Rollerblades and Cigarettes
I am home in Oklahoma (which as you know is always prone to spur a blog or two) for a few days for Thanksgiving before heading down to Louisiana to see the person who I am most thankful for in my life. My parents dropped our membership to the country club because none of us chitlins are home any more to enjoy it, which makes sense, which is also the reason that I take advantage of Mondays when the Office at the Club are closed. It was a beautiful day here in Duncan so I decided to go play some golf. I was playing by myself and suprisingly played pretty well, but something else today jogged my memory.
Behind the green on #6 there is this little place on the clubhouse where you can jump up and sit down, kind of bench-like. It is completely hidden by trees and it was the perfect place for a few rollerblading middle schoolers to go hang out. Chris Darling, Booth Boughan and I criss-crossed this town nearly every day on our rollerblades. I had Aeroblades, and Booth and Chris has Coolblades. We did lots of really really crazy/stupid things. We would find our way up onto our old elementary school and then skate really fast on the flat roof and drop 6ft down to the ground. We flew down stairs just like the professional skaters do, but by far the stupidest thing we did was when we would hide behind bushes near a stop sign and we would wait for a pick-up to come by. When the truck would start moving, we would dart out from behind the bush and grab on to the tailgate and hold on as the pickup went down the road. How stupid, right? Right. Sometimes trucks would go as fast as 30mph and there we would be, just hanging on the back smiling, being stupid.
And then we would take breaks, and they would smoke cigarettes and dip Copenhagen. It made me sick after a few tries so I abstained. But we were really cool, really cool. Don't ever forget that.
Oh i had forgotten
To avoid sounding very Americentric or racist, I must start by saying, I AM NOT MAKING FUN OF THE PEOPLE THAT I AM ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT. I don't know exactly what I am doing, but I am not making fun of them.
Tonight we had a flag football game here at Vandy and as I was strolling up to where our team was getting ready, I saw something that really warmed my heart. It was 1 very dark complected (maybe native African?) and 1 middle eastern guy throwing the football around. And it was funny, quite funny. It looked as if fingers were being jammed every time an attempt to catch was made. And it made me laugh really, because I just assume that people know how to throw (generally speaking of course) the football, and then I remember that football is pretty much an American thing. People in England even try to throw the football underhanded like a rugby ball would be thrown. If I were still a betting man, I'd put my black chips on the fact that they would kill me at soccer, hands down, no questions asked if given the chance.
And the best part about all this is that it drew me back to my college years. I would occasionally take this one route from my dorm to the golf course in Norman and I would drive by some international housing and see Chinese people playing basketball. Everyday. They played basketball everyday. And they were awful. Awfully awful, and I am no basketball star by any stretch. But there was so much fun to be had in watching them shoot the ball. Flat palms shoving a ball toward the rim. Stress on rim. They didn't grow up playing basketball, and I didn't grow up playing ping pong. They would probably laugh at me if I were in China, but for now, I laugh. Is that bad?
Grace, goodies, and a brass trash can
Do you know that feeling when you have something that happens to you that is exactly the opposite of what you thought? This happened to me yesterday and it was really an amazing thing.
It reminded me of a story that Ricky Jones, the campus minister at Mississippi state told one time about one of his boys disobeying his mother and when Ricky got home from work, the boy was expecting a spanking, but instead Ricky took him to get ice cream. And thus, to this boy, he shewed grace. Really, this same thing happened to me yesterday and it really caught me off guard, and it makes me wonder what I think grace is most of the time. I think it is usually this thing where God kind of forgives me, but is still very mad about the thing(s) that I have done. I don't really believe that it can be as good as it is. And the kicker is that it is this kindness that makes me want to repent and stop doing what i have been doing....romans 2:4.
And now for the goodies. I say goodies because there is this old guy who goes to our church and his name is john macalwee. we call him macalwee. he is really funny, makes occasional inappropriate comments, and then tells the same stories to you dozens of times over. but he is very cool and very nice for an 70 or so year old man. he recently sold the 4 story condo that he lives in because he is moving to a 1 story house. he told me to come over and that he would give me some 'goodies'. and yes, that's the exact word he used. my roomate told me that he was looking to unload some speakers on me, but i had no idea what else.
-3 ugly small vases (that went from the highest shelf in his kitchen above the fridge, to the highest shelf in my kitchen above the fridge)
-1 piece of glass that he put an ugly blue glass bowl on top of
-1 ugly blue glass bowl
-1 black turkey roasting pan
-7 bathroom hand towels
-1 big, ugly brass boot that sits next to a fireplace and holds fireplace tools (or beer, the Royal B?)
---and my personal favorite. we were standing in his kitchen, after i had made several trips already to my car with his other crap, and he said with this really excited look in his eye...
John- "I want you to go into that bathroom, and look on the floor. There is a brass trashcan. Its yours (him pointing at my chest at this point)."
Brent- "John, thats nice, but I'm not sure we need that right now, we have a bathroom trashcan (not to mention, it has probably had poop paper in it and assuntry other gross things)"
John- "You might not need it now, BUT WOMEN LOVE THOSE THINGS."
Brent- Pause, wonder why Sarah would ever love this, enter bathroom, wonder how the hell i was talked into this, pick up brass trashcan and take it to my car. Unload from car, put in trash bin.
