decided not to go through with the move. But the woman who was moving it was unhappy: she was hoping for the extra money... to buy her medication. Chad asked her how much student life was going to pay her, and promptly gave her $40 out of his wallet. That was just Chad for you.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about his intensity, not his generosity. We would push each other hard in the weight room, always with the threat of shame if one of us would back down. It was all about honor and shame in the weight room.

One summer Chad and I worked for "Bob" - who was dismantling his house and reconstructing it. We were mostly in charge of taking the brickwork off, because "Bob" wanted to save the bricks (if he used new bricks, he would have had mismatched brickwork). It was ridiculously slow, but it was fun working with Chad. We started the first day wearing long pants and sleeves and so forth, but by the third day, we were wearing shorts and shoes and nothing else. I ended up so tanned that in my Asbury directory picture that next year, I just looked like a smile.

We would be up on the roof with Sir Mix-a-Lot blaring from the system in Chad's rockin' Hyundai or 80s music playing (he was shocked and awed by the speed at which I was able to identify a Ray Parker Junior song - not Ghostbusters), cracking on "The Colonel" who lived next door, laughing at Bob's son (who got fired that summer, yes, by his dad), and idolizing the "real" construction workers who came in and did the real work.

There are too many awesome stories about that summer to tell, but once Chad left a hammer on top of a ladder, and it fell right on my head. Another time I dumped a whole bunch of brick and mortar chunks off the scaffold on Chad. We were tasked with digging a basement under the house and given a jackhammer for the day: Bob told us we could have a steak dinner if we got down 6'. By the end of the day we'd gotten down 1 1/2 feet. Yeah, he had to get some of the real construction guys to do that job (with a backhoe and a Bobcat).

Like I said, too many stories to tell.

Chad took an unconventional path. He was one guy who I believed when he told me that God had spoken to him verbally. That was part of his conversion story. Chad was baptized on the day he graduated from seminary.Chad's seminary job: bartender at my (hands-down) favorite Lexington restaurant. The others in the restaurant knew him as "the missionary." Which was what he was.

Today I got the news that Chad and his brother, Christopher (who I really only knew from meeting him once - he came out for a visit and played soccer with us. He was really good - oh, and I knew him from his picture on Chad's fridge. I spent a lot of time in Chad's apartment) died in a kayak accident.

His church is honoring him tomorrow (Sunday) morning.

My heart is broken at the loss of a friend. I miss you, Chad. Godspeed. Say Hi to Mike Yaconelli for me. And give Jesus a hug. I'll be along in what - in the face of eternity - will seem like a twinkling.

Blogging From the NPC: Day 4

Any guesses how I started my final day at the NPC? If you guessed "running" you'd be almost right. Actually what I did first was sneak into the Zondervan store and update my blog. But then I ran with the runners club. I only ran 3 miles, which means I was shamed by Rudy, who ran for 45 minutes (and did stairs... and walked like a 90 year old the rest of the day).

We decided that showers would be a better idea than seminars, so we got cleaned up (and started the extreme job of packing - when you come home with a truckload of books, it makes packing into an art form). Then we went to the final main session.

Efrem Smith was our speaker again, this time for a Communion service. He also led us in some hymn singing - as an aside, this was a great moment for the tech team. Efrem started a well-known song and then we went to the second verse and stopped and asked, "Do you know the second verse?" Then he turned around and noted, "Oh, they've got it on the screen!"

Communion was wonderful.

After communion, Rudy and I went out for lunch, but shortly after lunch, my old friend Jeff Rosenberry came down from LA to hang out. It was fantastic to see Jeff; it's been way too long since our days together playing soccer and at Chapel Hill. He is definitely one of the good guys.

He and Rudy and I drove around and saw the sights, walked on the beach, saw a famous hotel (that's been in lots of movies) and ate ice cream there (it was really good, and despite the fact that it was not all that warm out, it melted and got all over the place; I felt like I was one of my boys eating it). Thankfully I had napkins, so when the ice cream got on my nose, I could wipe it off (and I did know that it was there before Jeff started whispering and giggling about it - I knew Rudy wouldn't tell me it was there; not after the time I had suffered a bloody nose and spent the afternoon in the office with crusted blood under my nose and he never said anything about it. Nope, not bitter or anything). So anyway, before I went on that tirade, I was talking about that hotel. Its picture is below.

