Piercings and Bill Leftfoot

I celebrated my graduation from high school by doing things of which my parents would disapprove.

Rebellion is nothing unique to me. We see the light at the end of the tunnel—freedom! No more rules, no more curfew. No more questions about where we’re going, who will be there, or when we’ll be home. No more comments on our clothes, our language, our tardiness, or our laziness.

I was free to slouch into mediocrity and complacency, squandering my glorious potential on Super Smash Brothers and sleeping in.

My first act of defiance was to take myself right down to Icon Piercing, then occupying a couple of rooms above the Dairy Queen on West End Avenue, and get my cartilage pierced. What I hoped to accomplish by paying someone to punch a hole in my left ear is a mystery. I suppose it was self-expression, but I do wonder whether I would have done it if my parents had said, “Do what you want. We don’t care.”

To my delight, they were displeased. When my ear got infected and I had to go to the doctor for antibiotics, their displeasure only deepened. No matter, I was my own man, and they could take their disappointment in my appearance and my choices to someone who cared. I was so independent, free-thinking, and original, right?

When my grandfather saw my piercing, all he said was, “I wish that wasn’t there.”

My next step into adulthood was one my parents didn’t know about until last weekend. Certain acts of stupidity need eight to ten years to become funny. My friends Jonathan, Will, Bear, and I pooled our capital and bought an ‘88 Volkswagen Golf hatchback for $350.

This is perhaps the best decision I have made to date, other than following Jesus.

We first ripped out everything in the interior of the car that didn’t required tools. This included the center console and the glove compartment.

Why?

Because we could. It was our car.

We then found heavy sticks and a couple of metal pipes to store in the cargo space. At stoplights and intersections, we would pile out of the car, choose a weapon, and do as much damage to the paint job and body as we could before the light turned green. This was particularly fun to do in the middle of Green Hills.

The car had some mechanical problems. For example, if you shifted into reverse, you could only go backwards for a few seconds before the clutch popped the car out of gear.

We had no license, registration, or insurance for the Golf. This made every adventure a bit more exciting. Without a muffler, our little hatchback was louder than the biggest truck you’ve ever seen. I do not exaggerate when I say that you could hear it coming two miles away.

One time, the engine caught on fire in Jonathan’s driveway. We all stood around looking at it while Jonathan ran inside then ran back out carrying a single glass of water.

We all stood back as Christopher started it up. It ran better. The fire must have burned away all the impurities.

In between beating sessions and the nights when we would go for joy rides and run over people’s bagged leaves, For Sale signs, and trashcans, we parked the Golf in one of Lipscomb University’s parking lots.

One day, after we finished eating at the meat market where I choked on my beef stroganoff, we were approached by one of Lipscomb’s security guards. Back when I was in high school at David Lipscomb on the same campus, we parked across the street in a lot that belonged to Granny White Church of Christ. People kept breaking into the cars during school hours and stealing cd players. To remedy this problem, Lipscomb hired two of the oldest men in Nashville. Even after securing the protection of the Geezer Patrol, the break-ins continued. I wondered if the new security guards snoozing away in their Buick boats had anything to do with it. After school, they’d be asleep with their heads back. No doubt my car and my valuables were in capable hands.

I want to say it was Carl who tapped on the window of the Golf after lunch that day. He asked what we were doing.

“We just finished eating lunch.”

He asked if we had permission to park our car at Lipscomb.

We reassured him that we were both students at the high school.

He asked to see our IDs.

Yeah, about that, well, we didn’t have them on us. It was summer after all.

He asked Bear what his name was.

Bear turned to look at me then said to Carl, “Bill.”

“Bill what?”

Bear looked at me again. “Leftfoot. Bill Leftfoot.”

Of all the phony aliases he could have chosen, Bear picked the one that sounded least plausible. I did a Google search just now with “Bill Leftfoot.” No one in the history of humankind has ever been named Bill Leftfoot.

Carl the Geezer wasn’t buying it. He asked us to step out of the car.

Bear politely ignored him, put the car into reverse, put the car into reverse again, and a third time, and we finally drove out of the parking lot. I turned around to look at Carl in his white synthetic cowboy hat. Poor Carl. Even with the car’s mechanical problems, we would be in the next county by the time he got back into his car. No chance of a chase.

We didn’t have the car for very long after that. Parking on Lipscomb’s campus was asking for trouble, so we moved it three miles down the street to Belmont’s campus. We went to get it one day, and it was gone. Probably towed by some beastly man with no concept of how to love a car well.

My dad sells insurance, so everything mentioned above would have stressed him out if he’d known back then. Sometimes, oftentimes, what our parents don’t know can’t hurt them.

They never mean to smother us, only love and protect. They’re just human.

We have to teach them that the world needs piercings and Bill Leftfoot. The world needs the sound of a metal pipe putting a dent in an ‘88 Volkswagen Golf hatchback in the middle of a busy suburban shopping district. The world needs risk-takers and people who challenge our conceptions of what “normal,” “presentable,” and “appropriate” look like.

The world needs you to be yourself—to become more fully alive.

Just please don’t blame your arrest and jail sentence on me.

I hate cats

I hate cats.

I say that with the full knowledge that hating cats is all the rage right now. All sorts of people hate cats then go eat sushi then film themselves tweeting about these activities on their Twitter feeds then upload these videos to YouTube. They do all this while wearing v-neck t-shirts from American Apparel and skinny jeans and plastic Blue Brothers sunglasses in fluorescent green and pink. These people have long conversations about the drawbacks of cats while smoking organic American Spirit cigarettes and listening to A.A. Bondy and Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes.

