It's been an interesting week. Ups and downs, backs and forths, simple all-over-the-place fun. This is directly reflected through my clothing selections for today. In fact, it's so closely related, we'll treat this like a rhetorical question and you can figure out how and why it's connected on your own. I will explain one thing though; the lack of tie has great significance and that is, well, somehow, somewhere, one of my suits, charcoal in color, along with approximately 15 ties (half of my tie collection) went missing. Don't know the details, don't know how it happened, wish I did, wish this didn't happen. I put up a classified ad on Biola's network and here's a link to it:
This is a pretty significant loss, it's going to be difficult to recover and, in some situations, impossible to recover. It's brutal, but hey, it is what it is, live goes on, and we're good. Boom boom bam, let's go.
Speaking of "let's go," last Friday night's events were up in the air. There were three different options, all of which were undetermined. Long story short, I ended up committing to go to a Future of Forestry, Lovelite, and Reveal concert with Ms. Sierra Falco, Ms. Amber Agron, and Amber's boyfriend Mr. Preston Richardson. I was excited, they were excited, we were all excited. Before long, it's time to go and Preston, who was photographing the concert and was scheduled to come pick us up from Biola, was struggling to get his car started. It was at this point I knew we were in for a treat. We needed to figure out what to do and decided upon driving Amber's car, a big ol' Bronco. There was a problem though, Amber's arm is injured, rendering her unable to drive. Well, the smell of adventure was in the air, so I volunteered to put my driver's license to good use. I was warned immediately, old big vehicles can be fussy, there are little tricks and whistles one needs to master before it will drive well. Sure enough, the first five minutes were absolutely BRUTAL. The brakes were SUPER touchy and the gas required quite the punch. Luckily, we humans are made to adapt, so after quite the interesting 5 minutes, it was like I had been driving this bad boy for years.
So, we're on the freeway, just cruising, looking for exit 90 something in midst of traffic, and all of a sudden, a realization is made: we were going the wrong way on the freeway, and not only that, we had been going the wrong way for a good half an hour. This is the moment that plagues my life, the great moment of realizing you're in the wrong place. Now, if there's anything I've learned in my lifetime, it's that I ALWAYS get lost, and when I get lost, it's ALWAYS an adventure. BIG memories are waiting to be made. Never fails. Ever. So it's at this moment, I just start laughing, realize this trip has just become the trip of lifetime, and the story of this trip will be told for years. It was time to turn around.
So we did. And our less than 30 minute trip quickly turned into a 2 hour trip. And we enjoyed ourselves. We chatted about all sorts of nice things, including but not limited to in-depth conversations about two intense topics dreams and cancer. We had time, lots of it, and hey, when you stick people in a situation where all they can do is talk to each other, boom, that's what you do. That's my idea of a good time. So, FINALLY, we arrive at Crossline Church. After struggling to find the entrance, we make it in, quickly realizing we had missed the first two bands, Lovelite and Reveal, but hey, we made it. Future of Forestry absolutely killed it, those guys know how to jam and know how to put on a show! There were definitely a few of those moments where the only response worthy is a *gasp,* there's no other response suitable, it's just too too good. I couldn't help but yelp "SO DOPE" at one point, givin' me chills. Know what was also great? Seeing old friends like Mr. Grant Gunther and Mr. Louie Huesmann, among others from Hume. Reunions are the best.
And then we left. Presten's vehicle was still out of commission, so we left from Crossline with an one more passenger than we had come with, thought outside the bun and stopped by Taco Bell for a late night snack, and headed out. And guess how long the trip home took? Let's just say 25 minutes, just a tad bit shorter than the 2 hours it took to get there. Good, quick ride home.
All in all, the idea that "half the fun is getting there" rings brilliantly true, and in this case, it may as well read "three quarters of the fun is getting there." Through my experience with getting lost in virtually every driving situation I'm in, I've learned a few things:
- It's incredibly easy and tempting to become stressed, flustered, and concerned. It's very easy to get plastered by a wave of negativity and potentially ruin the rest of the trip. These aren't necessarily bad things, they just threatening. This happens to everyone, it's natural.
- If you can help it, be optimistic about the situation. Believe it or not, getting lost happened to you for a reason, probably reasons you will never know. I'll give you an example: my grandpa was scheduled to board a boat. For whatever reason, he accidentally did not make it on that boat and what happens? The boat sinks. You never know what's going to happen.
- Utilize your extra time you gain from getting lost. Time and time again, getting lost creates lots of laughs about getting back on track and relearning where you are going. Time and time again, conversation and experiences have taken place during that time that never would have had a chance if you hadn't lost your place.
- Make it fun. Laugh about it, have a blast. You might as well. It's a bad situation, turn it into a good situation. Make it a memory that will last a lifetime. And you know what happens with memories? They become stories, great stories. And what do you do with stories? You tell them. And hey, every time you're in a car, you can tell your co-car-riders the story of "that one time you got lost." THE BEST.
