Find. Teach. Baptize. Those were the three things we missionaries were supposed to focus on. The entire process brought me a lot of joy throughout my two years as a full time missionary, but not all of the steps were equally enjoyable. I never got super excited about the “finding” part because it meant a lot of rejections and doors slammed in my face. Once we found someone to teach, I loved loved LOVED teaching about the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And for those who really embraced the gospel principles, baptism was the ultimate event.

“I don’t think I want to do this,” Kenworth said quietly next to the water so that only I could hear.

“You’ll be fine. We don’t have to rush this.”

 Finding people to teach brought me the furthest out of my comfort zone. Teaching was a lot of fun. Baptizing was amazing. With Kenworth, though, it was completely backward. Teaching had still been a lot of fun, but I didn’t have to do any work in finding him, and the actual baptism was the hard part.

About six weeks before I had been transferred to the area, the previous set of missionaries began to teach a teenager their message. He loved what was being taught and invited his friends to sit in on the gospel discussions. I was transferred to the area just after the first young man was baptized, and one-by-one I enjoyed teaching and baptizing his friends. A different boy was baptized every week, the last of those being Kenworth.

So I didn’t have to do any of the work in finding him. He was already being taught when I arrived in the area. Teaching him was still as fun as usual, maybe even more so, but the actual act of baptizing him was difficult.

“No, no, no. I can’t do this.” Kenworth looked up to see the dozens of his friends watching anxiously as we whispered our conversation.

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then trust me when I say you have nothing to worry about. I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”

Kenworth wasn’t scared of the commitment that accompanied baptism. He hated being in water. Because of an illness he’d suffered as a child, the right side of his body was almost completely paralyzed. He walked with a stiff right leg, his foot turned halfway in, and his right wrist always tucked tightly to his hip. Because of his condition, if he were to ever fall into water, he would be in serious trouble. So, even though I was there with him the entire time, his terrible fear of water began to overshadow his desire to be baptized.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Kenworth, remember the discussion we had yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“We can do this.”

Kenworth stepped gingerly into the water, gripping my hand as tightly as he could with his good hand.

He made it into the water. I thought that was going to be the hard part, but, after saying the short baptismal prayer, I began to lower him into the water to submerge him.

Before he was even close to going under, his body seized up with terror and he began to panic, flailing his arms and legs as if he were about to drown.

Having spent a summer a few years earlier working at the county swimming pool, my lifeguard instincts kicked in and I wrapped my arms around him from behind.

“We’re okay, Kenworth. You’re okay. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

“I don’t think I can do this.”

We paused and waited. I held the nineteen year old tightly in my arms until he was calm enough to stand on his own.

We chatted calmly as everyone looked on in anticipation, then decided to give it another try. As I began to lower him into the water I kept my mind focused on holding firmly onto his arms and upper body. I did this not only because I wanted him to feel secure, but also because I knew he just wanted to get it over with. If I were to take charge, holding strongly onto him, I could physically control the situation and get him into the water. In fact, that was the discussion we’d had the night before. I had his permission to physically take control and do whatever it took to get him submerged.

Alas! I successfully got his upper body under the water, but his lower half, especially that stiff leg, popped up as soon as I started to lower him. The result was me holding onto him as he went almost completely upside down. It was all I could do to hold onto him and get him back onto his feet.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” He was starting to breathe heavily.

“Yes, you can. Kenworth, we knew it was going to be difficult, but it will be worth it.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“All you have to do is relax and I’ll get us through this.”

Kenworth nodded as we stood silently, waiting for his mind to settle, doing our best to ignore the presence of so many onlookers. We did our best to focus on the solemnity of the true meaning of baptism.

On our third try, I focused on his legs as well as his upper body. I positioned myself slightly in front of him this time so that his legs would kick up into mine instead of flipping up out of the water. I’d forgotten one very important thing, though, and as I began to lower him into the water—BAM!

In all the ruckus of the previous two attempts, I hadn’t noticed that we had migrated too close to the wall of the baptismal font. We didn’t even make it close to submersion that time, and with a near concussion, Kenworth panicked even worse than before, grabbing onto me like his life depended on it.

“No. No. No. I can’t do this.” He started to make his way to the steps of the baptismal font. “I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Kenworth.”

He looked at me, already knowing what I was about to say.

“Kenworth, I’m not going to make you do this. This is your choice. But I promise you it will work this time if you let me.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Kenworth paused, studying my eyes. “One more try. That’s it. Just one more. If it doesn’t work, that’s it.”

Now the pressure was on. I’d made a promise and I wasn’t about to break it.

Holding onto his right wrist with my left, and after saying the short prayer, although I would normally place my right hand onto his back to lower him in, I knew I needed to wrap my right arm around his torso in order for this to work. Plus, in order to keep his legs from flipping upside down again, I stood on top of his right foot (his stiff crippled leg) with my left foot. When baptizing someone, my arms and legs were usually the only things to get wet, but because of my awkward positioning, I went into the water all the way up to my nose as I submerged him.

Success.

It was done.

As soon as Kenworth came up out of the water, his fears were washed away and he wrapped his arms around me, this time out of gratitude rather than fear. “Gracias. Gracias. I didn’t think I could do it.”

“I knew you could.”

It’s hard to remember the details of most of the baptisms throughout my mission, but Kenworth’s has always stuck with me—not only because it was so difficult on him, and not only because it was so difficult for me to actually get him under the water, but because of how much he appreciated the process. The harder the road, the more appreciated the reward. True story.

The number THREE is an important number in baseball. It’s what lets you know whether or not you’ve succeeded or failed.

While batting, if you make three small mistakes (like watching a good pitch go by), then you strike out. If you make one big mistake, like popping the ball up in the air for someone to catch, then your turn at home plate is done. Go back to the dugout, stick out your bottom lip and pout, because your turn is over. You’re out. You get no more chances until the next time around.

And once you’ve gotten three outs, it’s time for you to let someone else take a turn. The other guys get a chance to hit to see if they can do better than you.

That’s what was on my mind when I stepped up to the plate in Anaheim. I would have three chances to get it right—three chances to succeed before letting someone else give it a shot.

No no no, I wasn’t literally stepping up to the plate. I didn’t have a bat in my hands. What I mean is that I was putting myself in charge of arranging a trip to Anaheim to see a professional baseball game.

I called friends, bought the tickets, and thought I had everything planned to perfection.

