|
coopsair
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Nathan
Gender: Male
Interests: Bright shiny things.
Not being on the ground. Mission work. Snippys.
Expertise: Knowing awesome people... Aviation. Volkswagens.
Want to learn to fly? Come visit.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
6/10/2005
|
|
| Whenever my parents get on board an airplane together, shortly preceding that moment there has been a call made to me from my mother advising me just where I can find their last will and testament. This cheery notice about their apparently imminent demise is invariably followed by a comment about how my elder sister Sarah is the executor of the will, because well, you know she is just more responsible about those things. I always nod at the phone and agree that she is in fact quite responsible and a wise choice for executing anything that needs executing, and then I repeat back the instructions on how to find the will in the file cabinet should I need to know.
I don’t bother to remind my mother that air travel is the safest transportation available and that she is at least ten times more likely to be killed by a donkey than in an airplane. That would just mean I would get instructions for the file cabinet anytime they wandered into the country and could conceivably encounter an ill tempered donkey. Instead I just tell her I love her and wish them a good trip. My parents then feel free to drive off to the airport in just enough time for them to be five hours early, because let’s face it, you just never know what the traffic might be like.
If travel habits were hereditary my mother might have had cause to believe that she was the victim of some sort of hospital cradle mix up. While I am a frequent traveler, the now routine nature of traversing the country or the globe has done nothing to improve my concern for doing it well, or made me the least bit more conscientious. I pack at the last minute. I forget to print out my boarding passes in advance. I forgot my ID one little time and now I am asked a half dozen times if I have it by my sister and her husband each time they drop me off at the airport. It is understandable. The time in question they had both had to stand by patiently at the end of the security checkpoint while I had my bags rifled through and my phone swabbed for explosives residue in the area of the security checkpoint reserved for bomb packing terrorists. The airline had let me through without a strip search but just barely. It was only through the assistance of a helpful ex-girlfriend and the U.S. Postal Service that I was able to avoid embarrassing my family members on the return trip as well.
That sort of thing happens. Well, to me anyway. It may be one of the reasons I enjoy traveling alone. I know then that despite the mix-ups I will invariably run into I will only be inconveniencing myself, and I do that all the time so I have a lot of patience for it.
My most recent trip started rather well, though it was under somewhat unusual circumstances. I had purchased a ticket to California for 4th of July weekend so that I could attend the baptism of my nephew and soon to be Godson, Lucas. In an unfortunate turn of events Lucas got sick and had to go to the hospital, and he and my sister Amy were unable to travel to California for the baptism as planned. I already had the time off work scheduled and the ticket was non-refundable so I decided to travel anyway and make use of the time to visit as many other friends and relatives in California as time would allow.
Getting on the plane was a relief. It had been a stressful couple of weeks at work so the escape was welcome. I didn’t even mind the delay on the tarmac. I had purchased a new book in the terminal and was firmly ensconced in my exit row seat reading before anyone’s moaning or complaining about the delay could get to me. I was content in my quiet literary world and other than the verbal response needed for the flight attendant to prove I registered the concept of how to properly flee the aircraft should the plane decide to spontaneously combust, I kept to myself.
My bookstore acquisition was the first of Stephanie Meyer’s Teen Vampire Saga called “Twilight”. By the time I touched down in Charlotte I was aware that I was not exactly the target audience she was writing for, but I also had acquired an appreciation for her writing style, and while glittery blood thirsty vampire teen crushes are not my usual literary fare, I was captivated enough to read straight through lunch in the terminal and right onto my connecting flight. Standing reading and waiting for my section number to be called I heard a throat clear loudly behind me. I pulled my head up out of the book and turned around to find a line of senior citizens staring at me with impatience. I looked around and what had been a large crowd of people waiting with me had thinned down to a few people up at the gate being checked aboard, a large void of no one and then the queue of old people lined up perfectly behind me. I looked at the woman who had cleared her throat at me who was staring with an expression that clearly stated, “ You gonna move or what? The line of faces behind hers was likewise staring in my direction.