However, before you lump me into the same category as the chic cat haters who drink Sparks and refuse to wear deoderant, please hear me out and then decide whether or not my feline vitriol is justified.

****

My family had lots of cats when my two sisters and I were younger—Cinnamon and Sugar, Emily and Bubba. I forget what happened to the first two, but when I was walking through the garage one morning to get to my car, I discovered a bloodied and torn-up Emily laying on the polished concrete. I went back inside to tell my mom that Emily had had a run-in with a coyote or raccoon or disturbed teenager. Poor Emily died soon after.

Bubba disappeared my junior year of college around Halloween. The police had found evidence of Satanic rituals in the hills surrounding our neighborhood, so I hoped that a pack of hungry coyotes were the culprits. I’ve heard that cats wander off to die alone, so maybe it was just Bubba’s time. Who knows.

Cats were never my favorite. I prefer dogs. However, I never bore any true malice towards them. They don’t love you the ways dogs do, and they stare through you like they know every sin you’ve ever committed. They act likes monarchs, as though in their generosity they allow their owners to continue living in the house so long as they continue to pay homage: small cans of Salmon Florentine with Garden Medley. If the owner defaults on said tax, the cat punish disobedience with needle-sharp teeth and feces-infused claws. It is not for nothing that cats lick their privates and store up dangerous bacteria. Provoke them, and you will be sorry.

I learned this the hard way.

My dad was in the hospital having the latest in a series of surgeries trying to correct a congenital problem with his intestines. A deep-fried meal at Harry T’s in Destin, Florida, precipitated the latest clog in the plumbing—he’d been fine for ten years—and my mom finally convinced him to go to the hospital on a Saturday night.

I had planned to return to Knoxville to resume my job hunt, but I wanted to wait around until I knew what was wrong with my dad. The doctors were deciding whether or not he needed surgery on Monday morning. On Sunday night, I invited my friends Hunter, Holly, and Chelsea over to grill out some hamburgers. I was going in and out taking the burgers and seasoning to the grill, so Max the Cat escaped the house. Max is notorious for not wanting to come back inside but on his own good time.

Right about the time we finished dinner, it began to rain. I knew my mom would be upset with me if I left their precious, if demon-possessed, cat outside to get soaked. Even though I thought a good dousing might help his bad attitude, I went outside to find him.

Max was sitting on the brick window ledge outside the den.

I petted him with my right hand to calm him down before trying to pick him up. Once he seemed pacified, I reached forward with my left hand to scoop him up.

Max chomped down twice on my left wrist.

At this point, I was holding him by the scruff, and he was hissing at me.

Whatever. He could suffer in the rain if he was going to be a jerk. Par for the course.

I went back inside to hang out with my friends, who heard the story, saw my bleeding wrist, and agreed that cats are Satan’s special agents of destruction and pain in homes around the world.

Before I went to bed that night, I got a blanket, went back outside, and captured Max. Nobody likes to get bitten, but Max is an animal, so what did I expect? I’m not cruel.

I noticed that my wrist had begun to swell, and I no longer had full range of motion. Interesting.

When I woke up, even bending my wrist was painful.

I went to the hospital and found out that my dad was having surgery, which went very well. After seeing him, I said my good-byes and drove home to pack up my truck to head back to Knoxville. I stopped at my grandparents’ house on my way out of town to pick up a rug.

While telling them about what happened with Max, I noticed that red streaks were running from the bites all the way up to my armpit. I’d seen them earlier but thought I must have just been scratching my arms.

Nope.

My grandparents suggested that I call my uncle Nathan, who is a doctor. He’d already written a prescription for some by-mouth antibiotics to treat the infection from the bites. When I described the streaks to him, he told me to check myself in to the emergency room at Saint Thomas hospital where he works.

Long story short, I checked myself in and had to stay two nights.

My parents’ cat put me in the hospital for two days. Max the Scourge of the Devil injected me with Bartonella bacteria when he bit me. I got Cat Scratch Disease (CSD). Why? For trying to bring him in out of the rain.

“But he’s just an animal!” you argue. “He didn’t know any better!”

Well, over $2000 in medical bills later, that’s not even the point. I was hooked up to an IV getting liquid antibiotics to keep the infection from spreading to my heart and thus to the rest of my body. My dad was six doors down and on morphine. He couldn’t sleep because he was in so much pain. All sorts of visitors stopped in to see me after they checked on him.

Why was I in the hospital? A stupid, malicious cat.

Talk about feeling ridiculous. Cancer? Heart disease? Kidney stones? Broken bone?

No. A mean cat.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t intend to be shamed.

I’m sure your cat is lovely, a perfect doll. It probably makes you dinner and pays your taxes. It’s probably never put you in the hospital.

Well, bully for you. I hope your cat love affair lasts a lifetime. I hope you grow older together and reminisce on the front porch.

I hate cats. I’d be a fool not to.

If you can think of a good reason for me to reconsider, please feel free to share. Until then, I assert that cats love evil.

Mexican ketchup

So my family has started reading Gu.e.

They now stop themselves in the middle of telling stories: “Oh, I shouldn’t say that. It might end up on Austin’s blog.”

