Crap Artist, Literally

What happens at a place is made more dramatic by the expectations we bring into it.

I went to college at a small, private, liberal arts school called Lipscomb University. Two theologians, David Lipscomb and James A. Harding, founded it in 1891, and over a hundred years later, many of the doctrines defining the Restoration in general and Stone-Campbell Movement in particular were still evident in its rules, practices, and traditions.

Students attended chapel every day. Boys were allowed in girls’ dorms only during designated hours, and vice versa. We were prohibited from using any form of tobacco on campus and from drinking while we were enrolled in classes, regardless of whether or not we were of age. Curfew for weeknights was 12am, but the administration graciously extended it to 1 on the weekends.

For the most part, it was a wonderful place to get an education. I’m convinced that the rules forced us to be more creative—in how we broke them.

On weekends, I’d sign out of the dorm to my parents’ house, fifteen minutes down the road, and on Friday and Saturday nights, I’d sneak back into the dorm through a first-story window left open by my friends Justin and David for that purpose.

Both semester of my freshman year, which was the only year I lived on-campus, I lived on the second floor with another alum of David Lipscomb High School, David Binkley. We’d played football together. On some Friday nights, my mom would cook dinner for five or six of us sophomores, then full of spaghetti or Taco Ring or another one of her delicious recipes, we’d put in the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack and speed to the field to get dressed out.

A few more of my high school friends were on the second floor of High Rise, and others were scattered throughout. We had a good mix of locals and out-of-towners, so that those of us who had grown up in Nashville could show the newcomers around. They could return the favor on weekends when we’d take road trips to their parents’ houses.

All in all, I’d say Lipscomb University fostered a wholesome environment. The professors were required to be members at churches of Christ, so if we went to church, we’d see them in worship on Sunday mornings.

No matter what faith or code of conduct the faculty and administration endorsed and enforced, one variable was always outside of their control—students.

This became clear one night in the commons area of the second floor. Our RAs, Kyle and Sean, called a floor meeting on a Thursday night.

When I walked in, many of the guys were already standing around in clusters, talking and cutting. Two of them were shooting pool.

“Does anybody know what this is all about?” I asked no one in particular.

No one had a clue.

More guys drifted in, and at 7pm sharp, Sean walked in with his clipboard and took roll. He was frowning.

A couple of people were missing, and he made a note of this.

Kyle was about 6’8” and played Center on our basketball team. We’d just gone Division I that year, so our chances of a long season were slim. He was leaning against the hand railing. You could see down into the lobby where two guys were watching SportsCenter and playing ping-pong.

“Okay,” Sean began, “I don’t know which one of you thinks he’s an artist, but this is not cool.”

We all looked around the room. What was he talking about?

“Kyle and I—“ he nodded at his fellow RA, who hadn’t yet spoken a word, “had the pleasure last week of cleaning up your crap. By crap, I mean crap, literally, feces. Was it on the floor in one of the bathrooms? Oh no, you freaks, that would be too predictable. No, one of you decided to smear it on the wall like a chimpanzee.”

He scanned our faces while shaking his head in disgust.

“Did the culprit stop there? Oh no. He decided that once wasn’t enough. Kyle and I thought that perhaps this was an isolated incident, so you can imagine our—how should I say it?—irritation when we discovered that the bandit had struck again. I mean, seriously, whoever you are, what is freaking wrong with you? That’s just messed up. We don’t really expect that you’ll turn yourself in because the kind of person who does this sort of thing in the first place probably isn’t the kind of person with that kind of balls. Be that as it may, if it happens again, we’re going to make it rain. Does everybody understand?”

We all said yes, then the meeting broke up.

I don’t know what kind of childhood causes someone to make a magic marker of a turd, but as a group of us walked over to the cafeteria for dinner, I think we were all secretly impressed. That’s really sick, and I kind of wish I’d thought of it, albeit with the appropriate tools like a face mask and yellow dishwashing gloves.

You never know what to expect at a Christian school. You could be un- or pleasantly surprised, depending on how warped your sense of humor is.

Getting even with a little girl

We’ve all done things that draw other people’s criticism and even scorn.

Standing up for what you believe is often difficult, especially if your friends and family refuse to support your decision. Posterity will decide which people were right and brave and which people were complacent and fearful.

The story I’m about to tell you went down in a little place called Wien, Österreich, where the beer flows like wine and the women flock like salmon to the shores of Capistrano. But before you interrupt to tell me that you don’t speak Spanish, content yourself with this English translation: Vienna, Austria.

I spent three months studying art, world literature, German, and a beautiful young woman who served the students breakfast in Hotel Theresianum. We nicknamed the “Frühstück Fraulein.” The day we were to leave and loading luggage on the bus, I walked up to her and said, “Du bist sehr schön.”

She smiled and said, “Thank you.”

She spoke English? Of course she did. I could have bestowed sweet romance on her that whole time. We could have watched cheetahs wrestle rabbit carcasses off the zipline at the Tierpark and tear them into pieces. We could have drunk Kinderpunsch and held hands at the Christkindlmarkt. Crappers.

Everyone in Vienna spoke English. The waitress at the crepes place and the waiter at the Greek restaurant would listen for a moment as we stumbled over the um-lauts, long vowel sounds, and strange clusters of consonants—“Ich möchte einen Salat und die—no—den—no—das Crepe mit…—before gently interrupting. “Would you prefer that I speak in English?” Ms. Fancy Pants would say.

“Ja, bitte.” I had to get one last German phrase in to prove that we Americans at least try. We’re good for more than obesity and other insatiable appetites. For example, my own state of Tennessee gave the world whisky, rock ‘n roll, and country music. Or at least, Jack Daniels, Elvis, and Music City.

