I should be sleeping, but I find myself here again at midnight enjoying the after taste of my coffee from a land far away. Times like this are vital to my existence. I lean back, close my eyes, and listen to the silence. Tonight I’m reflecting back on some of the clumsy things my best friend did back when we were younger. I wasn’t a witness to his hot tub fail, but the story goes like this...
On a senior trip to to the beach, he and his cohorts checked out the hot tub area at their fancy condo. To their delight, it was full of other party animals who were there to live it up for a week.
“Do y’all mind if we join you?” Ben asked as he probably flexed his pectoral muscles. He had a way of doing that without even realizing it.
“Come on in!” the single ladies replied.
With a full display of machismo, he climbed to the top edge of the hot tub. Being careful not to slip, he placed his foot onto the step just under the surface of the water. The problem he ran into at that point was...there was no step. He had just placed all two hundred forty pounds onto a step that did not exist. SPLASH! He instantly found himself submerged in a tangle of a dozen unknown legs and feet. I can only imagine the uproar that followed.
There was another hilarious incident. He was at home when he tripped over one of his nephew’s toys. Stumbling and bouncing off the furniture, he spun around backwards and violently crashed through his living room window. He managed to keep from falling completely out of the house by grabbing the window frames at the sides. So, in essence he crashed his butt through the living room window. Things like this were so normal, he thought nothing of it!
I had a large group of friends over one night. He and some others scaled the rafters through my attic to see a “Barbie” Corvette. It was hidden up there for my niece’s Christmas present. Somehow, everyone made it back down without a hitch...except Ben. There were at least a dozen people in my living room when his elephant skin cowboy boot crashed through the ceiling! Drywall chunks, dust, and insulation bits dropped from the ceiling like baby meteors. His leg dangled there for a second and then slowly retracted. When he came down, he had that “Did anyone notice?” look on his face.
His clumsiness was a very endearing quality to me. We all have personality traits or quirks that are part of who we are. These things are no accident. King David wrote: “You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They can’t be numbered!” [Psalm 119: 13-17].
We are all “Fearfully and wonderfully made” for a specific purpose. If we are witty, reclusive, bold, strong, athletic, etc... it is not by accident. God knew the type of person He wanted each of us to be. “Qualities” that we sometimes view as flaws are what enable us to impact certain people like no one else can. Even as you read this, God is using Ben’s clumsiness to have an effect on you. He made my life better by reminding me not to take myself so seriously and giving me memories to share with others. We know he could heap trouble on himself and find a way to wreck, get stuck, blow up, or bust anything in sight....and then laugh about it. The question is; what about you?
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Friday, February 15, 2019
Trying to Find a place to Take a Nap
Have you ever been caught off guard and then reacted by doing something totally off the wall? Of course you have. Maybe someone startled you and you blurted out something you should've kept silent. Perhaps you just did something, spur of the moment, that turned into an epic fail. One cool winter night, my best friend did just that...all of that and then some.
Ben had been talking sweetly to one particular young lady for a week or two. It seemed that she was becoming more interested in a relationship, so he decided to do something special. A few days later he devised a plan. I should interject here, that Ben wasn't a planner. He had a keen ability to heap trouble upon himself WITHOUT a plan. So if he took the time to make a plan, the potential for disaster became exponentially higher.
After "casing" her home like a bank robber, he planned it all out in his mind down to the smallest detail. Her quaint little home was surrounded by cow pastures with one neighboring property. The neighbor had a dog, but it wasn't very close. Lastly, a security light dimly lit the area around her home. With all of this in mind, he plotted a discreet, in and out, stealth mission of romance. We should call this: "Mission Candy Cane."
The purpose of said mission was to use the cover of night to sneak across the pasture to her house and place a gift on top of her car. Early the next morning she would discover it and decide that he was the man of her dreams. Harps would be heard and Cupid would shoot his arrows from the clouds. What could possibly go wrong?
Nightfall came and the moon rose high. He waited until the small hours when all good folks should be sleeping. Dressed in full camouflage, Ben idled his Mustang into the neighbor's driveway. Softly clicking his door shut, he assumed the prostrate position and began low crawling across the pasture. About the time he had crawled far enough to be fully committed, the neighbor's dog went crazy! He had anticipated this, so he opened a can of Starkist tuna and hurled it into the guard dog’s direction. The startled K-9 inspected the peace offering and was infuriated over the tuna fish. It became even more agitated and started barking profanities at Ben! He barked words like: "Are you calling me a cat?, What kind of a dog eats tuna? Who sent you? What are you doing here?....and why do you have a candy cane?"
So here we have a man with a choice to make. Should he persevere, hoping everyone would ignore the barking dog? Or should he retreat? Lying there in the grass, he pondered for a moment. The security light seemed excessively bright, and even in camouflage clothing, he felt a bit too exposed. With the dog still cursing at him like a Chicago crime boss, he began low crawling back toward his bright red convertible. Mission aborted. Ben almost made it back to his chariot when he suddenly became blinded by a bright light as if it was from an angel.