After that, we drove around some more, talking and having a good time. We decided to check out Point Loma Nazarene University. Rudy had a friend who went there for a while, and we were there, so we drove over to visit. The campus overlooks the ocean... yeah, pretty spectacular. We drove in and there was a "guard shack" where we told the young woman, "We'd just like to visit campus."

Later Jeff (or was it Rudy?) said, "that girl is going to be really upset when we start shooting the place up." Hilarious!

We ended up parking and walking around campus.

Yes, that picture is for real. But we ran out of plutonium for the flux capacitor, and we couldn't get it up to 88 mph in this crowded parking lot.

Our tour of PLNU was uneventful; it seemed like the students knew we were coming and disappeared (or maybe they all went home for the 3 day weekend). We seem to have missed seeing Abraham Lincoln in concert (by a day), but we did see a mouse in their chapel.

I had been told that I had to try In-n-Out while I was in California, and it was certainly interesting! First of all, I guess they hadn't heard that there's an economic downturn; the place was consistently FULL (or maybe these were the people who usually would eat out at more expensive places... or they're just addicted and can't stop eating there!). By the time we left, there were people standing around waiting for tables. Lots of people.

I was thinking that In-n-Out mirrors many churches. 1. There weren't many choices. 2. There were more choices than there seemed to be, but you had to have insider information to order them. 3. They used specific insider language and terminology. 4. People regularly come back (and order the same thing) religiously. 5. You had to be a great driver to maneuver the parking lot.

By then it was time to go back to the hotel and let Jeff head back north. It was so good to catch up with him, to share fun stories, to hear how God is using him, and to just hang out with a great friend.

Conference Call

Some of the brothers from the fraternity put together a conference call so many of us who couldn't make it to JimBob's funeral could get a chance to talk. It was great to catch up with the guys.

Question: why is it so strange to imagine the young, crazy fraternity brothers as mature, upstanding, (almost all) married fathers?

It was great to hear their voices; they all sounded the same, just a little older. The wonders of technology that can allow guys from all over the world (literally; Patrick called in from China) to talk together on the phone.

But I had to laugh at the thought of a conference call; I used 3-way calling once as a teenager to call two Pizza Hut restaurants in town as a prank to make them think that the other had called them... but before that, the closest I'd come to a conference call was on the party line in Normanda.

R.I.P. JimBob

If you didn't already know, I was in a fraternity in college. One of the fun things about being in a fraternity was the guys you not only got to meet, but got to know. Through the pledge period, you certainly got to know your pledge brothers well - better than most of the other brothers.

There were all kinds of characters in our pledge class; there were guys with names like Rick and Rob and Jeff (whose name was Gunch Ffej if you pronounced it backwards). There were others with names like Dudley and Schaff (can you dig it?). And then there were still others like Woody, Goat, Scud, Homey Dog, and JimBob (if you don't know which of those ten was me, well, I'm not telling).

Something about fraternity life leads one to believe that life will last forever. I pretty much am of the opinion that if the kitchen didn't kill us, nothing could.

That myth was shattered this week, as I got the news: JimBob died of heart failure.

It certainly made me think. About my own mortality, about how short life is, and about Jim Bob.

We used to joke that he was a vampire. Not because he'd bite people (that would have been waaay out of his character), but because he was pretty much nocturnal. He'd stay up all night, only to sleep all day. Sometimes he'd be up for 36 hours straight. I remember once when he stayed up all night studying for yesterday's test.

He was one of the good guys, and this world will miss him.

Moving violations are easy to fix; just tell the DJ to fix it in the mix.

Great Moments

I have several "catch phrases" that I find myself using frequently, and if people are around me long enough, you will definitely hear them. Some of them are definite Vinsonisms: prime example: when I tell a lame joke and nobody responds, I'll say I make joke; you raff (that phrase came from a Vinson family vacation some 20+ years ago).

