Random But Fond Memories

Today while sitting at my desk, I started having all sorts of random memories. I started to tweet some of them, but then realized that twitter couldn't contain the detail and number of memories I was enjoying. So, if you read my blog (even thought I haven't posted in like...forever) hopefully you'll be someone that is a part of one of these memories. In no particular order:

1. Dry Lake Swimming Pool during the Summers. My mom finally started buying me a summer pass for this public pool. Needless to say, the Indian in my genes definately showed up those summers. I remember hearing songs like "Electric Avenue" and "Too Shy" while swimming and running around the pool. I also remember putting 50 cents in a drink machine to buy a can of Coke and winning a can that had a free "Coke Is It" T-shirt in it. Dry Lake Pool...I miss the days with you.

2. Mazzios Pizza. I remember going there after church on Sundays and playing Yei Ar Kung Fu while the parents talked..and talked...and talked...and talked. It was a pretty rare game in arcade form. Although, you can find it now on Xbox Live Arcade. As I got a little older, it became the hangout for me and my friends on the weekends. The movie theater was right behind it, so parents would drop us off for pizza and video games; then we could go to the movies (memory number 3) at Parkway Cinemas. As mentioned in my tweet today, I can still remember the smell of their nachos and the way things smelled from the arcade area. LOTS of memories. When I was old enough to drive I used to hang out there after closing with my friend that worked there. We'd play Mortal Combat and drink Mr. Pibb all night long. LOLOL. Boneheads; we would spend almost all of our tip money from delivering pizza on the games. NBA Jams was the other game we'd waste our brains and coins on.

3. Parkway Cinemas. I had a very vivid memory today of going to see Back to the Future with my Uncle Clyde and my sister Regina at Parkway. Cherry Coke was brand new at the time and you could get it from the snack counter at Parkway. What a classic movie! To this day, whenever I drink Cherry Coke I'm immediately transported back to that night. I also remember seeing Karate Kid 2 there.

4. Pirates Cove and the Theater in Kentucky where my Mammaw and Grandaddy lived. Me and my cousin Steve and My Dad and Uncle Ed would go and play games like Tempest, Galaga, Omega Race, Space Duel and Asteroids. What fun memories! I remember going to see The Empire Strikes Back at the theater one year. I had not seen Star Wars, but I distinctly remember Steve telling me before we went in the theater that we would be finding out that Darth Vader was Luke's father. LOL...talk about a spoiler. I also saw Uncle Buck at that theater with some other cousins and my friend Nick Kline.

5. The Barrel of Fun. My dad, me, and my sister Tiffany would visit The Barrell every so often. Another arcade, The Barrell was one of my favorite things to do with my dad. I remember seeing Dragon's Lair for the first time there. And afterwards, we would almost ALWAYS go to Orange Julius and have a hot dog (usually a pizza dog) and an orange or peach julius. What great times!

6. Playing baseball with my Mom. I remember like it was yesterday standing on the sidewalk in front of the duplex on 24 mile road. I was probably 3 or 4 years old. My mom pitched a plastic ball to me, I swung the short little fat green bat I had, and smacked the ball clear over her head. I remember playing with my cousins and sisters in the yard there. The corner of the duplex was first base. Something was put in the grass for second. The corner of the porch of the Farm House was third. And back home to the sidewalk. I miss you mom. I'm still swinging for the fence! Sometimes I strike out. But when the bat connects it's out of the park!

7. Grandaddy's 80th birthday. It was just..."Epic". As a kid, it seemed like there were 200 people there. All the old dudes stayed up all night watching the whole pig Barbecue in the pit they dug, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Us kids all enjoyed the pool at the hotel and breakfast at Grandma's Kitchen next door to the hotel. French toast. Yep, that's what I had for breakfast. What a great reunion of family and friends.

8. The Air Force Base Bowling Alley Grill. I remember mom and dad bowling fairly frequently at the Base Alley. And they had the ABSOLUTE best hamburgers and french fries. Nothing has ever matched up to the memory I have of their burger and fries combo.

9. Freedom Lanes. What a stinky place! It always smelled like an ash tray. I remember finding a 5 dollar bill on the floor and taking it to my parents. When my mom told me how many quarters were in a 5 dollar bill...I was blown away at how many video games I could play!!! Of course, then someone came around looking for their money. They did reward me with a couple of quarters though so I could play some video games.

10. I miss the smell of my baseball mitt, freshly oiled and broken in. I LOVED playing baseball as a kid. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to play for the Braves one day. Yea, that didn't happen. LOL. Coach McKinney was my first coach. He coached me for several years before they started splitting up all the kids.