“Hey Ryan, we’re piling into the car right now and heading your way. We should get to Vegas at about 10PM.”

Ryan and I both worked for the same company for a number of years—a company that assisted individuals with special needs. He moved to Las Vegas to start his own company doing the same type of thing.

“What do you mean? You’re coming here to Las Vegas?” Ryan’s voice echoes a mix of confusion and concern.

“Of course we’re going there. That’s how we get to Anaheim—through Las Vegas.”

“Uh…”

“Did you forget? You said you wanted to go with us to L.A. to see the game.”

“Yeah, but that was, like, three weeks ago. I never heard from you again so I just figured the trip was off.”

“All right. I shoulda called. But you’re still going, right?”

“Can’t.”

“Why?”

Ryan went silent.

“You got a girl coming over or something?”

“Yeah.”

“So what’s that mean for us? The rest of us were planning to sleep on your floor.”

“Um. Well, you can still come crash at my place, I guess. We’ll figure something out.”

I hung up the phone assuming we were in for an awkward night—a group of guys trying to stay out of the way while Ryan entertained a lady friend. But just before we pulled into The City That Never Sleeps, my phone rang again.

“Russ, I got a proposition for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, one of the perks of owning my own business is that I control the checkbook. You’ve got that extra ticket to the game, and I’ve got this guy in my program named Bryan who would love to go. If you take him with you tomorrow I’ll get you guys a hotel room for tonight.”

“What’s Bryan like? Easy or hard?”

“Easy. Super easy. Just keep reminding him to use the bathroom and you won’t have any problems.”

“Deal!”

I shouldn’t have bought Ryan a ticket without being absolutely positive he was planning to go. Small mistake. Strike one. I should have had a backup plan in case we couldn’t crash at Ryan’s place. Another small mistake. Strike two.

I may have done a poor job planning that part of the trip, but at least the game was fantastic. It’s always nice to watch my Oakland Athletics beat up on the Anaheim Angels. All I had to do in order to keep from striking out was to get everybody back home without incident.

I dropped Bryan off at his place and we started heading back.

“Uh, Russ?” Tim said from the back seat.

“What’s up?”

“Did you remember to ask Bryan whether or not he needed to use the bathroom?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“When was the last time you asked him?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Did he go?”

“No. Said he didn’t need to.”

“Well, you should have insisted.”

“Why?”

“Your back seat is now a swimming pool.”

My head spun around, but night had fallen and I couldn’t see anything in the dark.

“Oh man. Did you stick your hand in it?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Because I stuck my face in it. I wanted to lay down.”

So much for making it the rest of the drive without incident. Strike three.

Still, having strike three gave me only one out. I could always plan another trip, which was destined to be more successful.

Before the second trip I called Ryan more than once to make sure he was planning to go. I also made sure we could sleep on his floor. Success.

We made it all the way to the stadium in Anaheim without incident. Things were looking good—until I went to the box office to buy the tickets.

“What’s the matter?” Ryan asked.

“Sold out.”

“You said we wouldn’t have trouble getting tickets if we showed up early enough to the stadium.”

“I know what I said, but I didn’t plan on tonight being mormon night.”

“Mormon night? What’s that?”

“I guess all mormons were able to get discounted tickets and they sold out.”

“Isn’t that a little—“

“Yeah, I know. A group of mormon guys can’t get tickets to the game because it’s mormon night.”

“So, what do we do?”

We had just one option. I had one strike against me for not buying my tickets in advance, but I could still set it right. All I needed to do was find a scalper, which didn’t take very long.

“Got some nice field level tickets,” Mr. Scalper said. “Third base side. Just five rows from the field.”

“How much?”

“Forty-five dollars.”

“Got anything cheaper?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. I guess we’ll take four of them.”

We all coughed up forty-five dollars apiece, pocketed our tickets, and headed back toward the stadium.

I was, indeed, successful at getting all of us into the stadium, but that was as far as we got before I realized what had just happened. The tickets Mr. Scalper handed me were not the same tickets he had shown me. He had switched them on us while we were fidgeting around for our money.

“Well, Russ. Those were the most expensive top-row of the upper deck seats I’ve ever paid for,” Ryan said.

That was it for that trip. Failing to buy tickets in advance on mormon night was forgivable, but paying seven times more than what the upper deck tickets were worth was an automatic out.

But that was only my second out. I was determined to give it another shot. I was focused on getting it right this time because if I failed again, that would mean that I had three outs and I would have to let someone else take a turn.

I called Ryan beforehand. I lined up a place to stay. I even bought our tickets a month in advance. Everything was going to go perfectly as planned. I was sure of that.

“Sorry, I can’t let you in,” the lady at the stadium gate said.

“Why?”                                                                                                                              

“Because these tickets are for tomorrow’s game. These tickets are for the Sunday game, not for today.”

I couldn’t believe it. Dumb dumb dumb. Out again. What was it about Anaheim that scrambled my brain? I just couldn’t get it right. We were able to buy some tickets from the box office, but still—what a buffoon!

There was only one thing I could do the next time I went to Anaheim for a game—let someone else have a turn. I let my friend, Dusten, make the plans. His idea of a good time was to wear Pittsburg Pirates jerseys and root for the Pirates the whole game, even though the Indians and the Angels were the two teams on the field. That’s exactly what we did—rooted for the Pirates, blurting out Pirate chants and booing both teams on the field. That’s what I get for failing every time I put myself in charge. True story.

“You’d better have a good reason for missing the softball game,” Justin said, half joking and half frustrated. “We were short a player.”

“I was staring down the barrel of a .40 caliber handgun. Is that a good enough reason?”

We stood in the hallway just outside his office as he scanned my face, wondering if I was joking. “You’re gonna have to give me a little more information than that. Who had a gun in your face?”

“It was his fault.” I pointed a thumb back at the familiar door—the door to the time-out room. Justin knew the time-out room well. Not only did we both work for the same company, taking care of people with special needs, but he was the one who hired me onto the company’s emergency crisis team. Whenever someone in the program was acting out of control and violent, the company’s crisis phone was called. Being on the crisis team usually meant physically restraining the angry individual and often bringing them to the office to have some cooling down time in the time-out room.

Justin peeked over my shoulder at the closed door to the time-out room. “Who’s in there?”

“Gary.”

“You mean to tell me Gary had a gun?”

“No, not Gary. The cops had guns.”

“The cops came? Okay, man. You’re gonna have to start at the beginning.”