Great. Now they’re going to practice self-restraint and try to be normal, and I’ll have nothing to write about.

I think that if I am going to write, then using family for material is a given. Flannery O’Connor is known for saying that if you make it out of childhood, you have enough to write about the rest of your life. Well, I never plan on making it out of my childhood, so let the anecdotes, absurdities, and irreverent banter continue to flow.

Since I now have to be careful what I say about my family—poppycock!—I’ll only be sharing hypothetical stories. Writing a book like Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes could get me in big trouble. His memoir didn’t exactly describe his family’s halos and laud their generous virtues.

I’d rather not have a falling out with my family. Spending time with them is one of my favorite pastimes, and I’m still on my parents’ cell phone plan. There’s a lot I stand to lose by alienating them.

I’ve been told that I’m allowed to write about my relatives after they’re dead.

Super. What if I die first and the world misses out on all those stories? I have a responsibility that I intend to honor. My family toes the line of sanity, and people need to know about all that ridiculousness.

I drank an Americano and came up with a solution: anytime I write about my family from now on, I’m writing about hypothetical situations. Understood? I’m not saying it did happen, I’m saying that on December 23, 2007, the following situation unfolded, and the family involved may or may not have been mine. I’m not pointing fingers.

That said, if you happen to know someone in my family, don’t go up and say, “Hey, I read Austin’s blog post, ‘Mexican Ketchup,’ and I can’t believe you said that.” You could make a fool of yourself because IT MAY HAVE HAPPENED TO SOMEONE ELSE’S FAMILY. Ha.

Do we have an understanding? (I’m narrowing my eyes and giving you a significant look.)

Good.

****

Every year, the dad’s side of somebody’s family eats at Kobe’s Steakhouse off of West End Avenue. We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember.

Kobe’s is a hibachi-style Japanese restaurant where a chef cooks your food right in front of you. The chef’s antics and canned jokes make the meal more a performance than a quiet affair. He’ll use a spatula to flip shrimp tails into his shirt pocket, his hat, or someone’s glass of water. He’ll stack slices of onion into the tapered cone of a volcano, pour vodka through the hole in the center, and light it on fire.

This particular year, our chef was Hispanic, not Asian.

No biggie, right? I’m sure he’s got the skills if he’s got the job. What does his race have to do with anything?

He says hello to everyone and begins setting out the shallow rectangular dishes for the dipping sauces. While he’s ladling out the soy-based sauce for steak, he says, “Japanese A1.’

Ha, ha, we’ve heard it a dozen times before. Everyone gives a courtesy laugh, and we go back to our conversations. This is what is expected of us. We know the script, and we play our part.

Once the Hispanic chef has passed out the Japanese A1, he starts on the reddish dipping sauce for chicken, seafood, and vegetables.

“Japanese ketchup,” he says.

Ha, ha. We all laugh, and we turn back to our conversations, but wait, our hypothetical Grandma has something to say.

She leans forward, making sure that he notices her, then makes a joke of her own, “You mean Mexican ketchup?”

He gives her a crooked smile, then turns back to his work.

[Silence.]

What just happened?

Did she really just say that?

I don’t know what was worse, what she said or what my hypothetical self did before I could catch him.

I kneed her under the table. She was sitting to my left, and I whacked her with my bony kneecap.

What just happened?

Did I really just do that?

She turns to look at me with a smile on her face. She shakes her shoulder and crinkles her nose—that posture that says, “I made a funny, didn’t I!”

Yikes.

Grandmas are tricky creatures.

You never can tell what they’re going to say. They are given to extravagant acts of generosity and waking up at 4am to do crossword puzzles. They know how to make biscuits, and they know all the high-scoring two-letter words in Scrabble.

I have two of them. They never cease to amaze me. I might get a random check for $100 in the mail for “gas money” or I might get something less tangible, like a story to tell.

But like I said before, I am not saying that this happened in my family. This may just be something I heard about on Facebook or CNN. Okay? Do we have an understanding?

Good.

In praise of 7s and 8s

My dad gives great advice.

He has a tendency to “sermonize,” as I call it, but those times when he gets straight to the point always end up being pure gold.

He also has an excellent sense of humor that few people have experienced in its purest form. When I would come home early from a date and he’d still be up, sitting in his red leather throne and watching Letterman, he thought it was funny to ask, with one eyebrow raised, “So what base did you get to?”

I knew better than to be embarrassed. It was never a serious question demanding a serious answer. The only reason he was even comfortable saying this aloud was that he assumed that I kept my hands to myself, which I did. Having two sisters gives you special insight into the damage done by sleazy guys with busy hands. Every girl is somebody’s sister or some dad’s baby girl.

I’ve dated more than my dad ever did, but he’s had more experiences with people.

If I remember correctly, he was standing at the kitchen sink, and I was sitting at the table. I must have gone through some minor break-up in the recent past that precipitated the following conversation:

“Austin,” he said, “Do you mind if I give you some advice?”

“No. Go ahead.”

“Okay. You’ve brought some pretty girls home over the years. In fact, most of them have been gorgeous—9s and 10s. The trouble is that you are disappointed time after time when they don’t seem to have much character or a very good sense of humor. They don’t treat you well, or they’re high maintenance, obsessed with their looks. You get your hopes up and you get let down. Don’t get me wrong: it’s important to be attracted to the woman you’re going to marry. By all means, date pretty girls, but all I want is for you to consider bringing home more 7s and 8s. I’d like to see more 7s and 8s around here. They’re the type of pretty you want to grow old with. 7s and 8s turn into 8s, 9s, and 10s the longer you know them.”