A stereoptypical conversation went something like this:

Wiener: “Hallo, wie geht’s? Was ist deiner Name?

Me: “Ich heisse Austin. Ich komme aus der USA.”

Wiener: “Cool. Which state are you from?”

Me: [thinking, Of course you speak English. You probably speak five other languages too.] “Tennessee.”

Wiener: “Oh, home of Elvis, Jack Daniels, and country music.”

Me: “Yes, you’re right.” [thinking, My education is worthless.]

Wiener: “So, do you like the Diskothek?”

Me: “Umm…maybe. Probably. Do they serve hot wings there?”

****

Wieners may be polyglots and have their superior mass transit system, world-class art museums, centuries-old coffee culture, architecture and landscapes steeped in history and tradition, and pastries filled with marzipan and Nutella, but they cannot resist our holidays disfigured by commercialism to the point of grotesqueness or our bad action movies. Ha.

Two of our chaperone-professors brought their daughter with them to Vienna. When orange and black tissue paper streamers began appearing in store windows, the Reeds asked all the students if we would help make Halloween special for their daughter Keegan by letting her come trick-or-treat at our hotel doors.

If trick-or-treat is what the little girl wanted, then trick-or-trick is what she’d get. I’ve always known a good opportunity when I saw one, but before you jump to conclusions about my character, let me give you some background on this little nine-year-old cupcake.

She slapped one of the students in the group and then enjoyed the spotlight when she stood up in front of the entire group to apologize. She bossed us around like some blond-headed female Napoleon. She would walk up to me, put her cool, moist hands on each side of my face, and lay her head on my chest. I guess it would have been kinda sweet if her hands were warm and dry and if she didn’t always tell us to be quiet and brag about all the time she’d spent traveling outside the U.S.

You get the picture: very intelligent, precocious child with no siblings and no children her own age who wanted to impress the cool college kids by trying to act their age. Maybe you had a little brother or a next door neighbor who fit this description. Recipe for disaster.

Nobody else was doing anything about this problem, but real men don’t wait to be asked. They just make something happen.

When my best friend Hunter and I went to Zielpunkt, a small grocery store near Südtirolerplatz, to buy whatever is was we’d be dropping into Keegan’s pillow case, we didn’t make our way to the candy aisle. Oh no. This sting operation required more than candy. Attila the Hun-eybun had to be stopped. No more of this crinkly skin around my eyes as I fake smiled my way out of another awkward hug. No more conversations ended abruptly when she came up to the dinner table and made herself out home. She wasn’t our mascot or our pet. She was our arch nemesis, which necessitated trickery, trickery not treatery.

In the refridgerated section amongst the sheep’s milk cheeses and cold cuts, we found the golden ticket—18” gorgeous inches of vacuum-packed mackerel with a dark green back and silver-striped sides.

****

That night, we heard a knock on our door. The time had come.

Hunter and I glanced at each other then walked over to the door. I held the package behind my back while Hunter opened the door.

Keegan was dressed in a black unitard. Her mom, whose class I loved and offspring, well—, had drawn whiskers on her face with mascara. She had on slippers and a head band with triangular cat ears. She hadn’t quite grown into her baby fat yet, so I tried not to make eye contact with the black mashed potatoes around her midriff.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Trick-or-treat!” she sang, her face lit up with expectancy.

“Trick,” I said and shoved the fish package into the pillow case she held open.

We slammed the door in her face, and when we heard another knock at the door, we refused to budge but basked in our glory.

Count it.

Score ::

20-year-old male…1

9-year-old girl…0

You might say I’m cruel. Or that I hate children. Or that as a young adult I should have been mature and exercised more patience with a mere child who was probably lonely and just wanted to hang out with the big kids. That’s garbage. I’m a hero.

How to Lose a Potato Gun

Lipscomb was a dry campus and had a strict no-drinking policy even for upper classmen who lived off-campus. This policy was the cause of most critiques and criticisms of Lipscomb that I heard, but in retrospect, I almost appreciate the rule because it meant we had to be more creative in how we had fun.

One night in early fall I was invited along on one such non-alcoholic adventure.

As a way of introducing me to their culture, my Gamma Xi friends helped me into the back of a Toyota pick-up, and we sped away from campus, south on Hillsboro Road, out into the neighborhoods and pastures that make up Williamson County.

****

Green rolling hills and gorgeous fields flanked by hardwoods and creeks are the reason I loved growing up in Brentwood. Drive five minutes in any direction, and you find yourself breathing in fresh air and watching whitetail deer graze in the same fields alongside cows and horses. If you drive towards Franklin on Franklin Pike, you might see goats and chickens on a rocky hill and a Sonic half a mile down the road.

For now, the unincorporated communities scattered in and around still have more grass and trees than glass and pavement, and Walgreen’s and Starbucks are sequestered in Brentwood, Cool Springs, and Franklin, though I know the slow, sad encroachment of urbanization and sloppy development will soon replace the Brahma bulls and hay.

****

We turned off Hillsboro Road onto a backroad called North Beech Road. The tree branches form arches over the narrow road.

The truck I was riding in skidded to a stop, and we all hopped out. As with most endeavors involving young men with too much time on their hands and resources to waste, no one seemed to have a clear understanding of why exactly we were here.

Someone had constructed a potato gun out of a length of PVC pipe, a canister of hairspray, and super glue. Brandon had brought his shotgun. What he planned to do with it, I don’t know. If you’re a guest, it’s polite not to ask questions, though I guess that’s how you end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, as I did.

Things like war, genocide, and corruption in the government get started because people don’t ask important questions. Or because they do. That, however, is a rabbit trail for another time.

After a brief discussion on the part of the unofficial leaders, who were carrying the guns, it seemed that I had been invited along to witness the maiden shooting of the potato gun.