“I was actually in my softball uniform driving to the softball game when my pager went off. So I went back to the office, got the company car and the leather transportation restraints, then went to Gary’s.”

“He wasn’t all greased up this time, was he?”

“Greased up?”

Laughing, Justin rubbed his arms like he was spreading lotion on his skin. “Last time the crisis staff went to pick him up he locked himself in the bathroom. He blocked the door for about ten minutes, then he comes barging out of the bathroom completely dripping with shampoo from head to toe and yelled ‘Catch me if you can!’ He ran all around his apartment punching people and slipping out of everyone’s grip like a greased pig.”

“Ha ha. No. That doesn’t surprise me. This was just a regular Gary-type wrestling match.”

“You mean fingernails and teeth?”

“Exactly. And it lasted for about forty-five minutes. Finally, after him fighting for so long and making so much noise that his whole apartment complex was taking an interest, we decided it was time to get going. We put him in the leather traveling restraints and tried to walk him toward the car.”

“There wasn’t much else you could do. He’d carry on like that for hours if you let him.”

“Yeah. The problem was that he wouldn’t walk. His regular day shift staff and I ended up having to carry him to the car. Once we got near the car, he suddenly stopped resisting.”

“Uh oh.”

“Uh oh is right. I knew he was up to something, but I didn’t know what. I sat him in the back seat, put my forearm on his chest so he couldn’t head butt me while I tried to buckle his seatbelt.”

Justin grinned a cheesy grin, imitating Gary. “And he just looked at you like this, didn’t he?”

“Yup. You know that look. Suddenly, right before I got the belt buckled, his eyes widen and he pulls both hands out from behind his back and holds them up in front of him.”

“Those restraints are no good for someone as clever as him. He can slip out anytime he wants.”

I shook my head. “I know. I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming.”

“How did you get him back in the restraints while in the back seat of a car?”

“I didn’t. Right after he showed me his hands, he tried to make a break for it. I pounced on him before he could get out. The last thing I needed was to take our crazy situation out to the streets for the whole town to see. We wrestled in the back seat for about ten minutes before we heard the sirens.”

“Okay. So that explains the guns. Did they handcuff you and all that?”

“They yelled for us to get out of the car, then down on our knees with our hands on top of our heads—all that. They wouldn’t let me even try to explain, but right before they handcuffed me, one of the cops saw the company logo on my softball jersey and realized what was going on.”

“And Gary loved every second of it, didn’t he? I bet he loved the attention.”

“Not at all. They still cuffed him and left him kneeling in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes. We finally found the one thing that intimidates Gary—the possibility of being shot.”

“Yeah, but I doubt the state of Utah would go for the crisis team packing heat.”

I laughed as I recalled what the officer said to me. “Whoever called the cops said told the dispatcher that two guys had hogtied someone and were trying to stuff him in the trunk of a car. That’s why they came with guns drawn.”

“Nice. So has he been calm ever since then?”

I raised one eyebrow and let Justin answer his own question.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” Justin laughed.

I took a break from our conversation long enough to peek into the peephole of the time-out room, then turned back to Justin after I saw that everything was okay. “Actually, he did better than usual. No more fingernails or fists, anyway. At one point, though, I slipped quietly into the bathroom. Then about ten minutes later he walked out of the time-out room and handed me his empty pill tray.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, his staff had sent his tray full of a week’s worth of medications with me when we came to the office and when I wasn’t looking, he snatched it.”

“Did he swallow them all? A whole week’s worth?”

“Gary wouldn’t say. I kept asking him and asking him, telling him I needed to know because he could get really sick or die of an overdose if he’d taken that many pills, but he wouldn’t say anything.”

“The first time in Gary’s life he had ever been quiet.”

“Exactly. He just stood there with that grin on his face. Finally, I grabbed the leather restraints and said I was going to have to put him back in them, drive him to the E.R., and get his stomach pumped.”

“I bet that taught him a lesson. He’s never going to want to do that again.”

“No. That’s just it. He was totally going to let me take him all the way to the hospital and he seemed like he was going to go through with it. The whole thing. All just to get a little more attention. But after I got him in the restraints and we started to walk toward the front door I heard the pills sloshing around in his sock.”

“In his sock?”

“Yeah. I could hear the pills in his sock as he walked.”

Justin’s smile evolved into an uncontrollable laugh. “That’s a new one. I bet you’ll never put that pill tray down again as long as you work with him.”

“I know. Every shift with him… he never ceases to surprise me. You just can’t plan for someone like Gary.”

True story.

“How did you rip your pants, Russell?” Mom asked.

“Barbed wire fence.”

“Were you climbing it?”

“No. Just didn’t see it.”

Please. Please. Please. Don’t ask me any more questions. I can’t lie to my mother. Lucky for me, she didn’t. What I had told her was absolutely true. I ripped a three inch chunk out of my jeans because I ran into a barbed wire fence that I didn’t see. That wasn’t anything out of the ordinary since Fallon, Nevada had many more barbed wire fences than people.

Perhaps I should begin this story a week earlier, a few days before my sixteenth birthday when I came home from school to find blood all over our porch.

“What on earth happened?” I asked.

“The dogs got out of the fence and the guy who lives over there across the ditch, the one with the cows, he shot them,” Mom said.

“Both of them? Curly and Daisy both?”

“I think so. Daisy came back, and that’s her blood all over the porch. Curly didn’t come back.”

“Well, I’m gonna go find him.”

Curly was what my dad used to call a “Heinz 57,” which was his way of saying he was a mix of just about every breed of dog possible. He was just a regular little grey curly-haired mutt—as harmless as could be. Who could ever want to shoot him?

Mom had told us that our friendly neighbor, Jess, had heard the shotgun blasts and came outside to see what the matter was. And after knocking on Jess’ door, he told my brother, Clark, and me that the two dogs were running around teasing Mr. Jerkface’s cows. Jess saw Mr. Jerkface walking back to his house with a shotgun under his arm.

Clark and I jumped the barbed wire fence into Mr. Jerkface’s pasture (No, that’s not when I ripped my pants).

“What if he sees us out here on his property?” I asked as we waded through the tall alfalfa.

“I hope he does. I hope he comes out here because I’d love to smash his face in,” Clark said.

We looked and looked, combing every inch of his property, but Curly was nowhere to be found. And Mr. Jerkface never emerged from his farmhouse.