He had a point. I call it The Sunflower Principle, and I’ve written about it elsewhere.

Achtung, everyone: forget about 9s and 10s.

Remember that scene in A Beautiful Mind when Russell Crowe’s character, John Nash, realizes that if he and his friends all go after the hottest woman at the bar, then none of them will take her home, they’ll offend her friends in the process, and every one of them will still be alone? Nash has a revelation that he later applies to economics: if each one of them pursues one of her friends, they all have a much greater chance of success. In that fictional scenario, competition over the hottest woman guaranteed failure.

What he meant to say is that 9s and 10s are responsible for all the brokenness in the world.

Thank you, Dad, for good advice, even if you generalized.

Perhaps the world holds two or three women with perfect features and curvy, athletic figures who score a 10 out of 10 on the hotness chart and love Jesus (which is important to me) and like thought-provoking literature and films and eat sushi and nurture insatiable wanderlust and take good care of people and love kindness, compassion, and justice and want to recycle and support local businesses and ride bikes to work and eat organic foods and live within their means and don’t cake on the make-up and read poetry and refuse to answer their cell phones when in the middle of a conversation and aren’t afraid to go for days without showering. Maybe up to half a dozen of these women exist…

in the minds of sad saps who are afraid of commitment and believe that love is a feeling, not something we practice.

These are men whose fathers were playing golf and eating cheeseburgers on the day that they were supposed to tell their sons, “I’d like to see more 7s and 8s around here.”

Three cheers for 7s and 8s!

9s and 10s can have their big boobs and chiseled abs and eat a turd.

Farkle

My favorite game in the world is Farkle.

Why?

Because Farkle is the best game in the world.

Why?

Because the loser suffers the consequence that all the players agree upon beforehand.

That means that some unlucky person—or unlucky people, depending on the consequence—has to do something embarrassing, disgusting, or hilarious. I’ve played this game all over the world with people of all ages. From snarfing down gobs of mayonnaise to streaking through the suburbs, Farkle will deliver the best stories you have to tell. Every time. It’s like Truth-or-Dare without the Truth option.

I’ve posted a video on YouTube to give you a taste of the realm of possibilities.

Please watch the video. I promise that you will be irrevocably touched.

Thermometer? I’d rather die.

Talking to Rachel last night, I realized that sharing certain occurrences from childhood—out of context—enables you to see them in their true light.

Telling an objective third party makes you see just how ridiculous certain precautions actually were.

If we got sick when we were small and young, my mom mistrusted the temperature reading she got by asking us to hold the thermometer under our tongues. We must have fidgeted, which would, of course, mask a life-threatening brain fever or onslaught of flesh-eating bacteria from the Eagle Nebula.

The remedy?

She stuck it in our butts.

Seriously?

Sheesh, I’m embarrassed even thinking about it now. Talk about a shiver running down my spine: watching her use Vasoline to lube up a piece of glass with mercury, a harmful element, inside. Knowing that I would have to lie on my stomach on the den floor and wait as she administered this device which was supposed to be a part of the cure.

Nonsense.

“Yes, I feel like garbage. Oh? What’s that you say? I’ll magically feel better if you stick something up my butt? Okay! Sounds peachy!”

Oh sure, and then Michael Jordan is going to come to my birthday party and carry me around on his shoulders. 

Could all the doctors, scientists, and inventors not cast a care to all the poor children out there stretched out in all their shame in the most frequently traveled room in the house with only Granny Dean’s afghan to cover their fragile pride?

Granny Dean’s afghan had holes in it, so the thermometer could stick through. Our tiny bums were like creme-colored hillocks skewered by a radio tower. I was getting a signal and a message alright: never tell anyone that you’re sick. Terrible things happen to tender places.

There’s a thought that will put the chill of death in your bones: Dad walking through the den and oopsy! wasn’t watching where he was going and stepped on the thermometer and drove it like the point of a spear through the delicate tissue of your something-you-need-intact-to-be-a-confident-adult.

It could have happened. Seriously.

Holy crap. I can’t believe the modern kid doesn’t have to go through this rite of passage. They get a slight tickle in the ear canal, and voila! no more cause for concern. 

“No, Mom, I don’t have a fever. Even if I did, I’d rather die from it than endure another one of your medical treatments.”

I know she did her best. My dad, too. But for the love of all that is holy, please don’t stick glass in my butt! Not in the name of science, not for the sake of my health. Just please let me die here with my dignity intact. And no, I don’t want any orange sherbert and Sprite. 

Thanks for nothing, 1980s.

Their Best Life Now

Some of you may like Joel Osteen. This post isn’t intended for you.

This post is intended for people who would like to “bless” their friends with a free gift, 30 Thoughts for Victorious Living, video streaming, weekly podcasts, and daily devotionals, compliments of Joel Osteen Ministries.

A couple of years ago, I decided that my best friend Hunter was in need of such blessing.

I followed two easy steps:

1) I went to my e-mail and copied his e-mail address.

2) I signed him up for what at that time were called Osteen’s “Daily Word” and “Weekly e-Votional.”

I care about Hunter a lot. The great lengths I went to to ensure that Hunter didn’t miss a single inspiring message from Joel bear testimony to that love and affection. We’ve known each other for about 23 years, and his spiritual vitality is as important to me as my own.