“Um, they haven’t called my section yet.” I said sheepishly, and sort of fumbled with my boarding pass slightly as a way of explanation.
A “Hmmph“ was all I received from her in response as she wheeled her carry-on around me, but another elderly woman commented as she filed passed with a “ To think we were waiting behind Him!”
I decided to escape the ire of the consternated old people by plopping into my next exit row and contentedly getting back to my vampires. I would have succeeded except when I got to my assigned seat someone was already sitting in it. I did the obligatory stare at the number, stare at the seat, stare back at the number routine to give away the fact that “Yes I am supposed to be here and who on Earth might you be?” The man in my seat had clearly been waiting for this moment and stood up, smiling a used car dealer smile at me and launched into his mentally rehearsed speech. “So how about I make a deal with you buddy? I’d like to trade you your seat for mine so I can sit next to my lovely fiancée.” He motioned to the middle-aged woman in the seat next to mine who was looking disinterested in the whole affair. I looked at the seat he pointed to and it was still an exit row seat as well, with an open space beside it so I nodded and threw my bag into the overhead. “Sure man.” The man grinned the sleazy grin of someone horribly impressed with himself and sat back down adding, “I really think you got the better deal.”, his opinion an unnecessary selling point to my new seat. The man’s fiancée had still not looked up from her magazine and clearly thought that if he wanted to be impressive he should have just booked them seats together in the first place. I didn’t care. There were lovesick vampires to read about. I buckled in, gave my “Uh huh” to the flight attendant to prove again with overwhelming certainty that I was competent to evacuate the hypothetically screaming masses from the plane, and went back to my reading.
When I touched down in Los Angeles I was whisked away by my uncle to the 55 and older community where my grandparents lived and where I would be staying the next few nights. It was called Leisure Village, or in my Uncle’s vernacular, “Geezer Village”. (Seizure Village was apparently also an acceptable nickname) I had an enjoyable stay there full of the good feelings that quality time with the grandfolks brings. They were wonderfully hospitable and happy to see me and I enjoyed catching up on the doings of the family and experiencing a couple of days in the life of my grandparents.
It turns out that the average day of an 87 year-old couple involves significantly more time for naps than my usual day. Not feeling up to that much snoozing, I took the ample free time as an excuse to use my Grandparents new golf cart and terrorize the neighborhood. Senior communities seem to have a lot of security personnel. I am not sure if the elderly are just a lot more mischevious than we give them credit for or if they had just caught wind of the presence of a young person and scheduled extra shifts. The guards passed by in their security vehicles and stared at me as I whipped down the road in my fringe topped speed machine. They communicated on their radios as I cruised past and I tried to imagine their conversations:
“Breaker, breaker, be advised, We’ve got a possible NGH on the loose in the village. Repeat, No Grey Hair visible on suspect, loose on golf cart headed south toward the gate. Move to intercept. Over.”
“Copy Security one, this is Security 2. How fast is the suspect moving? Over”
“I clocked him doing over 15 mph headed your way Security 2, stay cautious.”
“Wow we haven’t seen speed like that since the Bridge club had Sangria day and widow Flannery ended up in the pond.”
“Roger that, Security 2. Those ducks don’t need that kind of stress twice in one year. Use any measures to keep him out of the park.”
I slid down in the seat and tried to look suspicious.
I must have been successful because at one point the security truck passing me braked and did an aggressive u-turn in the road to come back in my direction. I happened to be next to the turn off for my grandparent’s cul-de-sac so I swerved into it, cackling maniacally for added effect and floored my golf cart’s accelerator pedal. I got to their driveway, did a quick k-turn and backed quickly into the garage pressing the button to close it as I entered. When the door was securely shut, I peered out the windows hoping to see my pursuers in the street. They didn’t show up. I was disappointed but I consoled myself by thinking that I was obviously just too quick for them. I wandered back inside and finished my book.
The next day my aunt dropped me off at the local Amtrak station so I could catch my ride north to Santa Cruz where I was planning to visit some friends. I got a nice hug goodbye from my aunt and the invitation to visit again soon, and I was on my way.