A few days went by and we knew Curly was gone for good. After those few days, though, was my sixteenth birthday party. My siblings and I didn’t get to have sleepover parties very often, but turning sixteen was one of those rare opportunities when we could, so I invited about ten of my bestest guy buddies over for an all-nighter. And once midnight came around, there was one thing on our agenda—something that involved a lot of eggs.

“What if he sees us egging his house?” Gota asked.

“Then we hit him with an egg too,” Clark said. “What’s he gonna do? Call the cops? We’ll be gone long before he knew what hit him and he doesn’t even know who we are.”

“Does he have any dogs?” Tim asked.

“Good point,” I said. “We should bring a bat with us just in case he has some big dogs.”

“He does,” Clark said. “I saw them the other day. I’ll get the bat.”

With ten boys, all of whom had played plenty of baseball, and all of whom were armed with at least two eggs apiece, we were able to cover his house pretty well.

“Run!” Daren said once the deed was done. “In case he heard us and called the cops.”

And run we did. A speedy getaway was paramount to the success of our mission—just in case he’d heard us—just in case he’d decided we were also shotgun worthy.

As I ran, though, I saw Gota just lying on the ground. Everyone else was moving as fast as they could, but he was just lying there, not moving a muscle.

“Get up, Gota!” I yelled as I ran, approaching him quickly. But just as I did, my feet suddenly were no longer touching the ground. In the dark, the large hole filled with tumbleweed looked like a flat, solid surface. And my legs still running, I fell face first into the pit of tumbleweed with him. I quickly realized why he wasn’t moving. Any movement at all was like hundreds of needles pricking me from every angle. Tumble weed may be a fun visual when it tumbles across the desert highway, but it aint not no none fun to tumble into a pit filled with them.

“Help! Someone help!”

It wasn’t easy to get us out of there. Since Gota and I had been running, we had fallen in quite a long ways from where the hole began, and a few people had to link arms in order to pull us out.

We jumped back over the barbed wire fence (that’s not where I ripped my jeans either), and we were homeward bound.

We were ten boys out in the dark of midnight hyped up on adrenaline and mischievous energy. We couldn’t just go home now, could we?

“Why don’t we go visit Sam?” Tim asked.

“He’s probably asleep,” I said.

“So?” Tim said.

“So, his mom would kill us if we woke them up in the night just to say hi,” I said.

“We’ll just knock on his bedroom window,” Tim said.

And with that, we decided to go visit our good buddy down the road. We had finished with the only thing on our agenda that would really get us into trouble… or so we thought.

There’s nothing illegal about visiting a friend late at night. There’s also nothing illegal about getting a group of boys together to go for a midnight stroll. In our minds, though, we still had that guilty feeling that accompanies mischief. So, even though we were about a mile and a half away from Mr. Jerkface’s farm, and there was no real reason for us think anybody was chasing us, when we saw headlights in the distance coming toward us we panicked.

“Run!”

“Hide!”

Like cockroaches reacting to light, we scattered in every direction. But where does someone hide out in the desert? A few boys were able to hide behind sagebrush, but not everyone could. I saw a large rotted out cottonwood stump by the side of the road. That’s perfect! I ran full speed, and that’s when I ripped my pants. The lonely desert road didn’t have any street lights, and the light from the moon failed me. I ran full speed right into the barbed wire fence strung out in front of the log.

The fence had slowed me down, but it was only about chest high and I was able to jump over it to get nestled into my hiding place. Success! We’re all in place. All we’ve gotta do is wait for this guy to drive past and we’re clear.

As the car approached, it slowed down. It began to pull into the driveway of the house we had been walking past when we split up to hide. As the car began to pull into the driveway, it stopped. At a forty-five degree angle in the driveway, the car had slammed on the brakes, fixing its headlights on the van parked in that same driveway—a van that had a teenager underneath it. There they sat for at least a full minute—one of the longest minutes of my life. It was Clark, my brother. Realizing he had been discovered, and realizing he had nowhere to go, he didn’t move a muscle. Like a deer out on the highway, he was frozen in the headlights. Nobody—not the driver, and not any of us boys, moved a muscle.

Clark finally made the first move. He slipped out from under the van and without turning back to look at the car, which still hadn’t moved an inch, Clark continued walking down the dirt road toward Sam’s house. As if coming home to find a teenager underneath the van in his driveway wasn’t enough, when Clark emerged he was still holding that old beat up baseball bat in his right hand. And if that wasn’t scary enough, Clark’s emergence began the chain reaction of adolescents slowly emerging one-by-one from a variety of hiding spots.

We had all continued to walk at a normal walking pace, as if acting nonchalantly would somehow make our presence less noticeable. Once the driver of the car had quickly parked his car and ran into his house, there was only one thing left to do.

“Screw this! I’m going home!”

And we ran! We had about a mile of desert to cover before the inevitable police officer showed up, and every one of us covered that distance in about five minutes. We made it.

Even though Mom wondered what happened to all the eggs that were in the fridge, and even though she asked about the rip in my jeans, she never asked the right question. And as Paul Harvey would have said, “Now, Mom. You have the rest of the story.” True story.

“Oh, come on. When are we going to get a chance like this again?” Tim said. “We’re both still single. Who knows—maybe next year one of us will be married or something and we won’t be able to go.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d have to skip class.”

“So skip class! It’s just one day. Have one of your friends get the homework assignment for you or something.”

Tim had a good point. When was I going to have opportunity again to jump on a plane, fly out to Oakland to watch my team in a playoff game, then fly back twenty-four hours later. It was exactly the kind of thing that a married man would have trouble convincing his wife of.

I’d go.

It wasn’t until that day in the Bay Area of California—that very day, that I finally realized that for a couple of minutes I was (trumpet sounds—br… br br brrrrrr) the most interesting person in the world. Perhaps I suffer from a serious case of megalomania, but yes—the most interesting person in the world.

Tim and I had flown into the bay area early that morning, and since we had quite a bit of time before the Oakland A’s game would start, we took the BART train to San Francisco to watch the Giants take on the Marlins.

“Let’s go throw at the radar gun,” Tim said.

“No, I wanna go try to catch a ball before batting practice is over.”

“There’s plenty of time for that. Besides, you’ll never get a ball with 20,000 people around you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I catch batting practice balls all the time.”

“Come on. See that sign? It says that the record for the day is only 81 miles per hour. You can beat that.”