As with most of my selfless gestures, I forgot about signing him up.

One Saturday night when I was home visiting my friends and family in Nashville, I went over to Hunter and Holly’s apartment to hang out. We took their dog Kiev on a walk. Hunter filled me in on a problem he was having. His inbox was filling up with spam from Joel Osteen Ministries. He’d unsubscribed twice from the distribution list, but the inspiring messages kept coming.

You can’t stop a revolution.

Hunter’s next strategem was to use stronger language in his reply e-mails. Maybe that would convince them.

I was at this point in danger of giving myself a hemorrhoid from holding in my laughter. For my health, I finally released my pent-up jubilation.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“I signed you up for that!”

He called me a name I won’t repeat.

I am proud to say that Hunter was only the beginning. I’ve signed up most of my friends. More people should find themselves in his dilemma. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. We must find creative ways to follow through with this responsibility. If we truly care about those closest to us, we should practice utmost diligence in collecting their contact information—multiple e-mail addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, and social security numbers.

Remember that we are to love our enemies. I can’t think of a better way to love them than to open up the floodgates of the golden globe above the stage in the Houston Astrodome. If you have trouble finding a valid e-mail for your enemies, check Facebook. 

We need to put Joel Osteen Ministries in contact with as many people as possible, so that Joel can give our loved ones their best life now.

It’s the right thing to do. We owe it to them.

>> Please post your success stories in the comments section of this blog. Let the encouragement flow like new wine!

least masculine souvenir of all time

I spent two months in the summer of 2004 working with Warringah Church of Christ in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. My best friend Hunter and another friend from Lipscomb University, Benji, were also there.

We stayed with different families from the church for one or two weeks at a time.

We especially enjoyed living with the Lubens. Bob refurbished vintage surfboards and liked to drive fast. Linda made us laugh with her impromptu mothering and cooked lamb roast on Sundays.

Most Australian homes have no central heating and air. Summertime in the States corresponds with winter Down Under. The Luben household used space heaters in different rooms. Your feet would get cold if you walked around without shoes on.

Bob was proud of his house shoes. He encouraged us to try them on, insisting that they were an Australian original, a great souvenir. He’d bought them from a guy who set up a table at the local mall. He was right-the shearling kept your feet warm and the sheepskin leather was durable. They even had a decent sole for going to get the paper or taking out the trash.

I like to buy souvenirs that have some purpose other than cluttering up the top of a dresser. I don’t ever want to buy hutches or shelves or cabinets to hold mementos from my world travels. Give me something like a satchel or wallet or shoes that I can use often.

Those boots made in Australia were right up my alley-functional, well-made, and authentic.

I bought a pair. I loved them. My feet stayed toasty warm, and I found them for cheaper than what Bob had paid.

Our two months came to a close, we packed our duffels and our backpacks, and the three of us returned to the States.

Back in the good ole U.S. of A., I was in for a nasty surprise.

I’m the only straight male in the country with a pair of Ugg boots. Bob led me astray. Those boots are not meant for chopping wood and butchering wild beasts. No, middle school girls cruise around the mall in them, and sorority girls of ill repute wear them in the summer.

Just when I thought I was being smart by passing up the didgeridoo and boomerang, I get stuck with the least masculine souvenir of all time. I may as well have start wearing pants with “Juicy” across the butt and saying, ”like,” every other word.

At least I petted a koala.

¿Cuantos anos tienes tu?

I took my first trip out of the country the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school.

My three best friends and I went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with our youth group from Hillsboro Church of Christ.

At this point, I had two years of Latin under my belt and spoke not a lick of Spanish. We visited a cathedral on a hill overlooking the city, and my classical training enabled me to translate a passage of scripture on one of the stained-glass windows: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52)

Pretty impressive, right? I could conjugate the crap out of the Latin verb meaning “to kill”—neco—but I couldn’t communicate with other human beings. Try this on for size: “Ego amo magnam tuum praedam.” “I love your big booty.” I put together that sentence for the construction paper cards we made on Valentine’s Day. 

Yet, if I’d drifted away from the group, I wouldn’t even have been able to stop someone and ask, “Have you seen a big group of loud gringos carrying bags full of tourist crap?”

As much as I loved my Latin teacher Miss Tracey and appreciated her willigness to treat me as a unique person and not just another drone passing through her class, Señora Lindsey, David Lipscomb High School’s Spanish-speaking titan, might have saved me from my most embarrassing moment in Honduras.

Our group was staying at Baxter Institute, a bible school that trained preachers to minister in Honduras and other countries in Central and South America. We ate our meals with the faculty and students in an expansive dining hall in the campus’s main building. Scott, my youth minister, encouraged us to spread out and try to get to know some of the students while we were eating. Some of them spoke a little English, but most smiled and said, “Buenos,” the same as us.

One morning at breakfast, my gregariousness got the best of me. As I put my tray down and settled into my seat, I turned to the young Honduran man next to me and said, “Me llamo Austin.

He told me his name.

“¿Cuantos anos tienes tu?” I asked. I thought I was saying, “¿Cuantos años tienes tu?”

What’s the difference? you might be wondering. Well, the difference is you either ask a guy how old he is or you make a complete fool of yourself. The accent mark above the “n” in “años” is called a “tilde” and happens to be crucial.