Of course I could go on and on and on. These are just the thoughts that came to me today. There are so many fun times and "staples of life" from growing up that I'm sure I'll be posting soon.

If you read this, I hope you enjoy it. Otherwise, I'm glad I captured some of this today while it was fresh.

Obedience

Amazing...hiliarious...but powerful story for me this morning. Just a few minutes ago I was trying to talk to my wife to give her an update on my brother-in-law who is at the hospital right now. While I was trying to talk my son, Cooper, kept interrupting me to tell me something about his train, Percy. I finally paused from talking to Suzii in order to tell Cooper that he needed to be quiet and wait a minute. He looked at me and said, "But daddy, Percy's brakes aren't working!". I looked at him and said, "Well, I need you to put the brakes on your mouth for a minute while I talk to mommy. Do you understand?". He looked at me and very obediently said, "I'm understand". 5 seconds go by and I hear him say, "Ow!". I look up at him and he has Percy's wheels on his mouth. He literally, obediently, put Percy's brakes on his mouth. LOLOLOLOL.

Of course, Suzii and I busted out laughing. Then, I explained to him that I simply needed him to be quiet for a moment, which he did.

Then it hit me how blessed God is when we are obedient to what we believe He is telling us to do. I honestly think that even if we misunderstand what He's telling us, He's still blessed as a Father to see us attempt to follow through with what He instructs us to do. Sometimes it may seem silly what God is telling you to do. A tender heart towards Him should lead us to attempt it anyways. What's God telling you to do today? Give somebody something? Call someone and tell them you love them? Go to the mall and dance around like an idiot? Put Percy's brakes on your mouth?

Love y'all
Johnny

Mario Kart

You know you've been playing too much MarioKart on the Wii when you start doing the following in your REAL car in REAL traffic:

1. You start revving your engine at the last second before a light turns green in hopes of getting a power boost.

2. You start looking for Floating Question Mark boxes at intersections so you can blast the person in front of you out of the way.

3. You wish you had a banana peel to drop behind your car to make that person who's following right on your bumper spin out.

4. When you go over hills you flick your wrists out of habit thinking that you'll get a super jump and boost when you come down the other side.

5. In tight turns your thumb habitually presses down as if you'll engage a jump and slide move.

6. When you make it through a green light before the person in the next lane...you hear the MarioKart "whistle" sound in your head as if you just crossed the finish line.

7. The pre-race music plays in your head when you sit at a red light.

That's all I got for now. Anyone else have any?

Some Words

Lately I've been doing a lot of twittering and chatting online with facebook friends and family. And, as a fast typer...sometimes I'll miss a letter here or there while chatting but I'll quickly hit 'enter' before realizing that I missed a letter. So my mis-spelling shows up on their screen.

Now most of the time, people can tell what you were trying to say and it's no big deal. But there are SOME WORDS that just HAVE to be spelled correctly.

Take the word "shirt" for example. It doesn't matter what the context of your sentence...if you accidentally leave out one specific letter, it REALLY comes across either Gross, Insane, or just TMI. Think about these phrases:

• I just spilled something on my "shirt"
• I'm wearing my favorite "shirt"
• Somehow I got a hole in my "shirt"
• I put my "shirt" in the laundry basket
• I just finished cutting the grass and boy! does my "shirt" stink

You follow? I know what you're thinking. This post has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. You're right! It's just random silliness. Welcome to my world. Oh and by the way, YES I have accidentally left the 'r' off of shirt while chatting with someone and the result was hilarious and really gross all at the same time.

Any other words out there that you've run into trouble with? Please share.

Johnny

Indiana Adventure

This last weekend me and two band-mates made a trip to Indiana to lead worship for a youth retreat. It was the most eventful trip I've ever taken. So I decided to try and capture the excitement in a blog. I'll attempt to include all of the details. There will be no exaggeration. Brace yourselves.

Day 1:
We leave around 5 o'clock. Matt decides to run through a "quick" carwash to get the van ready for the long drive. "Clean the windshield", he says. "It'll only take a minute", he says. He decides to go ahead and swipe his credit card while the person in front of us is still in the wash. The machine dries the guy in front of us...then he just sits there. The wash starts over. He doesn't move. The idiot TOOK OUR CAR WASH. 8 DOLLARS! It has now been 25 minutes. We ask the guy if he let it wash his truck twice on purpose. He says...Yeah I think so. I've never used this before. We decide to go ahead and get on the interstate.