I did. I took a couple throws and I was pretty proud of being able to throw 83 mph without a chance to warm up on a chilly October morning. But Superman arm or not, that wasn’t what told me I was— (br… br br brrrr) the most interesting person in the world.

Out in right center field I found a good place to stand. I had the watchful eyes of an eagle. Watching the batter was important, but peripheral vision was equally essential. Oftentimes a professional ball player in the outfield would catch a batting practice ball, then fling it up into the crowd.

That’s when it happened. My eyes were fixed on the batter, but in my periphery I saw that familiar white orb floating my way. It was flying right at me. In a crowd of thousands and thousands of people, it was coming right at ME!! The prize was mine for the taking, so I reached out and snatched at it.

Okay, so I admit it. I may be able to throw an 83 mph fastball without warming up, but catching a ball without a mitt proved to be too difficult. The only thing I managed to do was knock the ball over my head and deep into the mass of baseball fans. Trying to retrieve a loose baseball from a pride of baseball fans is like trying to steal a gazelle from a lion. Just let it go. Forget about it.

“Hey moron!” Only, the word “moron” wasn’t his choice of words. I looked down and saw him, Mr. Josh Beckett, standing just below me on the grass in his Marlins uniform. Out of thousands and thousands and thousands of people at the ballpark that day, he chose to talk to me. I had always considered myself insignificant in a crowd so large, but he wanted to talk to me. Little ol’ me!

We had a nice conversation—just the two of us—lasted about a minute or so. He had so much to tell me, and I guess there just wasn’t a whole lot of time for extra syllables, so he limited everything to just four letter words. He told me all about how he was throwing that ball to the ten year old boy to my left, but that I had managed to knock it out of the air.

Even though Mr. Beckett and I were enjoying our conversation, he turned on his heel and walked away. He came back, though. As if being singled out of a crowd that size wasn’t enough to make a boy feel special, Mr. Beckett came back to talk to me some more. He had a new ball in his hand. I’m sure he meant to, but he forgot to say the word “please” when he asked me not to knock this ball out of the air when he threw it to the young lad. I didn’t. And just when I thought he was done with our conversation, he started over again… all the way from the beginning, repeating everything he had already said. Of course, that wasn’t saying a whole lot since he was only using a few words to begin with, most of which started with the letter F.

And that’s when I knew—I was special. I was special enough to command the undivided attention of the guy who would be the Most Valuable Player of the World Series just two weeks after that. No, not the “Second Most Valuable Player”—and no, not “The Series of Just Part of the World.” He was the most valuable person in the world, and since he found me so interesting that he couldn’t stop talking to me, it stands to reason that I was the most interesting person in the whole wide world that day. True story.

“We’re human. We make mistakes,” I said. “Only by accepting Jesus as our savior and relying on Him can we reach our true potential. We will always come up short on our pathway without Him, but with Him and only through His grace can we make it all the way to where we need to be.”

I was giving a lesson in church, teaching a class of teenagers. As I usually do, I had given my lesson a good deal of thought. I put extra focus on the concept of “we can only do so much without grace” because we need Christ’s help, and “only through prayer.”

Do I practice what I preach, though? I guess that’s the real question. Just two days after giving that lesson I realized I need to heed my own advice.

“Have you said a prayer yet?” my wife asked.

“No.”

“Well, let’s do it.”

“You do it. I’m too mad right now.”

I was in my dental lab late and night making a gold crown (that’s what I do when I’m not writing). At the very end of a long fifteen hour day, I was finishing the last steps on a gold crown. After polishing it, I took it to the steam cleaner and sprayed it off to clean it. As I shot hot pressured steam at it, the tooth jumped out of my hands and disappeared.

This happens to me once a week or so, but I am usually able to find it within a minute. Not that day, though. That sucker was gone gone gone. I lay down flat on the floor to get a good horizontal view of the carpet. Nothing. I started moving things around, but the floors in the lab were so dirty that I decided it best to get out the vacuum. Nothing.

I kept my cool during the first half hour, but still found nothing. Spraying off that gold crown was the last thing I needed to do before I could call it a day and go to bed. It was due for an early morning delivery, so finding it couldn’t wait until morning. My frustration grew during the next half hour, scanning every inch of that room, but I still found nothing.

It wasn’t the first time I had searched for an hour for something. I once made my mother a necklace pendant out of silver which disappeared while steaming it off, and I never did find that one even after two hours of searching. I couldn’t give up search on this one, though, partly because it was due first thing in the morning, but also because it was made of about $125 worth of gold. I wasn’t about to give up, cut my losses, and start over. I continued looking and looking and looking in every crevice and corner of my dental lab. Nothing.

Finally, my wife came in and saved the day.

Standing in the doorway of the lab in her volleyball outfit, having just returned from her late night game, she uttered those words, “Have you said a prayer yet?”

“No.”

“Well, let’s do it.”

“You do it. I’m too mad right now.”

“When you don’t feel like praying, that’s when you most need to…” she stopped talking, seeing the look I was giving her, then said a little prayer with me to help us find it.

I had been searching for an hour and a half when we said amen, and within only five minutes of search, a funny thought suddenly popped into my head. I wonder if…

About five or six feet away from where I had been standing when I steam blasted the gold crown was my snowboarding jacket. It was draped over a chair, ready to be packed up with all my other snow equipment to be stuffed into storage now that the ski season was over. I walked over to the jacket and reached my hand into the side pocket.

“I don’t believe it,” I said, pointing at the pocket of my ski coat. “It was in there.”

Lesson learned. True story.

I woke up, got ready, and was sitting in my Sociology 111 class before I realized today was a holiday. It was easy to forget about Valentine’s Day because I had no reason to look forward to it. It wasn’t until my professor started the class with those words that started my mind reeling--

“Happy Single Awareness Day, everyone.”

It was true. From the moment those phonemes sounded from her vocal chords, I began a day that informed me over and over again just how single, and how lonely, I was.

It wasn’t my first Valentine’s Day without a girlfriend. I’d had many before and it had never really bothered me before. It was, however, the first Valentine’s Day after my divorce, which bothered me a lot.

There had been no slamming doors before she left, nor yelling. We didn’t argue or fight. In fact, the only thing we ever really disagreed upon was whether or not leaving would help her to sort out her depression. After just two months of being married that was exactly what she did, packing up the little blue Mazda Protégé and heading to Oregon where her dad lived. And there I was, standing in the doorway of our college apartment scratching my head, wondering what went wrong and what I could have done differently.