"Son, what in the world are you doing?" said the angel. Angels usually don't say stuff like that! They say stuff like "Fear Not!" and "Thus sayeth the Lord!" The deep voice behind the bright angelic light was actually the neighbor’s voice from behind his foot long flashlight. Yes, this neighbor just happened to be one of the town’s police officers! In a moment like this, the very next thing you say bears much weight concerning how and where you will spend the next day or two of your life. This would have been a good time for Casa Nova to have taken a mental inventory of his options BEFORE answering the officer's question!...Here we have a grown man...dressed like Rambo...slithering through the grass on his belly...carrying a plastic candy cane full of jelly beans, and a can opener...
As I said earlier, Ben wasn't much of a planner. He was more of the “just wing it” type of guy. In keeping with this, he didn’t really ponder much. He simply blurted out “I was just trying to find a place to take a nap.” With a chuckle, the officer replied “Well Son, I think I can help you with that. I know just the place for you to take a nap!” I don’t think a jail cell is much good for napping, but to find that out for sure, we’d have to ask Ben.
As I recall, the relationship between my best friend and the mysterious woman never materialized. He certainly didn’t win her over that winter’s night. The next day he was released from the confines of the jailer’s napping place without any further incident. It might not have made for a successful mission, but it sure made a good story. I’m certain that if Ben were able to do it all over again, he’d probably opt for baked beans, mushroom soup, or some other delicious dog treat to silence the K-9.
Have you ever been caught off guard and then reacted by doing something totally off the wall? Of course you have. Maybe someone startled you and you blurted out something you should've kept silent. Perhaps you just did something, spur of the moment, that turned into an epic fail. One cool winter night, my best friend did just that...all of that and then some.
Ben had been talking sweetly to one particular young lady for a week or two. It seemed that she was becoming more interested in a relationship, so he decided to do something special. A few days later he devised a plan. I should interject here, that Ben wasn't a planner. He had a keen ability to heap trouble upon himself WITHOUT a plan. So if he took the time to make a plan, the potential for disaster became exponentially higher.
After "casing" her home like a bank robber, he planned it all out in his mind down to the smallest detail. Her quaint little home was surrounded by cow pastures with one neighboring property. The neighbor had a dog, but it wasn't very close. Lastly, a security light dimly lit the area around her home. With all of this in mind, he plotted a discreet, in and out, stealth mission of romance. We should call this: "Mission Candy Cane."
The purpose of said mission was to use the cover of night to sneak across the pasture to her house and place a gift on top of her car. Early the next morning she would discover it and decide that he was the man of her dreams. Harps would be heard and Cupid would shoot his arrows from the clouds. What could possibly go wrong?
Nightfall came and the moon rose high. He waited until the small hours when all good folks should be sleeping. Dressed in full camouflage, Ben idled his Mustang into the neighbor's driveway. Softly clicking his door shut, he assumed the prostrate position and began low crawling across the pasture. About the time he had crawled far enough to be fully committed, the neighbor's dog went crazy! He had anticipated this, so he opened a can of Starkist tuna and hurled it into the guard dog’s direction. The startled K-9 inspected the peace offering and was infuriated over the tuna fish. It became even more agitated and started barking profanities at Ben! He barked words like: "Are you calling me a cat?, What kind of a dog eats tuna? Who sent you? What are you doing here?....and why do you have a candy cane?"
So here we have a man with a choice to make. Should he persevere, hoping everyone would ignore the barking dog? Or should he retreat? Lying there in the grass, he pondered for a moment. The security light seemed excessively bright, and even in camouflage clothing, he felt a bit too exposed. With the dog still cursing at him like a Chicago crime boss, he began low crawling back toward his bright red convertible. Mission aborted. Ben almost made it back to his chariot when he suddenly became blinded by a bright light as if it was from an angel.
"Son, what in the world are you doing?" said the angel. Angels usually don't say stuff like that! They say stuff like "Fear Not!" and "Thus sayeth the Lord!" The deep voice behind the bright angelic light was actually the neighbor’s voice from behind his foot long flashlight. Yes, this neighbor just happened to be one of the town’s police officers! In a moment like this, the very next thing you say bears much weight concerning how and where you will spend the next day or two of your life. This would have been a good time for Casa Nova to have taken a mental inventory of his options BEFORE answering the officer's question!...Here we have a grown man...dressed like Rambo...slithering through the grass on his belly...carrying a plastic candy cane full of jelly beans, and a can opener...
As I said earlier, Ben wasn't much of a planner. He was more of the “just wing it” type of guy. In keeping with this, he didn’t really ponder much. He simply blurted out “I was just trying to find a place to take a nap.” With a chuckle, the officer replied “Well Son, I think I can help you with that. I know just the place for you to take a nap!” I don’t think a jail cell is much good for napping, but to find that out for sure, we’d have to ask Ben.
As I recall, the relationship between my best friend and the mysterious woman never materialized. He certainly didn’t win her over that winter’s night. The next day he was released from the confines of the jailer’s napping place without any further incident. It might not have made for a successful mission, but it sure made a good story. I’m certain that if Ben were able to do it all over again, he’d probably opt for baked beans, mushroom soup, or some other delicious dog treat to silence the K-9.
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