Apparently, the potato gun wanted company, so the shotgun obliged. The shotgun might also be helpful in destroying God’s creatures for no reason whatsoever, except to remind the shooter that he can still hit something. That, however, is a rabbit trail for another time.

We’d parked in front of a pasture enclosed by a slat fence. A yellow bulldozer and backhoe sat out in the middle of the field. I put my hands on top of the metal gate, preparing to climb over. It fell over with a crash that bounced around in the quiet. That was easy, I thought.

We all started walking toward the closest bulldozer, as good a destination as any, but when we’d gotten about halfway, something like a bark came out of the darkness.

I turned around.

It wasn’t a bark, it was a yell. The origin of the noise was holding a rifle. The barrel caught moonlight.

I took a few steps back to better hear what he was saying. I looked to my right and left, and the other guys were just as confused as I was. We hadn’t done anything wrong, unless you count pushing over a gate that was leaning against the fence. At the same time, we weren’t supposed to be there and looked guilty simply because a group of college boys must be up to no good.

Typically, someone in the stranger’s position would wait long enough to see if we were up to no good, call the cops, and wait for the proper authorities to catch us red-handed.

PA koww! PA koww!

The stranger fired the rifle twice. He wasn’t waiting for no cops.

“Get the f*** over here now! You’re trespassing on private property.”

Oh crap. This guy was a loony tune. This was how middle-class college boys in their late teens get raped, eaten, or killed—Deliverance; Pulp Fiction; any variety of prison movies.

A handful of the guys, maybe three or four, took off running to my right.

Even from where I was and in the darkness, I could see the veins pop out in the man’s forehead and neck as he described all the terrible things that would happen if the runners didn’t come back.

Those of us who chose to obey his orders walked back the way we’d come and soon found ourselves standing in front of a pudgy man with a shaved head. His pale scalp was shining. Standing with him was another man.

“All of you sons of b****** get in a line. Now! I said, Get in a line!”

He was standing maybe five feet away when he squeezed off another round. PA koww! The report ricocheted inside my head.

[Think, Austin, think. What would Steven Segal do? Have you learned nothing from fifteen years of bad action movies? Okay, but where was I going to find coconut paste, a thermos, parachute pants, and a chimp fluent in Russian? All was lost.]

The older man said, “Now, son, just calm down. Why don’t we just call the police and let them sort this whole thing out?”

[Great. We got the father-son dream team here. The older man cool and level-headed. His son obviously frustrated by his hair loss and lack of authority in any social arena. Quick, somebody give him a hearty plug of Beechnut.]

“The police ain’t gonna do nothing. They’re not going to protect our property.”

“So this is your land?” Brandon asked.

The older man, the father, answered him: “No, we just work here. We live in that trailer over there and keep an eye on things.”

“Well, we haven’t done anything wrong,” Brandon replied. He was empty-handed. He must have left the shotgun out in the field.

“Shut up!” the son screeched. “We saw you carrying something, and if you weren’t up to no good, then why are you here in the first place?”

I now realized that this man was having his moment in the limelight. He’d probably never been a hero in his life, and right now at this very moment, he choosing his own adventure. His friends would be so impressed. His boss was going to promote him. Denise would finally let him spend the night. He wasn’t about to let some rich kids outfox him.

Russ chimed in: “We were going to shoot a potato gun we made. We’ll go get it and show it to you, if you want.”

“Stay where are and no more talking. I’m the one who’s going to be asking the questions.”

I bit my tongue before I said, “No one asked you a question,” but I decided that being a smart aleck might not be the best idea when you’re dealing with a vigilante construction worker who had already fired his weapon three times and obviously believed that he was Clint Eastwood or John Wayne in a spaghetti Western. All he needed was a Backwoods cigar, a wool poncho, and a name like Butch or Rosco.

I wonder if a car had driven by, what would the driver have thought?

Five guys standing about two feet apart with their backs to a field. A skinny, somewhat bow-legged man in his early fifties and a younger man pacing in front of them with a rifle in his hands who would have resembled a starving tiger were his belly not spilling over his jeans.

At this point, father and son got in an argument about the proper course of action. The son was losing ground, and with it, his newfound glory. The older man finally turned to us and said, “Ya’ll get outta here and don’t come back. If we see you, we’ll call the cops.”

His son looked like he was passing a kidney stone. Yet again, his father had prevented him from saving the day. He could have been William Wallace in Braveheart but in carpenter jeans and a wife-beater.

We walked back to the truck and took off. No reason to press our luck.

This experience was much better motivation for graduating than anything my parents, high school teachers, or mentors might have said. I certainly didn’t want to be Mr. Clean with a bad diet and inferiority complex.

I do wonder how the story would have ended if we’d all been about six deep in the Natty and feeling invincible. Somebody might have gotten shot, which would have been awesome.

Too Good to be True

Too good to be true. Aren’t we all?

We’re all messy with scar tissue and various types of stupidity, so I’m not saying that I’m perfect or that I’m not a piece of work myself. I’m saying that what we are on paper—our professional and social resumes, our accolades and exploits—counts for less than how we respond to disappointment. The adhesive of our hopes and desires doesn’t stick well to other people, no matter how glamorous, sexy, or accomplished they may be.

I was a victim of my own expectations.

Her hair was a shiny black that it took on a bluish tint in the right light. She was Albert Pujols now and Willie Mays back when. She was way out of my league. (This was before I stopped believing in leagues.)

I met her at Fido where I sat down at a two-top next to her and pretended to read. Of course, I was having trouble comprehending more than a word at a time: an attractive woman sitting close by is a lot like someone holding a hand next to your face without touching it. You can pretend likes it’s not there, but that won’t do much good. Brothers pull this stunt to annoy their sisters: “I’m not touching you. You can’t tell mom because I’m not touching you.”