Trains are great for people like me because if, like me you show up at the station in just enough time for the ticket agent to help all the people in front of you in line and then put up a “Window Closed” sign just as you step forward, you can still get yourself on board and purchase a ticket on the train. This option does come with an additional $9 service fee and a stern look from a woman in a Engineers cap and what looks like a World War I infantry outfit, but it beats waiting for the next train. This ticket agent will take the time to sit on the arm of the chair in front of you and expound on the reasons why you really ought to have purchased the ticket in Oxnard, because you see it is a full service route station and its not like you got on board at some barren pick up elsewhere. Oxnard Station is apparently the pride of the Pacific Surfliner line. I nodded amiably to all of her enlightening and educational comments and smiled thankfully at her as she moved on down the row. I was just happy to be on the train. We don’t get a lot of train riding in Florida so I was excited to be having the experience again. Plus, trains make me immediately think of Harry Potter films and that will make just about anyone’s imagination wander. My mind wandered right to my laptop where I put in a Harry Potter DVD and slouched down in my seat for a delightfully interactive movie experience.
The bad thing about the Train routes in California is that they don’t exactly connect together in the middle of the state. If you are headed to Sacramento you might be fine, or if you are taking the Coast Starlighter you will probably be fine. If like me you are trying to get to Santa Cruz by way of the Pacific Surfliner, you are going to need a catch a bus.
The bus station is San Luis Obispo is lovely. I wandered off the train eager to explore, but thought that first I should make an effort to be a responsible traveler and square away my travel arrangements for the rest of the day. I dutifully purchased my bus tickets from the smiling agent at the desk and stuffed them in my back pocket before hoisting my bag onto my shoulder and meandering out into the beautiful California sunshine. I walked down the hill intending to make the most of my hour layover and get something tasty to eat. I stuck my head into a couple of busy sandwich shops but opted to keep walking. The decision paid off because a couple blocks farther down was a park full of festive citizens celebrating the Fourth of July with a Barbeque and live music and games for the kids. I purchased a burger and some Fritos and munched happily as I watched the local people sing, and one particularly interesting fellow dance to “Johnny B.Goode”. The awkwardly dancing man was too much fun for me to enjoy alone so I made a quick video and made a mental note to post it on Facebook later. After taking in the beautiful weather and patriotism for a bit I turned and ambled my way back up the hill toward the station.
I was about half way to my destination when I came across a house that had an overgrown lawn and curtains over the windows. The wooden fence that sectioned off the back yard was leaning precariously in places and the driveway stood empty except for a crop of weeds. The apparently abandoned house caught my attention due partly to the fact that I had a love of trespassing in abandoned homes in my teen years, but also because another even stronger love from my childhood was just visible beyond the fence in the back yard. The bush was tall and expansive with creeping thorns and I could just make out the red and purple points in the foliage that were assaulting my eyes like little glowing beacons of joy. Wild blackberries.
Growing up in State parks in California there were few things except open threats to my person that my parents could use to pry me away from a summer crop of wild blackberries. When I was old enough I would wander for hours up the streams near my house in Ukiah spending whole afternoons stuffing myself with berries till I would eventually have to stagger home in the fading daylight, scratched and bleeding and with my fingers stained purple, but supremely happy. Staring at the enormous bush in that back yard I knew I had no real choice to pass it by. I took a quick look at my watch. There was still time. The bus wouldn’t be there for at least fifteen minutes yet.
I waited till a group of chatty pedestrians passed by and then crept toward the gate. I took a cursory look at the house windows again and slipped through the broken gate. I spied an oversized dog bowl and a bone from some sort of large mammal lying at the corner of the overgrown patio. I stopped to consider the possibility that perhaps the house wasn’t abandoned. It could possibly belong to someone who just hadn’t had the time or inclination for yard maintenance, and who curtained their windows because they needed privacy… for their drug deals…or because their man eating wolf-dog didn’t enjoy being disturbed. My concern for my personal safety held me there for a second or two but then was completely overcome by the sight of the twenty-yard long bush of red and purple deliciousness waiting around the corner. I strode through the tall grass and was soon picking my way through the best sections and stuffing my empty water bottle with the few surplus berries that managed to avoid direct consumption. Once I was satisfied that I couldn’t possibly fit any more berries into the container I turned my attention regretfully back to my travel schedule and pulled myself away from the back yard looking wistfully back at the bush as I slipped out the gate and made my way up the hill toward the station.