She didn’t come back. Not to me, anyway. Months later, and after a judge signed some papers that signified an end, she came back to town so she could finish her schooling.

Fast forward six weeks after school started back up again, and there I was in Sociology 111 celebrating Single Awareness Day. I had never in my life found it so difficult to concentrate as that day. No amount of Ritalin or Adderall could have kept my mind on track during all of my classes. I thought only about one thing. One person. Her.

With thirty thousand other college students swarming the sidewalks around me I still felt very much alone. And even though she was the one who brought so much confusion and sadness to that point in my life, she was the only one I wanted to see that day. What we had together had been ripped right out of my hands. I had felt helpless. I felt like I had no say in what happened to me. I was confused and lost.

I still cared about her and debated over and over all day whether or not to find a way to wish her a happy Valentine’s. Surely she would be feeling just as lonely as I was. That debate within me would surface over and over throughout the entire day. I still cared. Maybe I’d send her flowers. I could do it anonymously. 

I thought all day about the one thing I wanted most—not to get back together, but just to talk to her and see her again. Maybe I’d bump into her on campus.

Then, as I took my seat in my last class of the day, I began reading the campus newspaper someone had left on my desk. If I thought the news would be a distraction from the girl who had taken over my thoughts, I was sorely mistaken.

She had recently started as a photographer for the campus paper, chasing the desire she’d always had to have one of her photos make the front page. And there it was. She had done it, her name printed right under the large picture on the front page.

The cognitive dissonance of whether or not to send flowers was nothing compared to the turmoil about whether or not to send her a congratulations about her photo. I did own a cell phone, but back then nobody used them for sending text messages. I did, however, have a pager with a tiny keypad that served that very function. It also provided me a simple way to send a message to her email box. I sat in class for an hour, glancing back and forth between the front page newspaper photo and the pager sitting on my desk, completely tuning out every word from my professor. Not long before the bell rang, I typed a quick congratulations, hesitated, then pressed send.

It was done. Sent. I couldn’t take it back now. I was officially torturing myself by reconnecting with the one person I wanted most to see, but probably should leave alone.

After all my classes were finished, I spent the evening with my best friends to try to keep my mind off of things. As the day was drawing to a close, and although I had stopped wondering whether she would send me a message in return, my pager sounded off.

A few more messages passed between her email account and my pager before I found myself on her doorstep.

“I needed to talk to someone and you’re the only one who probably has any idea what today was like for me,” she said.

We talked. We talked and talked and talked. We talked throughout the entire night until the sun came up.

This story may seem like it’s full of nothing but loneliness and suffering, but as I reminisce on it, I smile. That day, Single Awareness Day, was one of the most important days of my entire life. Getting to really talk to her again opened the doors between us to be able to talk about all the things she wouldn’t tell me before—before she packed up the car and left so many months earlier. Over the next few weeks we talked and talked more about all the things I had been trying but failing to understand.

Most importantly, that day marked the start of my new life. Up until the night of the 14th of February, I felt like I was a sheet of paper blowing whichever direction the wind insisted I go. I finally started to understand what had just happened to me, and I was finally starting to feel like I could make my own decisions again.

That is the story behind my song, The 14th. Originally, the song was entitled Happy SAD (get it, SAD=Single Awareness Day), but it’s not a sad story to me. It’s a story of new beginnings. It’s a story of taking my life back. A story of becoming me again, and that’s not at all a sad thing. This song brings me a lot of inner peace to sing it with my brothers.

Blind
Blind to the fact that today is today, in a way blind to a lot things
One little thing I do see changes my whole day
And for an hour I debate to say what I’ll say
Congratulations on a picture-perfect picture perfect for the paper
Simple words
Simple words that will spark a conversation for the whole night
I still choose to skip on the flowers,
But that doesn’t help clear my mind much more, for I still think about a time once before
But even more I think about a story manufactured in my mind
I still choose to skip on the flowers, but fantasy can still become reality in a matter of hours
Bittersweet         
A bittersweet taste on my mouth I’ve tasted before
A taste more familiar than an imagination can imagine
Imagine that
And imagine me saying no

When I wrote this song, my goal was to get as far away from a “pop” song as I could. I didn’t want anything catchy or bubbly. I purposefully wrote the music in a “drag-it-out” fashion, taking my time to get from point A to point B musically to create a feeling of being deep in thought.

When I wrote these lyrics, as soon as I lifted my pen from the paper I put a guitar into my hands. In my more than twenty years of playing guitar I’ve never felt so in tune with a song as it I wrote it. It was almost like I wasn’t even the one writing it—as if the song came out on its own and all I did was watch it unfold. I knew I had to plug in a microphone and in less than two hours I had written and recorded the lyrics, guitar, and both vocal parts of the entire song. True story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9kF9XsG3eo

“Have you kissed Angie yet?” Mark asked.

We’d been college roommates for about three months now and were partners in crime to tackle the dating world. We gave each other advice whether it was needed or even wanted.

“Not yet.”

“What are ya waiting for?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you must be waiting for something. What is it?”

I really wasn’t waiting for anything, but I hadn’t really wanted to tell him the truth—the truth about what happened when I did try to kiss her.

“Okay, fine. I tried to kiss her.”

“You tried? What does that mean you tried? Did you miss?”

“Shut up. I mean that she turned her head.”

“Ouch!”

“Exactly.”

“You know what you need? You need to go out with someone else. If it works out with Angie later on, great. If not, at least you’re not just hanging out doing nothing. What are you doing Friday?”

“I was planning to just go over to Angie’s.”

“Not anymore you’re not. Who else do you want ask out?”

“I don’t have anybody in mind.”

“Okay then. Go into your first class tomorrow morning and sit next to the prettiest girl in the room. Ask her out.”

I’d never done anything that brave. Sure, I’d asked out pretty girls before, but never someone I didn’t know. “Are you serious?”

“Why not?”

“Okay, okay. I’ll do it if you do it too.”

It was a deal. I was going to ask out a total stranger and he was going to do the same. We’d go to dinner and a movie—nothing special. It was only meant to be a good chance to flirt with someone new.

I showed up early to my music theory class, but waited in the hall, watching scanning every girl as she entered the room. That’s when I noticed her for the first time and that’s when I finally went in, strategically placing my nervous self in the open seat to her right.

“So, uh… what instrument do you play?” I asked. It was a normal enough question—one  that started a lot of conversations in Music Theory 101.

