BoldUlysses.com

Here I stand
in front of your imagination

Last youth group of the year was last night, complete with small group mini-parties, a very short teaching by Jeremy, and a water fight at the end. I bought five bags of candy, a tube of Pringles, and a bag of Sunchips for the small group party, and brought the PS2. I’ve never seen candy go that quickly before, and I grew up in a household with three overactive teenage boy metabolisms. After 45 minutes I had no candy left, and these are the BIG bags of candy–Reese’s PB cups, Peppermint Patties, Skittles, 3 Musketeers bars, etc… At one point someone (I don’t remember who) made the very ill-advised decision to enter the room carrying a box of ice cream bars. Within seconds, a shout of, “Ice cream bars, who wants any?” resounded throughout the room, and amidst a cloud of ice cream bar wrappers and tearing cardboard box the hapless entrant barely escaped.

Part of it might have had something to do with the deal I struck with Donald’s (7-8th grade boys) small group before the meeting started. The water war was slated to take place at the end of the meeting, and in order to secure better odds for our group, I talked with Donald. He had been plotting a strategy ever since he heard about the possibility of a water war, and had made a supply run earlier that afternoon in which he purchased several hundred water balloons. He had even come to youth group about an hour early just to begin filling them and loading coolers, buckets, whatever he could find. I admired his strategizing, but I also wanted a piece of that action. So I struck up a deal whereby his small group guys could hang out in our room, eat candy, and play the PS2 (and Apples to Apples, which I also brought) instead of just languishing in the kitchen assisting him, and we’d have access to his water balloon stash. It was a perfect deal, but between the influx of Donald’s small group guys and the friends many of them had brought, the room was about three times as full as it usually was, hence the extremely shortened lifespan of the bags of candy.

As for the water war itself–things never quite work out the way we plan, although in this case I was surprised by the fact that the actual event wasn’t the polar opposite of my vision, as often happens. From the perspective of an organized game, as it was intended to be, it was, of course, was something of a bust. The leaders had tried valiantly to make up rules and goals prior to the event and to brief the kids on them, even separating them into teams. But as you can well imagine, the one thing on everyone’s mind as they stepped outside and grabbed their guns was just who they wanted to soak, squirt, hose down, drench. Before the chaos began I said I gave it 5 minutes before everything completely degenerated into a free-for-all. Turns out it took even less time than that, somewhere on the order of 30 seconds. Donald was prowling around the parking lot with his cart full of water balloon-filled coolers, and once he was discovered, anybody and everybody (mostly 7-9th grade boys, I was happy to say, since they knew of its existence beforehand) descended on them and started lobbing them into the crowd around the water hose. Within 15 minutes everyone was quite giddy and soaked to the skin. ‘Twas quite fun, although not having brought a dry change of clothes made cleanup a soggy experience. I had loads of fun.

We’re leaving for Europe in a day and half. Virgin Atlantic flight 21 out of Dulles, 7:30 PM Tuesday, to be precise. I’m so stressed about it. I’ve made all the reservations and travel arrangements, but things happen, even when you think you’ve got everything squared away. I might seem like I have it all together, but I don’t–it’s only by His grace that this trip is going to go smoothly and well, and the weight of responsibility is heavy underneath the affectations of calmness I might project. Please pray that it’ll go well, and if it doesn’t, that nothing catastrophic would happen inside the creation of a story to tell our friends on our return (you know, the “interesting” bits). There’s still so much left to do, loose ends to tie up, work schedules and projects to file away until I get back, and for heaven’s sake, packing. Gaaah.

Donald’s going to bring his digital video camera with about three hours of blank tape (and possibly more) available. I told him I want him to tape everything. We stood around outside the car earlier this evening and just planned out possible shots and situations and scenarios. There’s going to be so much raw footage when we get back that we’re not going to know what to do with it all. Donald and I want to whittle it down into a nice compilation of our trip, though. I’ve already started making mental note of songs I’d want on the soundtrack. That’s going to be grand.

And now, more work… Glad I took that 3-hour nap earlier.