I had just rounded the corner of the street in sight of the station when my hands made a startling discovery. My back pocket was empty. I frantically searched all of my pockets and my backpack, even making a fruitless look into my duffel bag knowing full well the answer to the question in my head. My tickets were gone. I looked at my watch and grimaced. The bus would be here in just a few minutes. I hurried inside to the ticket counter and found the agent who had sold me my tickets. When I asked if there was any way to reprint my boarding passes she shook her head at me. “Those tickets are like cash.” I asked if there was anywhere I could lock up my bags and they helpfully agreed to put them behind the counter. I tore out of the station and sprinted down the hill as fast as my flip-flops would take me. There were a variety of possible places they could have fallen out. I thought of all the people in the park and what the odds were of reencountering my tickets there in the crowd. I was praying for my other possibility. When I got to the house this time there was no hesitation as I bolted up the driveway and through the rickety fence. I slid to a stop in the weedy back yard and surveyed the expanse of sprawling bushes. For a moment I almost despaired, but then I saw a white envelope dangling from a strand of thorns a couple of feet off the ground. I dashed over and picked it up, looking again at my watch. Then I saw another perfect clump of berries. “Oh look at that”. I snagged a mouthful and sprinted back out of the yard.
I made it to Santa Cruz. My friends Ben and Andrea were wonderfully hospitable and we had a really enjoyable visit together. Ben even dropped me off at the bus stop the next day for my ride to San Jose. I made it aboard with only some minor sprinting involved as I learned that the Highway 17 bus only takes exact change. I had been required to dash to an ATM while the driver loaded the rest of the passengers and got aboard just before he ran out of patience. The problem of the ATM was that I now only had a twenty and had to make change from amongst the other passengers, but the driver seemed happy enough to let me stagger around and do this while we were rolling. In San Jose I caught the Cal Train to San Francisco and took the city 30 Bus to North Beach. The driver let me off a little after where I had asked, requiring me to hike up one more gigantic hill than was really necessary but I didn’t care. I was happy to be once more, dependant on only my own two feet. I had another splendid visit with my family there, hanging out with my uncle and my cousin and even her daughter who had no memory of me whatsoever from the last time I’d seen her there, but eventually warmed up to me a little before I left.
My departure was via a 6am Super Shuttle ride and with some pleasant conversation with a charming girl in the van and few other pick-ups I found myself back where I started, waiting for my flight home. For all the hiccups of the trip I was sad that it was soon to be over. I looked with appreciation around the terminal at all the travelers off on their own adventures, wondering where they would be finding themselves that night. I smiled at the thought and then wandered into the bookstore.
“Hey, They’ve got the sequel to my Vampires”.
And life was wonderful.
Hope you all are having a fantastic day, and many happy travels. -Nathan
| | |
|
There are people who are meant to make music. Naturally talented, gifted people with beautiful voices or skilled with instruments in ways that make your heart soar. Last week I found myself seated in a high school auditorium desperately wishing I were listening to something like that. Instead my friends Jessie and Roger and I were cringing at the sound of a trumpet being murdered on stage.
The three of us are part of St. Raphael’s Life Teen youth ministry program. We were at the senior recital waiting to hear one of our teens perform. Sadly she was only in a couple of the pieces and while we were waiting for her to come on, the other performers were making us wish that our eardrums might spontaneously burst so we wouldn’t have to suffer through their performances. One of the featured students was a soloist who sang songs in about four different languages. The French, Italian and German songs were making me wince so badly that I was praying for the English ones so that we would at least know what she was saying and perhaps the lyrics would salvage the experience of her off key warbling. I was horribly horribly wrong.