My friend Jim came up and talked to this Rapunzel in her High Tower of Beauty. He introduced me to Samantha. While they were talking, I pretended to go back to pretending to read, but I was really just eavesdropping.

Jim eventually left, and I got up to pour myself a glass of water. I offered to bring one to Samantha. She said yes please and thanked me. As I handed her the glass, I noticed that she was eyeing my Bob’s Candy Sticks that I’d snuck into the bill when my parents treated me to dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I know desire when I see it.

“Do you want some candy?” I asked.

She blushed.

“Sorry, yeah, I love candy. You don’t mind?” she said.

“Of course not,” I said, and thought, “Girl, for you I would fight Al Qaeda on a unicorn with only a copy of Bible as a weapon.”

We started talking.

I was in.

****

Fast-forward a couple of months. I ran into Samantha several more times at Fido and at a couple of Jump, Little Children shows (latterly know as Jump).

I asked her out, and she gave me her number. This was promising on multiple fronts: 1) she was gorgeous95, which meant that looking at her gave me a stomachache; 2) she was working a full-time job and going to school full-time, which meant she was smart, ambitious, and hard-working; and 3) she taught the five-year-olds at her church, which meant she was spiritual as crap.

This could be it.

When the big night arrived, I picked her up, and we drove to 3rd & Lindsley where a singer-songwriter we both enjoyed, Sondre Lerche, was playing.

This is where the ax would fall.

We found an empty table up on the mezzanine level, and a waitress brought us menus.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Not really. You?”

“I’m not super hungry, but I could eat. What if we split an appetizer?”

“Sounds good,” she said, and we both read the different options: chips & salsa, loaded potato skins, chicken tenders, quesadillas, 3rd & Lindsley Buffalo Wings.

“Hey, are buffalo wings really made out of buffalo?” Samantha asked.

[Oh no. Seriously? Surely she was being facetious. Surely she saw that episode from Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson or the Pizza Hut commercial. Surely she was testing my own knowledge of pop culture and gullibility.]

“Oh,” I laugh. “You’ve seen that Pizza Hut commercial with Jessica Simpson?”

“No, what commercial?”

Disappointing.

Frat Pappy

I was eating the Eddie’s Special at Shono’s for lunch yesterday with my friends Joe and Ben when our conversation ran into a roadblock.

We have the appellation “Frat Daddy” for the member of a fraternity who epitomizes the sleazy values of his brotherhood, but we have no fitting name or title for the bro who finally finished his degree after seven years of debauching himself and accepted an entry-level position with a modest salary and no responsibility to be performed in a gray cubicle at a medium-sized office park.

The three months that this ex-Daddy spent putting a positive spin on his mediocre grades and status as his fraternity’s Social Director so that his resume would exceed 100 words in length gave him some perspective: Would he ever again enjoy the popularity, the notoriety, the glory, that were once his after he nailed that 4 minute, 37 second keg stand in late November of 2008? Those were the days. Why shouldn’t he continue on as a mentor and consultant with his beloved frat? The siren song of the dank bars and 12-hour tailgate parties was calling to him. He could not quit now. He owed it to himself, his parents, and his country to drink himself into a stupor on weeknights and rack up a few more counts of public indecency.

What should we call the Frat Daddy who technically graduated but never left? The de facto king of Natty and corn hole whose every ambition, whose very reason to exist, is caught in the time warp of College?

Yesterday, Joe suggested “Frat Papa,” but I think “Frat Pappy” is even better. Pappy is, of course, a synonym for grandfather, and if a Frat Papa is still skipping classes and leeching money from his parents, then a Frat Pappy carries the venerable distinctions of a diploma, pile of credit card debt, and aging Chevy Tahoe. A Frat Pappy has the social network needed to get his fleshy paws on the White Lightning.

Now that we’ve decided on the title, let’s catalog some of the bearer’s attributes, which include but are not limited to the following ::

· wraparound polarized sunglasses or Ray-Bans with Croakies balanced on the back of his neck and worn both indoors and outdoors
· a closet full of Polo clothing in a palette of pastels
· large, fuel-inefficient vehicle with a Browning decal on the back window; may have 4-wheel Drive gummed up through lack of use
· a can or dip or pouch of chew within arm’s reach
· lip or gum cancer in the early, undetectable stages
· alcoholism
· a prodigious gut, or “spare tire”
· three to six total pairs of boat shoes, loafers, Wallabees, and flip-flops
· seer sucker garments in at least three colors
· a personal appearance that elicits the following or similar remarks from concerned friends or past acquaintances: “Wow, he’s really let himself go.” Or “That’s what you call hard livin.’”
· mysterious hair loss
· purplish or swollen skin underneath his eyes
· an encyclopedic knowledge of his alma mater’s football and/or basketball team(s), more impressive considering that he was unconscious during the games themselves
· affinity for red meat
· fondness for profanity
· corpulence
· an astounding tolerance for alcohol
· a way with women that most often causes women to walk away from him
· habit of calling these same women derogatory names while they are walking away
· strong love or hatred—nothing in between—for the bench press
· unlimited supply of friends with lake houses
· various and sundry parts of North American game animals strewn about his room and vehicle
· the makings of a turkey gobble
· Koozie collection
· multi-daily use of cologne
· claims to have bought a beer for Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, or Will Ferrell
· boring job
· spiritual complacency
· existential torpor

We hope this catalog will help you identify and classify the Frat Daddy, ubiquitous at your local dive.

Please take a moment to append additional attributes in the Comments section below. Thank you.

Jim’s package

I am fortunate to come from a family of verbal blunderers.