“Flute. How about you?”

“Guitar.”

“Really? Guitar? Anything else?”

“I play around with other stuff, I guess. But yeah. Mostly just guitar. Is that okay?”

“Course it is. It’s just that I don’t meet many music majors whose instrument is the guitar.”

“Oh, I’m not a music major. I’m just taking this class for fun.”

The guy sitting in front of me spun around. “Are you serious?”

“What?”

“You’re taking music theory for fun? You think this class is fun?”

I froze. I was uncomfortable enough without jerks butting in.

“Well, I think it’s cool,” she said. “I wish I loved theory. I think it’s hard.”

“I could help you study sometime if you’d like—if you’re ever having trouble with something in particular.”

“I think I’d like that. I’m Mandy, by the way.”

I was halfway there. She’d agreed to see me outside of class, even if it was just to study. The next words out of my mouth couldn’t be, “It’s a date. Can I pick you up Friday? Say, around seven?”  No. That wouldn’t work. Mark and I already agreed upon dinner and a movie, not chord progressions and key signatures.

Class started before I could muster up the courage to take our conversation up a notch, which left me stewing in my seat for nearly an hour. What was I going to say? What would she answer in return? If this blew up in my face I would have to sit on the other side of the room for the rest of the semester, which couldn’t be all bad because I wouldn’t have to sit next to Mr. Conversation-invader.

Finally, the bell rang. I watched her stuff her books into her bag. Still, no words came out of my mouth. She stood up and slipped her arms into her jacket.

“Well,” she said. “It was nice to meet you Ru—“

“Wanna go to a movie on Friday?” There! I said it. Even if she said no, I did my part. I asked someone besides Angie out. It was done. Relief flooded into me after I finally got the words to come out, but then I realized her answer was the second half of the story problem. Anxiety filled me again.

“What?”

“Uh… a movie? Want to go with me to a movie on Friday?”

“Umm.” She paused, thinking, obviously caught off guard. “Sure. I’ll go with you. What time?”

I got her phone number, address, and we set up a time. I did it! The hardest part was done! Now all I had to do was wait two days for Friday to come, then I’d go pick her up. Who knows—this may even turn into something.

Then there was Mark. Good ol’ reliable Mark. Always there when I needed some advice about dating.

“What do you mean you never asked anybody out?” I asked. “You said you were going to—“

“I know. I forgot.”

“So bring Yvonne.”

“Not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Just go without us.”

I tried and tried to convince him to find a quick date, but each girl I named was either unable or it was a bad idea.

When time came for me to pick Mandy up, Mark was still dateless.

“Does Mandy live here? Is she here?” I felt more than awkward.

“You must be Russ. She’s back in her room on the phone.”

“Should I just hang out for a minute? Or—“

“Um. I think she’s probably going to be a while. She said she’d call you when she was finished.”

It was the mid 1990’s back then, which meant I didn’t have a cell phone. Waiting for her call meant waiting back at my own apartment.

I waited.

She could have just said no if she didn’t want to go.

I waited.

It had been an hour and a half since I sheepishly walked away from her front door. How long was I supposed to wait? Was she ever going to call? Do I even want her to call anymore?

Eventually the phone rang and Mandy was on the other end. “I’m so sorry about that. Do you still want to go?”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. It would be good to take my mind off of things.”

I guess that was good enough for me. If I couldn’t be a Romeo, I could at least be a distraction—even if I didn’t know what I was distracting her from.”

I picked her up and we were on our way to the theater. And by “picked her up,” I mean that I walked to her place and we walked to the theater together in the twenty degree weather. I didn’t have a car my freshman year.

We were far too late for the time we had originally planned to see the movie, so we bought tickets for the next showing an hour later. Since our evening didn’t kick off until much later than we had anticipated, we had both eaten dinner before I came by the second time. Our dinner plans were gone.

We had a full hour to talk about the phone call she had just finished with her boyfriend back home in Arizona—or maybe I should say ex-boyfriend. Getting asked out by a random guitar playing musician was just the push she needed to break off her long distance relationship, and we had a full hour to talk about it. True story.

He couldn’t come to church because he didn’t have any nice pants to wear. That’s what Rodrigo said.

“It’s okay if you don’t have fancy slacks,” Elder Daniels said. “Just wear whatever you feel is nice. Lots of people wear jeans to church.”

Rodrigo shifted uncomfortably in his chair, pensive. “I’d feel uncomfortable being there in jeans. When I can save up enough money to buy some nice slacks, then I’ll come to church.”

I remember clearly my first Sunday in Guatemala. The guy next to me at church decided it was too hot so he took off his shirt. Belly hanging out, that’s how he spent the rest of the day. And the first time I baptized someone—she wore a bright yellow Corona Light t-shirt to her own baptismal service. Nobody besides me seemed to notice because nobody cared. Rodrigo cared about slacks, though. I seemed to really matter to him.

“I’ll lend you a pair until you can buy some for yourself,” I said.

A smile ran across his face. “Bien.”

Rodrigo was about my age, in his early twenties. I was a good six inches taller and forty pounds larger than him, but rolling up the bottoms and wearing a good belt could fix that. Plus, it made more sense to lend my pants than those of my companion because Elder Daniels had three inches and forty pounds on me.

I brought him a pair of pants later that day for him to wear on Sunday. Elder Daniels and I were excited for him to finally come to church, but alas, he still didn’t come.

When we went by his place to check up on him we were told he wasn’t there. When we came back later in the day, he wasn’t there again… and again and again and again.

“I’m beginning to think he told his family to always tell the gringos he’s never home,” Elder Daniels said.

“I don’t get it. I thought things were going so well.”

“I did too. Who knows?”

We stopped going out of our way to stop by his house, but as missionaries we spent fourteen hours out of the day on our feet, walking the streets of Guatemala city, so we often found ourselves walking past his house. Still, every day we got the same response until…

“Should we knock again or just give up?” I asked.

“It’s not just about him avoiding us. The dude stole your pants,” Elder Daniels said.

“You’re right. Ya never mess with a man’s pants.”

I made my way to Rodrigo’s front gate, but before I could knock we heard someone yell hello from down the street.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Elder Daniels asked.

The voice calling to us was from a girl we knew from church—a pretty girl. We hoped she would be willing to knock and ask for Rodrigo. She did.

As always, Rodrigo wasn’t the one to answer the door, but he was soon summoned.