As she began singing in English we knew we were in trouble.
I am a respectful concertgoer. I am. I am polite and know how to act appropriately in those kinds of environments, and we are certainly immensely supportive of teens and all of their endeavors, even the ones we don’t know. It just couldn’t be helped. Jessie and I started to shake with that uncontrollable laughter that is only made worse by the fact that you can’t let it out because it is so inappropriate. I am thankful the floodlights obscure the view of the audience because the girl on stage might have had to wonder why a couple of her listeners were having seizures in their chairs. I stifled my snickers into my sweater as best I could and desperately tried not to watch Jessie who was crying with laughter into her hands and muttering between snorts. ”Please …don’t…..make…me..laugh”. We got ourselves under control briefly but then she texted me a message that involved the phrase “cats dying” and we were gone again, choking ourselves on our nearly silent laughter till our lungs hurt.
When the trumpet came back on I considered the playing and realized that while awful, there was something special about the experience, however humorous. I realized that we were witnessing what was probably the pinnacle of a young man’s musical achievement. In ten years when he is rooting through his garage with a friend he will pull out his trumpet and when his friend oohs and ahs and says how he never knew he could play a musical instrument, he’ll respond with, “Oh yes. I played in high school”. He may even mention the senior recital and mentally relive the glory of it all.
We saw that moment. For what it’s worth I think that’s just a little bit awesome.
I am not a musician at all. I do own musical instruments and I have in fact attempted to make noises come out of them from time to time. So far I can say that I have enough knowledge to sound slightly less discordant than if you were to throw said instrument down a flight of stairs. One day I hope to be able to actually play the occasional song and look marginally cool in front of girls who don’t know any better, and possibly not altogether hopeless in front of the ones that do. I make no real claim that I will ever be good at music but I am okay with leaving myself room for the possibility of improvement.
Seeing our trumpet murderer living out the last shred of his musical glory on stage made me get all introspective briefly and wonder about what things in my life I have already peaked at.
I would say my baseball career is officially done. It actually hit its apex in the eighth grade when I clocked one to the fence in the last inning of a game with two outs and bases loaded to win the game. I ran all the bases even though the guys I batted in had clinched it for us and I didn’t really have to. My parents took me out to Subway after to celebrate. It was all sort of downhill from there.
Track and Field made me work hard, and I did end up running some good races but mostly only because I had a bet going with one of my teammates that if I beat him we could cut his annoying hair. Once we did that I lost a bit of motivation. Throwing Javelin was a blast, though I was always mostly just pretending to be spearing wildebeests and never really took it too seriously. My coach rolled her eyes at me and wondered why she bothered. I told her she never knew when I might end up in Africa and need those skills to survive and that she should be happy I was finding incentive in my imaginary herds, but I don’t think she really appreciated that train of thought as it didn’t seem to make me throw any farther.
I tried my skills at Tae Kwon Do and did pretty well at it till I went home from a tournament with bruised ribs and two broken toes. I would have kept up with it but I moved and the next gym I went to didn’t include martial arts in the membership. I suppose I could pick it up again eventually, but I may have worn out my affinity for Korean catchphrases and never-ending sit up sessions.
Orville Reddenbacker said, “Do one thing. Do it well.”
I have ignored that man pretty much my entire life.
I seem to have started a lot of things and never really gotten excellent at very many. I am an excellent Snippies player. I can say that. I am by no means the best but I am pretty skilled. I can fly pretty well, but I don’t think I’m nearly the best Flight Instructor I’ve known or anything. I go pretty easy on my students and I think I will always enjoy myself entirely too much to ever be extremely efficient. I do land awfully well though and in all kinds of wind. There is a lot more in other areas of pilotage I could use improvement on however.
It’s just that there are so many interesting things to do in life that it seems awfully hard to pick the one to be excellent at. I would like to just be excellent at life. I would love it if people would say, “Ah yes, that Nathan. He’s an excellent liver.”
“What? He’s got an excellent liver?”