My mom has often brought laughter to dinner conversations without ever intending to make a joke.

Her younger sister Amy was born the year my mom married my dad. Amy is only about six years older than me and has always been more like a cousin, but she is definitely my mom’s sister, as the following story illustrates.

We were celebrating my brother-in-law Jim’s birthday with my mom’s side of the family at P.F. Chang’s.

Jim was sitting in the middle of our big table on the opposite side from me. Different family members assembled a few cards and a wrapped gift in front of him.

Amy was sitting a few seats to his right.

There was a brief lull in conversation.

You know the kind. They happen for a number of reasons. Someone makes an awkward or offensive remark. Two people are angry with one another, and this conflict balloons into a palpable discomfort. Or, perhaps, nothing at all is wrong, and the momentary silence signifies a simple shift in a number of conversations, all at the same time. When I was younger, I remember other kids pinning superstitions to this kind of pregnant pause—a ghost passed through the room, an earthworm died in France, an angel got its wings. I believe in supernatural occurrences like miracles, but I don’t think two seconds of silence in a room mean that a sherpa in Tibet got indigestion from unpasteurized yak’s milk at the same time a 23-year-old gas station attendant outside of Glasgow found some euros in an old jacket. C’mon, people.

In an Asian fusion chain restaurant on West End Avenue in Nashville, Tennessee, my aunt Amy scanned our faces and offered her explanation for those two seconds of silence:

“We were all just sitting around staring at Jim’s package!”

I, for one, was doing nothing of the sort.

Amy’s observation created another two or three seconds of silence before we all burst into laughter.

Amy was confused.

“Think about what you just said.”

Her double entendre finally sank in, and she turned red.

My family isn’t one that passes around lots of dirty jokes and sexual innuendo, so Jim’s birthday was a very special occasion indeed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lady lost her head

I’ve only made it into the paper once that I know of.

For years, I drove down Granny White Pike on my way to David Lipscomb. On the front porch of a house just past the intersection at Tyne sat a three-foot tall head. The head was white with colorful tattoos all over it. 

More pieces of bizarre modern art were scattered around the lawn.

My freshman year of college I finally decided to do something about it. I alway signed out on the weekends to my parents’ house to get around the 1:00am curfew. Most of the time I’d sneak through the window of Justin Chunn’s and David Lavender’s first story dorm room, and sleep in my bed in High Rise dorm.

This weekend I’d decided to crash at home. My dad had agreed to let me borrow his ‘98 black 4Runner. I picked up some friends, and we all went to Rites of Spring at Vanderbilt. Guster played. They were one of my favorite bands. The music and the rich, blond girls in their North Face jackets were making my head spin. Emily Waddell asked if I had been drinking. Nope. Just high on life, baby cakes.

After the show, we were looking for some mischief. The time was ripe.

We drove to the house on Granny White. 

In retrospect, we could have been a bit less brazen. I backed down the driveway, then Marshall, Justin, and Mike walked up to the front porch of the house, hoisted the head, and carried it back to the 4Runner. We loaded it then drove down the street 50 yards to the intersection. We then unloaded the giant head and positioned it in the middle of the intersection. Easter Island had come to middle Tennessee.

I parked on a side street near my cousins’ house.

Five or six of us hid in the honeysuckle bushes and watched the glorious confusion. The head acted as an impromptu police officer. It was about 1am at this point, but we weren’t seeing any roll-through stops, no sirree. The cars stopped, rocked back on their tires, and inched forward. Drivers rolled down their windows and leaned out to better understand this visitation. Their noses were a foot away from the thing.

A high school couple drove through the intersection and parked their car. She hiked up her prom dress to walk, and he carried the camera. A third friend hurried up to take their picture. They stood on each side of the head grinning. 

A guy I knew from Lipscomb named Ross showed up with another guy I didn’t know. They leaned out like everybody else. Something must have struck their fancy because they parked, walked back to the head, and began to carry it off.

This could ruin everything.

Summoning my best God voice from Vacation Bible School, I yelled, “Ross! Put the head down!”

They dropped the head then turned circles in alarm.

I started to feel bad. 

“Hey, Ross, it’s Austin. Put the head back. I’ll explain later.”

“Oh,” he said to the honeysuckle bush. “Okay, dude, no problem.”

They drove off.

This went on for fifteen or twenty minutes and then came the climax.

We heard somebody walking down the street from the direction of the head’s house.

A skinny middle-aged woman stomped to the middle of the intersection. She glared all around her. Bent at the waist with her chin stuck out, she unleashed her fury:

“I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re still here, and you’d better leave because the cops are coming and if you’re still here, you’re all going to be in huge trouble.” She continued on like this for awhile, with an even temper at first but crescendoing until she was really mad.

Apparently, we had just been introduced to head’s owner. If I were her, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it either. One of her friends must have driven through the intersection, seen the head, and given her a call. The head must have been too precious, too steeped in sentimental value, for her to appreciate the hilarity of the situation: a giant white tattooed head sitting in the middle of an intersection in a suburb on a quiet night in spring. That’s what I call good humor.

We walked back to my truck, I dropped my friends off at their various places of residence, then we all went to bed.

Matthew Netterville was reading The Tennessean the next day when he saw the headline: “Lady lost her head.”

He’d walked over to join in the fun the night before. He told us all about it later.

Whoever wrote that headline, I want to shake your hand. Thank you for getting it. Thank you for supporting random acts of unkindness. Thank you for taking a stand against bad art.  

Thank you for joining us in our quest to disrupt suburban complacency and irritate comfortable middle-aged Nashvillians.

As for the head, well, it found a new home in the lady’s garage. We never saw it again.