And that's the story about that one time I got lost with Amber and Sierra. It's in the memory bank for good.
Now, I've got three strange topics to talk about.
First, bad breath. I feel like bad breath is one of the strangest, nastiest, troubling accidents on the face of this earth, an accident we all struggle with in some form. When you're talking to someone with terrible breath, it's revolting, you can't stand it. But what do you? More often than not, you don't do anything. Now, I'm not quite sure why we don't say anything. Perhaps it's embarrassing. You feel bad for telling someone "Hey, sorry to bring this up, but you need a breathmint, your breath...well, it's bad." Not only is it hard for you to say, but how are they going to feel? We feel embarrassed. If you're the one with bad breath, how do you feel? I'm speaking from personal experience right now. If someone tells me, "Woah, take a swig of Listerine or something," I think immediately "YIKES, bad breath is nasty" and then immediately think "how long have I had this repulsing stench fuming from my mouth, how many people have been devoured by this scent, been disgusted, and not said anything." In my opinion, if my breath has even a hint of "bad," I would love for it to be pointed out, that way it can be fixed from the get-go and it won't have to get embarrassing for either party when my breath is killing the plants I walk by.
Second, the wave. I recently had two different converstaions with two separate sets of people about waving, and now, as I'm writing this, I'm realizing this will be very difficult to describe in words without showing with my own two hands. Bascially, we came to the realization that men and women wave differently. More often than not, a man will either just stick his hand in the air, or maybe do one simple "swipe." A women kind of hits the whole spectrum, ranging throughout all sorts of different varieties of waves. I'm going to cut this conversation right now because it's literally impossible to describe all the variations of waves, plus it's much more fun to demonstarte. Ask me sometime about it. One last note though, during the first conversation about waves, we agreed that a notable wave that is feminite and maybe a tad annoying is the finger wave, where you kind of have your fingers pointed at your subject and move your fingers in a wave pattern. The funny thing about it is since we talked about this, I have caught myself over and over and over again waving in this extremely awkward and strange way of waving. I just can't help but laugh. Out of all the ways to wave we talked about, that's the one my phyche chose to naturally do (at least for this week). Strange.
Lastly, social experimentation. Do you ever do little things to see how people react? Whether that's something you say, not speaking up when you would normally, choosing to do certain things that wouldn't normally do, but for the sake of reaction, you do them anyway, or, similarly, not doing or saying things you normally would? I guess we all do this kind of stuff, just involuntary. Recently though, I've been having some fun with it. My absolute favorite is not speaking up with there's an awkward silence. It's quiet and uncomfortable and getting worse by the second. You feel the urge to do something, whether that is speak up, chuckle, or do the hand motion that, in my opinion, is the greatest symbol of the loss of social skills among our generation, the awkward turtle. I LOVE not breaking this silence and just seeing what happens. Every time the results are different and it's so interesting to see how people react to awkward silence and in there end, how they break it. It's almost like taking a seat and watching the drama play out. Just good clean fun.
Along that note, the other night I was talking with Ms. Sierra Falco and Ms. Jenette Hatch about the topic of hugs. Now, hugs are a funny business. A hug is what? The in between between a handshake and a full on kiss? There is a level of intimacy in a hug that does not exist in a handshake and it's this intmacy that catches me off guard. People enjoy the feeling of touch. I'm not sure how to explain it, but there's something about touch that hits us hard and we were designed by our Creator that way. That said, the variety of a hug is intriguing. First you have the side hug, the supposed awkward cousin to the "real" hug. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. To me, it's not awkward or weird; yes, it is less intimate (don't you love that word?) than a full hug, but why does the side hug get a bad rap? Don't know. Then you have the "real" hug, a straight up greeting of meaningful proportions. Sierra and Jenette called it, they said the reason a real hug is absolutely necessary is the feeling of being surrounded, encircled in the other persons arms, a feeling that a side hug can never offer. Now here's something else, what happened to that hug/kiss on the cheek thing? I don't know what it's called, but I've noticed that older people and Europeans in general tend to use this greeting when greeting a member of the opposite sex. I know virtually nothing about this type of greeting so I'm going to stop talking about it. I just thought it is either an interesting twist on cliche American greetings or it's just gone out of style...or something.
And lastly, I have one video for you. My apartmentmate, Mr. Michael Warnecke, showed me this video last night and it's the epitome of JAMMING.
The drummer is having the absolute time of his life. JAMMING JAMMING JAMMING. I can't put it into words, I just can't. I can't get over the absolute greatness of the BEAST of a drummer. So incredibly good. In the pocket, in the groove, mmmm, GORGEOUS.
And that's the post! Lots of words today. I'm always a fan of words.
Go tell someone else some words, have a good, meaningful conversation.
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