We make it to Nashville. So far the trip has been lots of fun. We've been listening to some funny CDs and laughing a lot. We get to the hotel/suite that was booked for us only to find that the office is closed. Not a good sign. The security guard opens the door and gets us a key. The place feels kinda creepy. Sorta like a trailer park. We go to our room and find it has only one bed. So I call the security guard and he lets us in a different room with two beds. And then he says, "You make sure to close your door". I say, "Of course we're going to close our door." He says, "No, I'm serious. Make sure and lock your door. I mean it. For your own safety. This isn't a good place for you to be." ??!!??!!!
So now we're just a little freaked out. Now the picture is becoming clear. the liquor store and the adult video store across the street should have clued us in. This is a BAD NEIGHBORHOOD. And we've got thousands of dollars worth of gear in the car. And Marshall is too scared to sleep on the couch near the door. So around midnight. I finally say, "If you guys want to just keep driving we can." Without hesitation, both guys jump up and start getting their shoes on. LOL.

Day 1.5
So we load back up in the car and head for Indiana. It should only be about 2.5 hours. We get some coffee and stuff and are doing great. Then we hit Louisville. Rain like you've never seen is dumping on us. It was so heavy that we had to drive 20 mph. Then it starts going sideways from left to right. The rain that is. It's completely at a 90 degree angle. Then all of a sudden, the rain starts going sideways from right to left. A TORNADO??? There are cars spun out all over the place. Needless to say, we were no longer fighting sleep. We were, could you say, just a little puckered? After we made it through what seemed like a never ending storm, we were even more exhausted from being to tense. Props to Matt for driving through that mess.

Day 2:
4 a.m. We arrive at the campground. Their office is closed as we expected. We decide to sleep in the car. Matt has some sort of sleep apnoea grizzly bear snoring type thing he does when he "sleeps". Marshall and I are so buzzed from no sleep that all we can do is giggle. By this time we were so miserable that it actually was laughable.
5:50 a.m. Matt wakes up and says he's cold. I say, let's check the office. There's a very nice girl there who let's us follow her to our dorm and opens it for us. We go inside and lay down on the beds and sleep for a couple hours.
8:00 a.m. I wake up with what most assuredly looks like strep throat. And I have to sing all weekend. So I call my Dr. and he calls in some antibiotics for me to the local Walmart (which by the way was even more like a trailer park). So Marshall and I drive to Walmart. We get out of the car and it smells like cow poop. No lie. It took an hour for the pharmacy to get my stuff ready. We head back to get Matt and then meet my Aunt and Uncle for lunch. That was a highlight of our trip. They bought it for us and my Aunt brought me some snowcream in a cooler.
9:30 p.m. The youth group arrives. We set up our gear and have a great worship service with them. Tom Agnew speaks and does a great job. It's good to be with Ben Taylor again.

Day 2.5
2:30 a.m. After much laughter and funny stories, I finally go to bed.

Day 3
Saturday morning and all day Saturday is good. The services were good, the free time was good. The meals were good. Matt purchased a guitar. Saturday night we had what was supposed to be a bonfire. It was more like a small campfire for 30 people. It kept going out. It was cold out. Once all but 7 or 8 of us left...the fire started roaring so the remnant enjoyed a great fire and some s'mores.

Day 4
Sunday morning at 5 a.m. I wake up and cannot breathe. I don't just mean that my nose was stopped up. My throat was closing up. My gagger was as big as my thumb and was getting stuck in my throat. I wake Marshall up and type out a text on my phone for him to read cuz I can't talk. He gets the nurse. She says, "go to the hospital". We get Matt and head out the door. The campgrounds decided to lock the gate to the outside world; something about "keeping people safe". So we call for them to come open it. It takes them 15 minutes. My adrenaline is pumping and I'm getting nauseous. After the lady finally opens the gate, Matt takes off while following his GPS on his phone. It's leading us turn by turn to the "nearest hospital". Finally the GPS tells us we're at our destination. But guess what. We're in the middle of a field. There's no hospital around us. Now I have to barf. And I can't breathe already. I literally thought at that moment that I was about to die. How do you barf when you can't breathe?

Matt calls 911. The lady offers to send an ambulance. I muster out of my swollen throat to Matt, "That'll take too long..have her give you directions". So she does. And we make it to the hospital. Not after me barfing though. I threw up so hard that my whole face swelled up where I couldn't open my eyes. And I didn't die.

The emergency room people were great. They were timely and kind. They gave me a steroid injection and some stuff for nausea. They took an Xray to make sure there was anything else going on. They took a throat culture to check for strep. That was fun. The guy said, "open your mouth". I couldn't even begin to open my mouth without gagging 'cause my gagger was still so swollen it was resting on my tongue. Yuck. We got it done though.

8 a.m. or so: We left the hospital and went back to pack our bags. Then Matt drove us all the way home through the snow.