Head, you are gone but not forgotten. Your fame was short-lived but your legacy will touch posterity.

age, gravity, sun damage, and slower metabolism

While I was finishing up my master’s in English, I was working as a Teaching Associate. Two classes of First-Year Composition 101 made the mistake of registering for my class. 

Poor children. None of them knew what to do with a teacher who knew their tricks better than they did themselves. I assured them that however proficient in the art of sarcasm they believed themselves to be, I was better. I’d had more practice. “Please don’t tempt me,” I said. “I’d enjoy it too much, and nobody likes cleaning up a mess.” I suggested that we start from a baseline of respect instead.

My class was built around discussion, dialogue. We read articles, and then we talked about them. My class was straightforward: do your homework, participate in class, do your best to write with simplicity and clarity, and you’ll be fine.

Of course, as many of them did none of these as did them all. I had trouble pushing a thought through their thick, complacency-encrusted craniums: I will know whether or not you read when I call on you to participate in the discussion.

Who needs quizzes? Sure I gave them as a formality, but I just threw them away. I knew if Kevin or Justin or Laura or Blake did their homework simply by watching their faces when I asked, “Do you think a woman donating her eggs is a decision that is hers alone to make?”

Nervous titter. Glancing around the room. Eyes drop down to desk. Color appears on cheeks. 

“Umm… .”

“You didn’t read the assignment, did you?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s okay. I expect more from you in the future. Please pay close attention and try to participate.”

I never humiliated them. Communicating my disappointment and my desire for improvement was effective enough without dressing them down in front of their peers. I always disliked the teachers who used fear. They never earned my true respect, just lip service with a snarl.

One particular day in late summer, I held one of my classes outside behind the humanities building. Knowing their tendency to disconnect and look for four-leaf clovers, I asked them to sit in a circle. Never underestimate how adolescents will self-correct when people their own age are watching.

I had assigned Dave Barry’s essay “Guys vs. Men.” I didn’t enjoy the essay that much. Barry makes the easy jokes at men’s expense and reinforces stereotypes of masculinity rather than disrupt or at least challenge them. 

Regardless of my opinion, the essay provided an accessible springboard for the issue of gender and harmful or unhealthy gender constructs. Most of the girls in that class spoke up that day. They talked about their fathers, brothers, and boyfriends. Most of them wanted to date a “gentleman.” Gentlemen were scarce.

The first time I called on Kelsey, she deflected. Rather than interrupt the flow of the dialogue, I moved onto somebody else. I eventually called on her again. What did she think about the essay? Was Barry’s essay part of the problem?

She threw daggers with her eyes before saying, “Stop calling on me. I obviously didn’t do my homework.”

Hmm. Bet she has a great relationship with her dad. 

Her attitude was the sort I refused to tolerate. I decided to nip it.

“Kelsey, you are in no position to be making demands.”

Her eyes went wide, and she sat up a little straighter. She was cute, slender, and bitchy. Just the sort of girl guys fall over themselves to ask out. The sort of girl who is accustomed to getting whatever she wants.

I never did have much of a stomach for that sort of girl. She took part in our discussion from then on.

I hoped she cleaned up the attitude because playing the victim will only take you so far. Not to mention the effects of age, gravity, sun damage, and slower metabolism. Kelsey, force a man to love you for your mind and heart.

I saw her the other day and said hi. She was with a slouchy guy who looked like he knew how to bake space brownies. 

Sure, I judged by appearances. You can’t win them all. Maybe the joke’s on me for remembering her.

Abandonment & Deportation

During the train ride home the full implications of the day’s events began to sink in. 

Where was Hunter?

The day had started with a good jolt of adventure, eating a Käsekrainer and running through the streets of Vienna to catch our train. Once we had crossed the Hungarian border, Hunter realized he’d left both his Eurail pass and his passport on his dresser in the hotel. He’d told me to have fun for the both of us, so against my better judgment, I rented an inappropriate bathing suit and spent an hour or two exploring the amenities of the largest medicinal baths in Europe.

I’d eaten dinner by myself in a Chinese restaurant with plenty of time to catch a train back home to Vienna.

Now, as the train finally pulled into the Westbahnhof and I took the U-bahn from Reumannplatz to our familiar stop at Südtirolerplatz, I grew more and more anxious. 

I may as well have run I was walking so fast. I should have gotten off the train with him. What was I thinking? I was so shocked to see men with guns take him off the train that my thinking was sluggish. What he said had seemed like the best idea until the doors to the train closed in a rush of air. I had abandoned him.

I grabbed the first person I recognized and asked him if he’d Hunter.

“Sure, he’s upstairs in your room.”

I ran up the five flights of stairs and burst through the door.

He was sitting on his bed, looking calm as can be.

He looked up when he heard me and grinned.

“What happend?!!”

“Well, they kept me in some building for a couple of hours. I just journaled the whole time. It really wasn’t bad at all. Then, they put me on a train back to Vienna and gave me this letter.” He showed me the piece of paper, an official-looking document in Hungarian.

He continued: “You know how Anna who works at the front desk is Hungarian? Well, I got her to translate it for me.”

“What’d it say?”

“It said I’m not allowed to go back to Hungary.”

On one glorious day in the fall of 2002, I rented a speedo in Budapest while my best friend of sixteen years was deported and asked never to return.

We both laughed until we cried. 

Serious lapses in judgment become some of our best stories.

I was a Greek god

After a Käsekrainer, a traumatic train ride to Budapest, and renting a “bathing suit,” I was walking down the stairs to the pool. One handing was holding up my bathing suit in the back, and another in the front. My “bathing suit” failed to cover everything.

This was less clothing than I’d ever worn in public.