There are some sayings that I've picked up over the years, and you might recognize them if you're a fan of The Blues Brothers (don't look like no expressway to me!), Better Off Dead (Greendale is a bodaciously small town...), or the Princess Bride (you've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders...).

But the other day at church between services, my day was made. The band was doing their soundcheck, and the sound guy asked the drummer to check his microphone. He said, "Check" in it a couple of times, to which I responded, "Check, baby, check, baby one, two, three, four."

Now if you were in my fraternity at the time I was, you knew that Sherman, the cook, always played WGCI radio, a station which concentrated on Soul, R&B, rap, and hip hop music. So if you were in the house when he was cooking, you usually heard the same songs every day. So naturally they became part of our vocabulary.

But I wasn't expecting the church member who was standing next to me to immediately come up with the next line.

It was a great moment.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People

When I was little, my neighbor brought me (along with her kids) to see a movie. The movie was Darby O'Gill and the Little People. It absolutely terrified me. I spent most of the movie praying for it to be over (and envying my little neighbor kid, who fell asleep). Something about a death coach and a banshee gave me nightmares for quite a while.

Now Jonathan has his own Darby O'Gill experience, coming at the hands of an innocuous-seeming Thomas the Train movie: Thomas and the Magic Railroad. Our neighbor gave it to us, and we, just thinking "ah, it's just Thomas" let him watch it (Thursday). He's been afraid to leave our side since then. He's had nightmares and is afraid to go to sleep, and he keeps telling us, "That movie is stuck in my head forever."

I have to say I know how he feels.

Cross Country

Last night I went to Millersport's (only) home cross country meet. It sure brought back a lot of memories, especially of junior high cross country. There were all sorts of things I liked about running cross country. I liked how unstructured practice usually was: just go out and run (and keep on running)! In 8th grade, we ran a lot at Summers Park and in the cemetery near our school (OK, so I had one difficulty with Summers Park, and that was that root that I sprained my ankle on).

I remember as a middle schooler, how important I felt when the high school coach came up and talked to me following a meet, wondering if I would be running in high school, because the team could use a runner like me. I had a "popular" kid write in my 7th grade yearbook "to Flash, the long distance man"... (and something about kicking the crap out of the other runners [sic] buts [sic]).

I loved the camaraderie with the other runners - even from the opposing team. My dad gave me a strategy: to draft off the other team's top runner and then sprint him at the end, and it always worked through middle school. It also helped me build friendships with most of them, because we would talk all through the race.

Once I got to 8th grade, several of them were my teammates (Tim and Richard, most notably), and we pushed each other hard. I remember one race I really thought Richard would beat me, and I told him he had to let me win because it was my birthday (it was). As it turned out, I don't think anyone let anyone win, because I ended up setting the course record that day.

High school was a little harder; it's tough coming in as a freshman. Of course, I was running cross country every day and then going for soccer practice (often riding my bike across town to get to soccer). I probably ate my parents out of house and home!

I ended up running #1 JV as a freshman, and I won a lot of meets. In the last (regular season) meet of the year, we ran JV and varsity together (JV probably had to wear our jerseys inside-out, so it looked like we were from OMOKOK), and I was our 7th runner, earning me a varsity point (toward the 15 or so that you had to get to earn a varsity letter).

Then, after the Sectional, some disciplinary problems on the team (none relating to me) required a new 7th varsity runner, so we had a run-off to determine who would run in the Regional. I won the run-off (with my best-ever time and my only sub-17 time: 16:57), so I went to the Regional, which our team won (earning me my varsity letter).

I loved running cross country; I liked the courses (especially those that went through woods and up a lot of hills). I liked getting out and running and running and running with my friends. I liked the runners' high. In fact, having made the varsity team, I had decided that as a sophomore, if there were conflicts between soccer and cross-country, I would run. But when I went to church camp and thus wasn't eligible for the first meet (and played soccer instead), so the coach was mad at me and instead of talking to me, he bawled out my sister, that was it.

I think that cross country coach would be surprised to know that I'm still running these days (and loving it).