“No. Well I don’t know. Maybe he does, but I said he IS and excellent liver.”
It is kind of appropriate. I do digest things well so it can have double meaning. I can eat all kinds of Mexican food and not get even a little bit gassy. I don’t know if that counts as a skill though. Being a good digester doesn’t seem like it would go well on my resume. Even so if you are trying to find excellence I guess you don’t always get to choose your strengths. Its tough to claim any glory though, on God given, possibly hereditary traits like burrito digestion. Its not something you can really improve on or help anybody else with.
“Well I’m selling my amazing new two-step How To Guide, detailing your path to Mexican nirvana!”
“Get born, then eat burritos! Its just that easy!”
It would make for poor programming on the infomercial channel.
I do love witnessing greatness even if I don’t share in any of it. I love seeing exceptional talents in their element. It’s so inspiring to see people who manage to dedicate themselves to something so completely that they excel at it. It makes you feel proud to be a witness of it even if it’s only briefly. I think that’s why we watch the Olympics. We all need our fix of greatness, vicariously or otherwise.
The moment we were waiting for finally came and Natalie stepped onto the stage. We had seen some rough performances so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
She played beautifully. Her instrument was the clarinet and I have never heard anyone play one so well. It was absolutely worth all of the torture of the other performances. Jessie turned to me and said, “We are staying for the whole thing right?” We had contemplated ducking out after Natalie’s performances but we knew we wanted to get a chance to congratulate her in person. “Yeah.” Was all I replied. Every once in a while you get to see greatness. It’s worth the wait.
I have been thinking about Natalie’s performance. She told me that the University she plans to attend next year doesn’t have a music program so she is probably going to have to give up the clarinet. That made me sad to hear it. She makes such beautiful music. She seemed at peace about it though. The Buddhists have a saying “Be here now” that encompasses the idea that all things are impermanent. Nothing lasts forever, not even beauty, but what is wonderful is that just because something is temporary doesn’t make it any less beautiful. Because it existed, it will remain in our memories, and its passing out of the present will make room for new moments of beauty.
I think about the moments that have passed in my life and can appreciate them for what they were. I have had to let go of some things but I have added lots more interests in their place. I hope that I have many more peaks to reach before I’m done. I hope you all do too. I’d love to hear about the ones you’ve traversed so far, so feel free to share.
Thanks for reading my ramblings. I hope you all have a wonderful day.
Lots of love.
-Coops
| | |
|
“Some of my favorite fantasies used to involve revenge, he said, but I’m older and now they’re mainly about a good night’s sleep.” -Brian Andreas
“There are things we do for money and there are things we do for fun, but the things we do for love are gonna come back to us one by one.” –The Mountain Goats
I pulled off my sweater and pulled a black trash bag out of the box, shaking it to spread it out and laid it on the cold asphalt. The back of the bus was coated in oil. I looked at my watch and noted it was one in the morning. The time was slipping by us and we were barely out of D.C. I took the watch off and shoved it in my pocket to keep it safe and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. Easing myself to the ground I slid under the back of the bus. Mel, our driver and owner of Faith Travel, the bus company we had hired, dropped down and slid under with me as well. Together we looked the oil pan and the dripping hole where the drain plug used to be. Mel had inadvertently backed over a high curb prior to picking us up that evening for our trip home and sheared the drain plug off the oil pan. The threaded portion of the old plug remained in the hole with the head sheared off, the hollowed out center leaking oil past the couple of protruding threads. The fact of its stubborn existence there made it impossible to put a new plug in. I sighed and watched my warm breath drift across the beam of Mel’s flashlight.
If you were to ask any person on the core team at Saint Raphael’s Catholic Church in Saint Petersburg why it is that we do youth ministry, I think you would get as many different answers as there are members. It’s rewarding to be sure. It’s also challenging in ways that drive you crazy. This past weekend we took two buses full of teens from three parishes on a road trip from Florida to Washington D.C. for the annual March for Life, a peaceful protest of the 1973 Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade. The teens were great. They endured the 16-hour overnight bus-ride on the way up with great attitudes and positive enthusiasm. We had the opportunity to take them to some of the museums and monuments and one night they got to go ice-skating. Some of them had never seen snow so they prayed for it all weekend long and got blissfully excited at the flurries that wafted down at us. It never did snow but they made use of every available remaining pile of ice to pelt each other with little chunks of frozen pain.