However, once my feet touched the cool tiles next to the pool and I looked around, all my fears vanished. I was by far the youngest, fittest, and most attractive person in the room. I don’t say that to toot my own horn. Whoever tells you that Americans are the only ones for whom obesity is a problem is a liar. Hairy guts were hanging so far over speedos that my only means of discerning whether or not these men were even wearing speedos was the bright fabric on their sides and back. We’re talking waistlines that were punishing the elasticity of lycra or spandex or whatever material from outer space that speedo uses. These elderly Hungarian men were pushing fabric technology and human anatomy to new limits. They were pioneers.

Although I don’t recommend such comparisons for eradicating self-consciousness, I confess that after a quick glance around the massive indoor pool, I was filled with Pride. I had nothing—nothing!—of which to be ashamed.

Come butt crack, come glimpses of pubic hair, I was a Greek god among overweight, arthritic, and sluggish mortals!

My spirits revived, and I sampled everything the spa had to offer: mineral baths, swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, and steam room. People were drifting in and out of a particular door. I decided to explore.

Outside was a heated pool. Steam was curling off its surface and scattering in the breeze. Snow danced in the air. 

Ha! All the young people were out here. So I wasn’t alone!

I slipped into the heat, and waded around for awhile, still wondering what was happening with Hunter—to Hunter!—at the moment. I decided that I’d had about as much fun for the both of us as there was to be had. I ran back inside to change.

That image is frozen in my mind though—orbs of light burning in the darkness, laughter and snatches of Hungarian, snow, wind, steam, and the statues on a pedestal in the middle of the pool somehow sad and pensive.

I changed, thanked Mr. Cabana Boy, my only acquaintance in the place, and walked out into the park. I knew how to get back to the train station from the previous trip, so I started walking that direction.

To burn the florints I had left, I ate a lonely five-course dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Soon, I was fully, warm, and sleep, riding a train three and a half hours back to Vienna. 

Where was Hunter?

[To be continued...]

renting a “bathing suit” in Hungary

After a Käsekrainer and a traumatic train ride, I arrived in Budapest.

Three or four weeks earlier, when I’d visited the city with Hunter, Holly, and Rebecca, our train had stopped at the largest of Budapest’s three railway stations, Budapest Keleti pályaudvar. I anticipated arriving at the same station, following familiar landmarks to the City Park, Városliget, and then taking Hunter at his word—“Enjoy yourself for the both of us”—by doing something relaxing at the Széchenyi Gyógyfürdő, the largest medicinal bath in Europe.

When I got off the train, I recognized nothing. Surprise! I was at another station, Budapest nyugati pályaudvar. Whether it’s the lingering effect of the Cold War or a resistance to Western culture, I don’t know, but few people that I encountered in Budapest spoke English. Maybe I tried to communicate with the wrong people. In fact, I know I tried to communicate with the wrong people because of what happened soon after.

Rather than feel sorry for myself, I got some Hungarian forints from an ATM and bought a map. The green swatch of the City Park was more blocks away, at least 20, then I cared to count. Nothing to do but start walking.

Outside, snow was falling. Everything seems quieter when snow is falling. The streets were empty of people. A few cars stirred the snow as they passed. Loneliness. Where was Hunter? What was happening to my friend? 

At least I was wearing my North Face down vest and wasn’t cold.

I began to enjoy myself—the ornate facades of the old buildings, the sky of gray and white, the bittersweet melancholy and poignant reflection that often accompany solitude. We miss people more when they’re gone. We notice so much more and thus have more to share when we’re alone. Solitude makes people more precious.

After about an hour, I was climbing the steps to the lobby of the spa.

I found a guy about my own age who appeared to work for the spa. 

He must have gotten his hands on an English dictionary because he knew a few words, but not enough to form into sentences. After some wild gesticulations and calling for backup, he finally drove his point home: everything was closed but the baths, pools, sauna, and steam room. No massage this time.

Where could I change? I asked with an absurd pantomime of removing my clothing and swimming motions.

He seemed to understand and motioned for me to follow him. He led me upstairs, let himself in behind a desk, located a key, then showed me to a tiny wooden stall. These were set up in rows like lockers. He opened the door for me, dropped the key in my hand, smiled, and sauntered off.

Okay, now I was going to enjoy myself.

Wait.

I had no bathing suit. I had no towel. I had only one pair of underwear.

This is where the story gets a little strange. I was determined to make the most of my time in Budapest because I was worried about my friend and I’d never had a massage and wanted one and had missed the cut off twice in a row and I hadn’t ridden three and a half hours to be deterred by something as simple as having no bathing suit.

I marched back up to the desk and got the guy’s attention. In perhaps the finest feat of nonverbal communication of my life, I told Mr. Cabana Boy that I needed something to wear. He squinted his eyes at me and tapped his lips with a finger. I tried again. This time, he jabbed a finger at the ceiling as if to say, “Aha! I’ve got an idea.” He ducked down under the desk, and I could hear him rummaging around.

He reappeared holding some fabric. I wouldn’t call the fabric trunks or even shorts. If I didn’t know there were pools of water somewhere in the building, I would have thought he was holding a washcloth. There just wasn’t enough material there. He stretched it out for me to see a pair of trashy men’s underwear, the kind that guys who shape their eyebrows wear. The kind that guys who go to the tanning bed wear. This was a Speedo glorified with about an inch of leg.

Do you have anything else? I gestured. 

He was confused.

Do I have any other options?

He tapped his temple then held up his hands. He didn’t understand.

Why was this day trip to Hungary challenging everything I believe in like sticking by my friends and not renting bathing suits and a comprehensive boycott against Speedos?

Fine. Whatever. 

How much?

He was confused.

I took the change out of my pocket and slapped it on the counter.

He shrugged and took a medium-sized coin.