“Well hello there,” he said, his eyebrows about to leap off his forehead. “What’s your name?”

He was leaning with one elbow against the door frame, striking his most sexy pose. Apparently she wasn’t impressed, because she simply pointed to the two white guys standing four feet away, smiled, turned her back, and walked away without saying a single word.

The elbow supporting him in the door frame dropped to his side as he stood straight up. “You didn’t have to do that. I would have answered the door.”

“Can I just have my pants back, please?”

“I don’t have them anymore.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Please, just give them back. We’re not going away until we get them.”

“They’re not here.”

“Okay. We’ll come back tomorrow and every day until we get them back.”

That’s what we did. It became a battle of who could be more stubborn—the two large gringos constantly stopping by or Señor Neverhome. Eventually we caught him alone with nobody else there to answer the door and send us away.

“Why do you guys keep coming by? I’m not going to go to church with you.”

“We figured that much out already. I just want my pants.”

“What pants?”

“Come on, just give me my pants back.”

“I don’t have them.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You guys are jerks, aren’t you?”

“I guess so.”

He looked me in the eye, studying me. He could see we weren’t going to go away. Finally, without saying anything, he turned and walked back into the house.

“Do you think he’s gonna…?” I began to ask, but when I turned to Elder Daniels, he was gone. Gone gone gone. I spun around, looking in every direction, but he was gone… just like my pants. That was odd. Missionary companions never leave one another’s side, not even for a minute. But that’s exactly what happened. Vanished.

“Here. Take ‘em.” I heard Rodrigo’s voice from behind me through his door. He flung the slacks through the door then slammed it shut. That was the last I ever heard from him.

I held my once beautiful slacks up to measure the damage. There was no hope for them. They were completely caked in mud with large holes in each knee at least four inches in diameter.

“Sorry about that.” Elder Daniels was walking toward me with a sheepish grin on his face.

“What do you make of this?” I held up the pants.

“My guess is he wore them playing soccer or something.”

“Why would he do that? Borrow my slacks just to play soccer in them?”

“Beats me. Maybe he was on his way to church when an emergency soccer game broke out.”

“So where did you go just now? I turned around and you were gone.”

“You only know the missionary Elder Daniels. Back before I came here… man, you think I’m a hothead now… whew. I had to leave because as soon as I saw that guy’s face poke out that door… I had to get outta here or I was going to punch a hole in his face.”

I could never wear the pants again, but that didn’t mean they needed to go in the garbage. A teenage boy I knew from the neighborhood made good use of them—as cutoffs, of course, and with a good belt. True story.

I remember clearly that Independence Day when my brother, Clark, got shot in the stomach by a misfiring Roman Candle. Blast after blast, the fireworks were shooting into the sky, dazzling everyone who looked on. Suddenly, unexpected to everyone, it backfired, shooting a white-hot fireball into Clark’s stomach. Dad freaked out, like any father would.  Clark freaked out too, like any five year old would.

That’s how my practical jokes go sometimes. Boom! Right back at me! Burned!

Like the time, just a couple of months ago, when  I hid the little laughter box under the sheets. My little girl, Hazel, had this baby doll that laughed when it was squeezed. One day she figured out how to remove the little plastic box inside that made it laugh, and she realized that when she squeezed the little white box, it laughed for fifteen seconds. She got all the laughs she always enjoyed, but now with something that fit conveniently in the palm of her hand- walking around the house, squeezing the little box and laughing along with it.

Naturally, being who I am and having a complete inability to help myself, when I stepped on the little white box she had left on the floor, a brilliant plan came immediately to mind. I would put it under our bed sheets, on my wife’s side of the bed, so that when she climbed into bed it would go off. It would be hilarity in its purest form, right?

The problem with my plan, though, was that I forgot about it by the time we went down for the night. And since she somehow didn’t lay on the little laughter box, it didn’t go off… until about three in the morning. It starts laughing, and our half-asleep consciousness thought it was Hazel in the next room laughing in the night. But she kept laughing and laughing and laughing until Jammie jumped out of bed to see what was going on in the kids’ bedroom. Making her way to the door, however, Jammie realized the baby laughter was coming from behind her… from our own bed. It wasn’t until about that time that I finally remembered my joke. We both got a good laugh about it, but the joke was on me because once I’m fully awakened, it takes me a long time to go back to sleep.

The ultimate backfire, or “epic fail” as teenagers say today, was back when I was eleven. I’d gotten out of bed on a typical morning, went to the bathroom, and before getting started on my day I noticed how my oldest brother, Bryan, was sleeping. He was on his left side, with his left arm sticking out, hanging over the bed. I had recently heard of a practical joke where, if you put someone’s hand in warm water while they’re sleeping, they’ll pee the bed. So, being who I am and having a complete inability to help myself, when I saw his arm outstretched like it was, as if he were begging me to try out this infamous joke, I hurried to the kitchen to fill a bowl with warm water.  It would be hilarity in its purest form, right?

The problem with my plan, though, was that the joke simply doesn’t work. I knelt there beside his bed, resisting the urge to laugh, holding the bowl steady, but nothing happened. The bad news was that there was no urinating taking place. The good news was that he didn’t wake up. So, being who I am and having a complete inability to help myself, plan B immediately came to mind. I had already punched my ticked on the prank train, and trains take a long time to stop, so even if I wanted to stop trying to prank him, the momentum in my mind pushed me forward. It just made sense that, since I was hoping to make him wet the bed, the next best thing would be to make him think he wet the bed. I would take the warm water in the bowl and pour it on him. It would be hilarity in its purest form, right?

The problem with my plan, though, was that I assumed the water wouldn’t wake him up and I’d be able to slip out of the room undetected. After all, the warm water on his hand didn’t wake him.

Oh man, the look on Bryan’s face! The millisecond I started to pour the water on his crotch he jumped up.

This is the point of the story where I have to nominate my big brother for the “Nicest Big Brother Ever” award because any, and I mean ANY, other big brother on planet earth would have pounded me into pulp at that point.

“What are you doing?”

I’m not sure if he was more confused or more angry.

I froze. I just stood there… and stood there… and stood there.

“Seriously, what are you doing?”

“Uh…”

And that was all I said, “uh.” How was I supposed to explain something like that? How do you explain to someone twice your size why you’re pouring water on his crotch while he sleeps? And that was the end of the story. I just turned and walked out the door. Nicest big brother ever. True Story.