I ended up in youth ministry years ago when I lived in Venice and our Priest Father Michael Canon put out the announcement that they were starting a LifeTeen ministry. The premise of LifeTeen is that if we want to spread the faith we need to start by feeding those most in need of it. After having seen countless friends and family members drift from their faith into nothingness or apathy I knew that the only way to keep people involved in their spirituality was to give them something meaningful to bite into and let them know that confirmation class is not the end of your learning about your faith. I knew the value LifeTeen had in that area and I was able to watch first hand as these high school teens progressed from their spoon fed faith lives to really grasping and understanding their faith and claiming it as their own as thinking growing young people taking charge of their spiritual journeys. I was hooked.
Its not always clear why God puts us in certain situations in our lives. Sometimes we struggle to figure out our role, wondering what challenge he has in store for us. We try to discern it the best we can and hope we got it right. That cold night in Virginia lying on the ground under the bus at one in the morning I didn’t have that problem. For once at least for the moment I knew exactly why I was there. I was supposed to get this bus back on the road. Mel had called a roadside service that sent someone to look at it. They charged over 400 dollars to say that they didn’t want to touch it till the next day. He called another bus company as well to see about getting us another ride home. They wanted way too much money. That’s how we ended up rolling into the Wal-Mart parking lot a little after 11:30 PM and rummaging around the automotive department looking for a way to get ourselves back on the road.
You can tell a lot of things about a guy based on how he deals with tools. I could tell that Mel for example was at the end of his rope. He had stuffed a rag and a screwdriver into the hole in the oil pan to get the bus as far as the Wal-Mart. I had not been on board with that decision but it was his bus so I couldn’t keep him from trying it. I knew now that Mel was out of ideas. I could tell he was relieved to have someone else dealing with the problem by the way he followed me around the tool aisles and the look of rather solemn desperation on his face.
On the trip so far I had not had to take much of a leadership role. Jessica, our youth minister had done a great job getting us through all of the events of the weekend, the joys and the headaches and the other minor crises we had encountered. The other core team leaders each handled their groups and I took care of mine. All of our kids had managed to make it back on the bus and not get lost. We were almost finished if we could just get home.
It’s a funny thing when you end up with responsibilities as an adult. You go skating along in life minding your own business, relying on others more knowledgeable or experienced than you to help you get through. You know someone will take care of things so you don’t have to worry. Then one day in some situation or another you find everyone looking at you. I find it happening to me more and more these days. It’s one of those sneaky things about adulthood that creeps up on you, like thinning hair, or caring about the economy. One day you look at the whole picture and think “What the Hell?” “When did all this happen?” “Wasn’t I just one of those sleeping teenagers just the other…. Year?” That’s the moment. Nobody asks you if you want it, you just end up there and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it except suck it up, and in some cases, go fix the bus.
In the end that’s what I did. I didn’t have much for tools so it wasn’t pretty but this was no airplane engine so the FAA won’t be knocking on my door complaining about my lack of professionalism. It was much more along the line of the emergency parking lot repairs I’ve done on my Volkswagen over the years. I had to take a ½ inch tapered round handle of a wooden paintbrush an jam it into the hole in the oil pan and after cleaning all around the brush seal the whole area around it with JB Quick welding compound. The gamble worked. It stopped leaking. We dumped all the oil we had back into the engine and fired it up. The oil pressure gauge held at fifty. I took off my oily rubber gloves and threw them away and then shivered back into my sweater.
I climbed back into the bus and took in the scene of all of our sleeping teenagers. Jessie pried her eyes open and asked how it was going. I gave her a thumbs up and told her I thought we were going to be okay now. I collapsed into my seat. I pulled out my watch and looked at it. It was a little past 1:30am. On the clasp of my watch there is an engraving that says Ecclesiastes 3:1. It was a gift to me and I really love it not only because of the memories it holds or the fact that it’s a great watch, but also because of that verse. “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven”.