I found this out the hard way. Tildes signifies that you’re supposed to add a “y” to the pronunciation of años, as in  “AHN-yose,” not “AHN-os.” Latin has no tildes.

I asked, “¿Cuantos anos tienes tu?” and thought I was saying, “How old are you?” or literally, “How many years do you have?”

My new friend was confused. He leaned away from me, looking at me like I’d just grown horns. He turned to his friends at the table. For a moment, everyone was silent, then they all erupted into laughter.

He turned back to me and held up a pointer finger. 

“Uno,” he said.

Why is that little tilde crucial? 

Because I’d just asked a stranger, “How many anuses do you have?” 

I’m just glad his answer was one.

If anybody has Rosetta Stone software for Spanish, please let me know.

You have to get up anyway

My freshman year of college at Lipscomb University, I lived next door to a guy who chose his own nickname.

He was short and skinny with lots of freckles and blond hair that he spiked up with product. He believed that he had lots of game.

I didn’t think too much about our proximity at first. He seemed nice enough.

My roommate and I chose beds and settled into our room on the second floor of High Rise. David put some tin signs with John Deere, Remington, and Coca-Cola on them. They helped masked the sanitarium white of the cinderblock walls. We each had a closet and a desk, and we shared a mini-fridge and futon. Our parents retreated to Nashville’s suburbs. Life was sweet.

I took fourteen hours that first semester. My earliest class started at 9:00am—Introduction to Psychology. I’d get up at 8:45, put on a hat and my clothes from the day before, and slide into my desk right before Dr. Turner cleared his throat.

Steve’s earliest class began at 8:00am. He needed an hour to get ready, so without fail, he’d wake up, turn up the music on his computer, then walk down the hall to the shower. His roommate was never around. Otherwise, we never would have had a problem. As it was, the 10″ subwoofer hooked up to Steve’s computer made the tin signs on our wall vibrate like a hoopty with a system and some serious amps.

BBBBRRRRRrrrrrr. BBBBRRRRRrrrrrr. I’d sit in bed listening to Boyz 2 Men or ‘N Sync or A Cappella and get more and more irritated. After all, I wasn’t supposed to wake up for another hour and a half.

We took the tin signs down, but that didn’t help much. More extreme measures were necessary.

Steve would leave his door unlocked, so I let myself in and turned down the volume, assuming that he’d get the picture.

No such luck.

For a couple more weeks, the bass sounded like two lost whale lovers sounding to each other in the fathomless deep. I was starting to feel just a touch of resentment.

Now I need my sleep. As I’ve gotten a little bit older, I can catch the crankiness before I aim it at anybody. I know to keep my mouth shut and make the best of it. However, when I was 19, I had less self-control and more passivity.

One morning while Steve was in the shower, I went into his room, shut off the music, and unplugged his computer.

Surely he would get a clue. Surely he would notice the silence in his room and a light bulb would click on in his brain, “Oh! People are trying to sleep. Perhaps I should be more considerate, and if I must have late 90s pop with my Fruit Loops, the least I can do is turn down my Mariah Carey.”

No such luck.

The aural terrorism continued.

I may have, as a general rule, disliked and even avoided confrontation, but every man reaches the breaking point. It was time to make something happen.

I waited until I knew Steve was back in his room from his shower, then I knocked on his door. The music was so loud he couldn’t hear me. I turned the knob and walked in. 

“What’s up?”

“We need to talk.”

He furrowed his brow.

“Okay,” he said.

I decided to use tact and logic: “You turn up your music really loud as soon as you get up, then you go straight to the shower. You’re not even listening to it. My first class isn’t till 9. I don’t get up till 8:45. Your music wakes me up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Would you please find a way to keep it down so that I can sleep?”

I am still amazed at his response.

He replied, “You have to get up anyway.”

Was he joking?

I stared at him. He stared back at me. Nope, he wasn’t joking.

Perhaps all of us are egocentric. Our selfishness is as large as greed and as small as the volume of KC & Jo Jo’s “All My Life” at 7:07am. Those of us who have brothers and sisters and received socialization at school, on sports teams, and in youth groups could sometimes face concrete evidence of our selfishness by taking offering an apology and accepting some measure of responsibility. We agreed to try harder to be more considerate in the future.

Steve was unfazed. Apparently, thumping bass was his birthright.

He ceded this birthright when I gave up on diplomacy and threatened violence.

I have to respect his blind allegiance to himself though. 

That kind of self-centeredness becomes a caricature like big, floppy ears or a lumpy nose. It’s so absurd that it’s almost endearing. Almost.

I’m glad I didn’t stuff him out the window. I guess no college experience is complete without some inconsiderate or kooky roommates. Steve was only the beginning.

Tape Ball to the Face

One of the crowning achievements up to that point in my life was knocking a squirrel out of a tree with a rock. It fell off the branch, hit the ground, popped up without the slightest trace of embarassement, and ran right back up the tree. 

Throwing one object at another seems to be hardwired into boys. 

Most sports are built around this concept. I’ve thrown rocks at squirrels, poppers at passing cars, donuts at windshields, water balloons, snowballs, grapes at my tennis coach, queso dip at a girl named Sarah, darts, Frisbees, pencils at acoustic ceiling tiles, eggs at everything, pieces of firewood at streetlamps, bottles at road signs, coins, mud, and large insects.

Now that I think about it, I realize that a large portion of my life has been spent chucking the any projectile at hand at a target.

Don’t think that this stops when boys grow into men. 