I attempted to say thank you, but the look on my face probably said otherwise.

I locked myself in my booth, undressed, and put on the thing.

It was very uncomfortable. It was grippy. I wanted it to get its hands off of me. I wanted to charge it with sexual harassment.

It was dark blue with some broad stripes.

I looked over my shoulder into the full length mirror. Yep. My butt crack was hanging out. 

I pulled up the back then looked down. Yep. Indecent in the front now.

If you’ve ever seen the Seinfeld episode where Kramer wants to borrow Jerry’s swimsuit, then you’ll understand what I mean when I say that my boys were definitely out of their neighborhood.”

I had just paid money to be 95% naked in eastern Europe in front of complete strangers without a partner in crime.  

 

Fine. Whatever. If was going to gird my loins with a garment belonging to a 9-year-old boy, then you bet your baloney I was going to do it with confidence and price. Behold, Spa Men and Spa Women! Michelangelo’s David in the flesh!

I took a deep breath and followed the signs to what I hoped was the pool. 

 

[To be continued...]

Käsekrainer

While I was studying in Vienna with 29 other Lipscomb University students, I discovered the Käsekrainer—a sausage filled with piping hot cheese. When we broke for lunch between classes, we’d walk down to the permanent stand on the corner of Hanuschgang and Albertinaplatz and say, “Hallo, ich möchte einen Käsekrainer mit Brot und Senf, bitte.” “Hi, I’d like a cheese-filled sausage with bread and mustard, please.”

“Wien” is the German name for “Vienna.” Now you know why hotdogs are called “wieners.”

Eating these culinary delights takes strategy. We learned this the hard way, or at least one of us did. A couple of weeks into our semester, Hunter ordered a Käsekrainer for lunch. Their casings cook to a delicious crispiness. As his teeth chomped through, a stream of hot cheese shot out and hit Justin in the eye. He screamed in surprise and pain. The rest of us roared with laughter. Always point the sausage away from the crowd when taking a bite.

A month or so later, Hunter and I decided to take a day trip to Hungary once class got out. The train ride to Budapest was three hours long, so we needed to grab lunch before we got on the train. We had thirty minutes to get to the Westbahnhof and find food. Solution? Käsekrainer.

Something I’ll never forget: eating a cheese-filled sausage and running through the streets of Vienna with my best friend at the same time.

We made our train and settled in for three hours of indigestion.

[To be continued...]

Ouch

My dad’s side of the family tells me I take after my Grandpa, Roger, meaning that, like him, I have a propensity for sticking my foot in my mouth.

I studied abroad in Vienna, Austria, the autumn of my Sophomore year of college. My younger sister started at Lipscomb University as a freshman while I was gone. She’s only a couple years younger than me, so we were very close growing up. Once spring semester began, I had a lot of catching up to do, meeting all her new friends, many of whom would become friends of mine.

One Wednesday night, we were at the college class at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ. She introduced me to a petite blond girl, very cute, a freshman like my sister. Let’s call her Sarah. 

We got to talking, and Sarah was really sweet. I was happy that class started soon after, so we had to sit next to each other.

She kept coughing.

I couldn’t just leave it alone. I had to be Mr. Funny Guy and charm her. I leaned to my right and whispered in her ear, “Maybe you should get that checked out.”

She leaned to her left and whispered back, “I have cystic fibrosis.”

A Man’s Pride

I was a born salesman.

My freshman year of college, I talked my parents into letting my four friends and me drive my mom’s blue Suburban down to Key West for Spring Break. What were they thinking, right?

We decided to make the eighteen-hour journey stopping only for food, gas, and restrooms. I’d gotten a job at J. Crew over Christmas break—please don’t judge me—and had a shift the night we were leaving. David, Chris, Hunter, and Justin swung by the mall to pick me up. We stopped at a Shell station for Red Bull then hit the interstate. Driving through Atlanta, someone busted out the Moon Pies.

Hunter had agreed to ride shotgun and stay awake with me, so the others dozed off one by one. 

We were in Florida by sunrise. I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, but a whole hour passed without our seeing another car on the road. I’ve never been so delirious in my life. I started making promises to God. I started cussing a lot.

Now, let me fast-forward.

I have very fair skin. My “friends” in middle school called me Powder. Middle school is hard on the albino child.

While in Key West, I got the worst sunburn you’ve ever seen while wearing sunscreen. You could feel heat pulsing out of me. I was the colored of steamed lobster.

The night of the day this happened, we decided to take a bus downtown to eat. If you want good stories to tell, take the bus. Driving a car keeps you insulated from the outside world, all the people from whom your parents tried to protect you.

I’m sitting on a bus seat by myself wearing a green, long-sleeved linen shirt. Maybe you have a beautiful olive complexion and don’t know how it is. When you get roasted because you trace your heritage to a country that no longer exists—Prussia—you get cold at night. You sweat like you’re playing pick-up basketball, but you get cold.

So this hefty middle-aged woman with brown hair plops down next to me. She’s ready to talk. 

“Wow, you got some sun!” she said.

I think: Thanks a lot, lady. Why don’t you find somewhere else to sit?

I say: “Yep. I was even sitting in the shade.”

“Looks like it hurts.”

“Not too bad yet. If it starts hurting though, my aunt told me that putting vinegar on a sunburn will take the sting out.”

She leaned back to take me in, as if I said I’d been to the moon. She then shared this insight with me, “You don’t wanna smell like a douche-bag, do you?”

I thought: No, ma’am. No, I don’t.

I said: nothing. No class, no handbook, no mentor, no hypothetical interior monologue can prepare you for that question.

My sunburn started hurting the next day. Later in the week, it started itching so bad that I couldn’t fall asleep at night.

I never bought any vinegar. A man has his pride to consider.