Sometimes it’s your job to be patient and wait, other times its your time to step up and use the talents God has given you and realize that He has made you and put you in the life you have for a reason, and even if you don’t always feel your role is the most exciting or you wish someone else would do it so you don’t have to, God has His reasons for choosing you. I look at Jessie doing her job as youth minister and Matt and Amy and all the other core team leaders and the effort they put forth working with our teenagers and I am very proud of them, and proud to be a part of something bigger than us. We pray every week that the work we do will make an impact on the lives of the teens.
The bus trip home to Florida took twenty-nine hours all together. There were smiles and laughter, grumbling and yawning and in the end there were exhausted hugs and waves goodbye. We won’t know the impact it had, but we trust that God has made good use of us. We crash into our beds and go back to our lives for a few more days so that Sunday we can come back to them again and carry on together.
I hope that if you are reading this you are doing well. I hope that God is blessing your life and that you are finding your way forward with peace and an unrelenting sense of humor.
I wish you all the best. Thanks for reading. – Coops
P.S. Please say some prayers for our ministry that we find more good people to get involved and make a difference in these kids lives. We can always use more.
| | |
| 1. The FAA is the Devil.
2. Old Age can make you Crotchety.
3. There is nothing so exciting about aviation or flying that the FAA can't write a regulation about to make it sound more boring than watching grass grow, or in my case, watching the hands on the clock tick ever so slowly by.
I learned these things today at the Inspectors training course I am attending in Daytona. My co-worker Eddy and I are endeavoring to get our Inspectors Authorization Certificates for work. We will be here all week. It is going to be a long week. I can already tell this due to the fact that today's lessons took about 3 1/2 years by my calculations. There was a time during the afternoon where I was garnishing great entertainment from cleaning out the gunk that had accumulated in some of the metal crevices of my watch band. I didn't want to clean it all though because I am hoping to have something to look forward to tomorrow.
Our instructor is an interesting character. He is the owner of the school and had been teaching the class for over thirty years. Since 1973 actually. You can tell in some ways. He is not unlike a potato in general shape, though significantly more so in the middle where he has extra lumps. He curses like a champion in a sort of southern accent. Not twangy but with a definite rural flare. He has a belt that has the most difficult job in the room in that it is asked to hold up the swell of what can only be years and years of bad habits. He has a sort of hunched over look, his neck disappearing into his sloping shoulders. During the afternoon he shuffled around teaching the class in his socks. Despite this relaxed approach to fashion he does not tolerate much in the way of nonsense in the class, not that we know from first hand experience yet, but he was prompt in warning us in the first five minutes with colorful tales of past students who had attempted hostile take overs and how he had set them straight or shown them the door. He may have murdered them. There is some question about that in my mind.
I am typically a very involved student. I raise my hand and ask lots of questions. Here that is a daring activity however because any useless statements come under fire in rapid order. After a couple classmates attempted to show some knowledge on a subject and were mercilessly devoured, I took that as a lesson and decided for future reference that I am going to know nothing about anything he asks and all of his questions are meant to be rhetorical. How I am going to entertain myself after the rest of my watch gunk is gone I have yet to figure out, but I have about four hundred years of lecture to go so I will have to think of something... | | |
| Well it seems we had our couple days of winter for the year. It was awful. People huddled up and whimpered for all three days of it. The sun is back out now. People are coming out of their hibernation and jubilantly going about the business of yard sale hunting and visiting the Saturday morning market downtown. We all feel better for having survived. Should be eighty again tomorrow. Its a good thing too. The average floridian is not cut out for more than a few days of temperatures below fifty. Its just asking too much. If we want cold we'll get it by cranking our air conditioners to sub arctic temps in the summer time. Those are the real Florida seasons. Indoors or outdoors. Air conditioned or not. If you want Fall, you will just have to trim your palm tree... | | |
|