I was teaching English to four classes of juniors and two classes of freshmen at David Lipscomb High School. Quite a few of my students sang in Concert Choir, Chorale, or the Freshmen Choir, and on one particular day most of my second class of freshmen were gone all day because they were singing at a choir festival on Lipscomb University’s campus.

I was twenty-three years old at the time and had zero education classes under my belt, but I was no dummy. I wasn’t about to teach that day’s lesson to half the class only to repeat the exercise the next day. What I didn’t know then but soon discovered was that I’m a better mentor than high school teacher anyway. I loved spending time with my students outside of class because that’s when real learning was most likely to happen. I jumped at any opportunity to escape those four white cinderblock walls with them.

Inevitably, when my students discovered a wrench in the gears of our normal routine, they would ask to go to Lipscomb University’s Student Center, which was a short walk across campus and sold all kinds of food and candy.

I had no reason to say no that spring day, so we strolled across campus. They scattered into the bookstore, Uncle Dave’s, and couches and chairs all over the lobby.

We hung out for a while talking and cutting up until it was time to shepherd them back for their next classes. We walked from the main lobby through the bookstore to a door on the side of the building, which lets out onto the lawn between the Student Center and Elam, one of the girl’s dorms.

For some reason, Anna was carrying around a tape ball, and when I saw Jennifer, a girl who had been in the youth group when I was the interim youth minister at Hillsboro Church of Christ, a sequence of synapses fired down an old path and all my boyishness was brought to bear on the situation at hand. 

[Enter slow motion.]

Jennifer and her friend Kayce were walking up the stairs to the side entrance of Elam.

I held out my palm to Anna, and said one word: “Ball.”

For whatever reason, she didn’t hesitate and dropped it into my hand without question.

I’m left-handed, so I switched hands, reared back, and hummed that tape ball straight at Jennifer.

Or so I thought.

Somehow, in the immediacy of the moment, my vision became skewed, and I missed a key element in the equation: another girl, a stranger to me, was walking up the stairs ahead of my friends.

Oh no.

As I mentioned before, I had at this point entered samurai consciousness, and the action was unfolding frame by frame.

The stranger stepped up onto the short covered walkway that led to the door. She must have seen movement with her peripheral vision because she turned to her right.

At that very moment, the tape ball made impact with her forehead, right between her eyes. This was perhaps the finest result that my otherwise average throwing arm has every produced.

She roared something like, “BRRroagggghh!” and bent over double. With her left hand still covering her face, she used her right hand to pick up the tape ball, which she then tossed over the railing with the sissy throw of a very angry and unathletic person.

“I’m so sorry!” I yelled. “It was an accident. I wasn’t aiming for you at all!”

She said nothing, just yanked open the door and disappeared inside. 

The door shut with a click.

Perfect silence.

Jennifer and I stared at each other. We both turned to look at the blank face of the door. I turned to my left and right and looked at my kids. They looked back at me. Their eyes were wide, but no one moved.

Then, we all started laughing, and continued to laugh for the next thirty seconds.

My boys unfroze and gave me high fives. With their jaws dropped, my girls said, “Mr. Church, that was terrible.”

Twenty yards away, Jennifer was wiping tears from her eyes. She threw the ball back to me, and I returned it to Anna.

“Do you know her?” I asked.

“No!” Jennifer said.

This precipitated another round of laughter.

“Well, if you ever see her again, tell her I’m sorry, will you?”

We said our good-byes then walked back over to the high school.

News of my latest goof as a young, inexperienced teacher circulated amongst my other classes. If anything, my students treated me with more respect. After all, my aim that day was awe-inspiring. Yes, I was a human being who sometimes exercised poor judgment but at least was willing to apologize for my lapses and missteps. 

The tape ball incident also helped cement my reputation as a teacher unafraid of throwing curveballs at my students. They couldn’t pigeonhole me as some curmudgeonly young fart without a funny bone in his body. Being consistently unpredictable can be the most effective form of classroom management. 

Teach with no regrets.

Moral: Everything you need to know about teaching you learned at recess in middle school.

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Shame on me

In honor of April Fool’s Day, I’d like to list some of the pranks and mischief that I’ve orchestrated in years past:

High School

1) Stealing the ball from Coach Tillman’s mouse so that it wouldn’t work. Once he discovered what was happening, he asked for a backup from Phil Sanders, the IT guy at David Lipscomb High School. I searched until I found the backup then I stole it as well. Coach Tillman found this quite frustrating, which pleased me.

2) On occasion I found a tube of lip balm on the floor in the hall. In the afternoon, just before I left school for the day, I’d screw it all the way up then cake it behind Coach Tillman’s door knob. That way, he wouldn’t be able to see it when he unlocked the door and grabbed it to let himself into his room. I enjoyed the thought of his disgust and surprise as the lip balm coated his fingertips.

3) After a half-day at school, I ate lunch with some friends at San Antonio Taco Company, known to locals as “Satco.” Jonathan and I saved our leftover queso dip. We drove down to the football field where the track team was practicing. I motioned to Sarah M., who walked over. When she was in range, I threw the styrofoam container of queso dip at her. It hit her in the neck. Cheese splashed up the side of her face into her hair. It dripped down her front and down her back.

4) David, Justin, Jonathan, and I threw a four-foot-tall blue stuffed animal, a bunny, off the Natchez Trace bridge. We then drove to the bottom and ran over it a few times. The decency left in us said it was wrong to litter, so we took it with us and junked up Jonathan’s Explorer with styrofoam pellets. Sorry, Nonny John.