I Wonder...
...why nobody ever listened to my radio show. As I mentioned, I am going through my old cassettes and transferring them to a medium that I'll be able to listen to (and getting rid of many dubbed cassettes that are in such bad condition that I can't really even listen to them). As I do so, I have been listening to some of the "mix tapes" (if you're under age 30, just smile and nod your head) and I came across some of the tapes of the "DJ Jazzy Brian and the Fresh Pancake" WNUR radio show. Not only were our shows on between 2 and 4 am, but they were simply awful. You never knew what kind of horrible music we were going to play. Probably because we never knew what kind of horrible music we were going to play.

Set list:
Motorhead
Dead Kennedys (they ranked two songs)
Aztec Camera (on 45 instead of 33, doing a Van Halen cover)
Atilla the Stockbroker
Beastie Boys
Depth Charge
Burl Ives
The Toy Dolls (with an Elvis cover tune)
DJ Quick
Ronald Reagan (spoken word)
Ella Fitzgerald
Sesame Street Theme
Public Enemy/Ice-T "medley"

(+ multiple playing of a short portion of a public service announcement; I think we were supposed to play the whole thing)

That coupled with inane and sleepy-sounding stupid DJ banter... I can't see why people weren't staying up all night to listen to our show. Or why the only calls we got were from drunks or stoners. Doesn't make any sense.

Duh.

Our radio show's advertising policy was something like this: if you happened to tune in between 2-4 on a certain night, you could hear the show. Otherwise, forget about it. Oh, and we didn't have much of a broadcast range anyway.

We played music that we liked and that we wanted to hear, and if you didn't like it, you were free to call in a request that would be ignored.

We bantered in ways that the two of us generally thought was at least somewhat humorous (it was funnier at 3 am than in the day), and if you didn't like it, there were plenty of other stations on the radio. We lampooned characters made "famous" by better radio personalities (if my brother and his friends qualify as "better") in the past - if you hadn't heard their shows, or even the combined show that I did with my brother with "Pancake" as our apprentice, then you missed out on why they were funny. We used insider terminology where we were the only insiders...

Why does this matter? Why does it even merit a blog post?

Because this is often the way Christians deal with their faith and with church. If you happen to show up in their church building at the right time of the day on the right day of the week, you might be able to "tune in."

We play music that is accessible to church people. Only. Besides the obvious point (the instrumentation, which I really don't have as much an issue with as one might think), try reading the lyrics of some favorite hymns - but read them with an outsider's mentality. It can be quite difficult. And try shouting out "FREEBIRD" in a church service sometime and see if the worship band stops and plays it for you.

We use a lot of "Christianese" and insider terminology in the church. I remember once when the Appalachia Service Project was brought up in a former church (great ministry, by the way) - we always used its initials: ASP. So anyway, someone saw it and immediately thought of this.

And all the while, just like "Pancake" and I - as long as we're "on the air" we think we're being successful...

Memory Lane

At the end of last week, I downloaded some freeware that allows me to transfer my cassettes to mp3 files, so I have been taking a walk down memory lane. As I have been doing my work, I've had music playing.

This kind of reminds me of "the Great Vinson Music Purge" in which my mother heard rumor about the nasty, profanity-laden music that I was listening to and demanded to listen to every cassette I owned (to those born after, say, 1985, check out this history lesson). Hour after hour, day after day, my mother listened to our music (I say "our" because my brother gladly threw his cassettes into the pile, too).

Some highlights of the "Purge" included Big Mama actually liking some of our music (I can distinctly remember that she liked Love and Rockets) and walking into the living room to hear the screaming guitars of Quiet Riot (she didn't like them all that much, but can you blame her? I have it on good authority that (the late) Kevin DuBrow couldn't kick butt even with the aid of "butt-seeking boots").

Of course, when it came down to it, she only confiscated one cassette (this doesn't count the Judas Priest cassette she took from the Dunce some years before - it had long since been "returned" via a "seek-and-destroy" mission). We gleefully ripped the tape out of it, much to Big Mama's horror (I'm not sure exactly what she was going to do with it).

So anyway, it's been fun listening to the music of the high-school Thief, from days when my babysitting money bought me a cassette every week from the scanty "alternitive" section at the mall music store while the babysittee was in CCD class. It takes me back to a much more confusing, difficult, and less simple time in my life.