5) On three consecutive weekends, Jonathan, Will, Justin, and I cruised the streets of Brentwood and Green Hills looking for roadkill. Each Saturday night, we crammed one dead animal into Brittany’s mailbox. A raccoon, a big turtle, and a oppossum. Sorry, Brittany.

6) We tipped over a port-o-john in my neighborhood.

7) At the Coming Home football game my senior year, I put a dead squirrel in a brown paper bag. This bag I put on the condiments table at the concession stand with its tail sticking out.

8. We stuffed a dried-Christmas tree in Barrett’s Jeep.

9) We ordered 10 pizzas to a certain Geometry teacher.

10) I was Student Body President my senior year, and thus, was in charge of making announcements in chapel. A few days a week, I worked in nonexistent announcements about Zach Morris and other pop icons whom the teachers wouldn’t recognize. The students laughed, I kept a straight face, and the teachers were very confused.

11) Coach Tillman was also my youth minister. Jonathan, Will, Justin, and I went on a mission trip to Honduras with him. Without asking for permission, we trekked two miles through the crazy streets of Tegucigalpa to buy condoms at the Pali grocery store. These we unwrapped and put in Coach Tillman’s bed. He was displeased.

12) Our friend Ted’s father owned a donut shop. We’d roll in a few minutes before midnight just as Ted was closing the shop down. He’d give us all the jelly donuts that hadn’t sold. We would then cruise around and throw them at cars passing the opposite direction. The sound of a jelly donut hitting a windshield at about 60 miles per hours is akin to the laughter of a child in its ability to thrill the soul.

13) Certain mailboxes were found in the middle of the yards of their respective owners. Certain metal trashcans had dents so large they were no longer functional. I know nothing about that.

14) At fast food drive-thrus, we would either order items that weren’t on the menu or make ourselves impossible to understand. One lady at Krystal had the pleasure of taking my order for a pitching wedge. As you can imagine, she was confused. She told us to drive around to the window. You should have seen the look on her face when we drove through in reverse. She started laughing and told us to get on outta there.

15) Waiting until Coach Tillman left his room before sneaking in and turning off everything.

16) Squirrel crepe

17) The time I used a piece of bad modern art to befuddle driver’s at a busy intersection. This was also the only time one of my ideas made the newspaper.

College

1) I moved the pizza guy’s car when he was delivering a pizza to Fanning. I was on a double date at the time. He came out of the building holding the warmer. Bewildered, he just looked from side to side. His shoulders drooped. We had to get out of there after he saw us laughing.

2) Justin and I yanked the Toucan Sam hanging from the ceiling by fishing line in Uncle Dave’s while Jessica was working. 

3) “Borrowing” the maintenance golf carts. Sad day when they started locking them up.

4) Sneaking into a Jars of Clay concert in Allen Arena by climbing up the roof then putting on yellow Staff t-shirts David found in a box.

5) My younger sister Laura and I sent our cousin Jessie a taco through campus mail.

6) “Napkin Surprise” every day at lunch. INSTRUCTIONS: Take half the stack of napkins out of the basket. Scoop the nastiest leftovers on your tray on top of the remaining napkins. Smush the rest of the napkins on top of the food, thereby disguising it. Wait several days. Return to the table and check the surprise, or know in your heart that the surprise has touched the life of someone else.

7) Paging myself over the intercom in the High Rise lobby.

8. Pretending to be the Domino’s guy, calling random numbers in Elam dorm, convincing these strangers to buy the pizza for $5 so it wouldn’t come out of my paycheck, then watching from a corner as the girls came down with their money in hand, the pizza guy nowhere to be found.

9) Setting up a table and chairs in Lipscomb University’s commons area called “Bison Square.” Petioning people passing by for their contact information, signatures, and beer of choice. The petition was to get beer on tap in the cafeteria. Lipscomb is, of course, a dry campus. Drinking can get you kicked out. The signees were nervous, asking me if my petition was “for real.”

10) Staging very loud arguments in the library so that Mrs. Byers, the eagle-eye librarian, would ask us to leave.

11) During one of my rotations as the worship leader for University Bible, “UB” for short, an extended chapel service on Tuesday and Thursdays, I told over 2,000 people that we were going to start the morning off with some calisthenics. You could have heard a pin dropped. I think the only person who laughed was my friend Wilson McCoy. 

12) Using the words “pissed off” in a chapel talk and doing damage control for weeks. Being fussed at by everyone from the Dean of Campus Life to the elders at my church at the time. For some reason, providing the “context” for my word choice and explaining the words’ rhetorical effectiveness failed to appease any of these concerned individuals.

13) Wrapping up a 2-liter bottle of urine and giving it to a girl named Emily for Valentine’s Day. Strangely, we never went out on a date.

14) Picking the flowers around campus and giving them to girls. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.

15) Potlucks in the library study rooms.

16) Carrying a tiny watergun in my right hand and soaking the front of people’s pants while engaging them in conversation.

 

• Please don’t judge me for any of the above. I’m a changed man. I did not send my mom an e-mail today telling her that I’d been laid off because of the economy. She did not write me back and say that she almost threw up after reading my e-mail. What sort of sick person would play such a cruel joke on his own mother? The woman who gave him life? Shame on whoever it was.