Today:
I still feel like crud. I'm taking meds and resting. Matt got in trouble for purchasing the guitar. Marshall is just glad it's over. I think he may have cried a little from the overload of emotions and adrenaline. That's why we love him though. He's real.

OVERALL: The retreat was awesome. The ministry and worship and fellowship was great. The TRIP however was the most horrific experience.

There ya have it. Sorry for the long read. A lot happened.
johnny

Top 10 Least favorite Sounds

Several weeks ago I posted my top ten favorite sounds. I've been prompted to write out my top ten LEAST favorite sounds. So here goes:

1. An out-of-tune piano. Mr. and Mrs. bride and groom...when you ask me to play for your wedding and I ask you to make sure the church has their piano tuned...don't just assume like every other bride and groom that the church always keeps their piano tuned. I stopped playing weddings because of you.

2. A piece of junk car sound system with the Bass cranked all the way up. Like...ok...if you actually have a decent system...go ahead and crank it. But some of you poor wannabes are turning the treble down and the bass all the way up on your stock speakers and you actually think you are booming down the street. It SOUNDS LIKE CRAP. Yes. I just said crap.

3. When Cooper turns all his trains on and sets them on their side and goes to play in the other room. It's like....whirrr...zzzzzzzz.....ssshhhhh.... times 50.

4. There's a certain rendition of a certain patriotic song that I saw in a video once that made a little vomit come up in the back of my throat. Only a couple of my friends will know what I'm referring to on this.

5. The drill at the Dentist. I know y'all are with me on that one.

6. Somebody else's kid whining. I have to deal with my own kid whining lady...would you please smack your kid?

7. The sound of someone singing "just" sharp or flat on a sustained note. No matter how hard I try...I can't stop my face from contorting on that one.

8. When the TV, the washing machine, cooper's trains, and the neighbor's blower are all going at the same time and Suzii tries to talk to me about anything important, I break down.

9. Hearing someone make fun of how much I love my kid. Go grow a heart you jackhole.

10. This last one is sort of a LEAST favorite AND a favorite. I went to my niece's 5th grade Christmas orchestra recital a few years back. It was so horrible...the total combination of "out-of-tune" with the "timing" of all of their playing...the fact that I could actually tell you what song they were "trying" to play. It was the most hilarious thing I've ever heard in my life. I literally almost wet myself and was gasping for air from laughing so hard. Imagine it with me: Violins, Clarinets, Horns, Flutes, and Drums. Boom...chick..crash..whine...pbbpbbb...wwhiiirrr...boom.

Well there ya have it. This was for you Russ.

Leaders...submit

This post is not coming from any personal hurt or situation of my own. It is coming from a culmination of several years of seeing people hurt needlessly through ministry and at the hands of fractured leadership.

I think we would all agree that good leaders should have the ability to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. Some leaders will even "admit" those weaknesses. But I see in scripture the need to do more than that. Unfortunately I don't see very many leaders, especially those who hold the position of senior pastor, "submitting" themselves in those areas of weakness. I see way too many pastors and other leaders who may have even admitted that they are not relational people try to "administrate" or "warrior" their way through personnel changes and issues. I see way too many pastors who might be relational but are weak in the area of administration try to keep everyone happy and like them through a season of logistical or strategic change. What saddens me is that this type of behavior usually comes from a prideful attitude. It's the thought that "I'm the man".

What I see in the Bible from the Apostles was mutual submission. This doesn't mean that no one led. They all led in the area of their strength. And they submitted themselves to each other's strengths. So I think that it's important for leaders, especially pastors, to not just "admit" their weaknesses but "submit" themselves in those areas.

Paul eventually understood the value of this as a leader. I think it's safe to say that Paul was a choleric type personality. He was a forward mover "my way" type of leader. He understood the law and didn't seem to be afraid of anything. He was not, however, the relational guy. We see this played out with how he dealt with John Mark. Barnabas, on the other hand, was the relational guy. He pleaded with Paul not to be so harsh with John Mark because of his lapse in judgement. Unfortunately, initially Paul missed it. Him and Barnabas even had to go separate ways because of the strength of their disagreement. Paul wasn't submitting his weakness to Barnabas' strength in a matter where relational leadership was important. It was a "personnel" issue.

Eventually though, Paul got it. Later on he actually calls on John Mark, recognizing his usefulness for ministry. I have to believe that somewhere along the line Paul realized he wasn't strong at everything. And like so many other examples of the other Apostles submitting themselves to HIS strengths...he finally submitted himself to Barnabas.

So, pastor so-and-so, what's your deal? Why can't you do this? You are willing to admit you aren't a relational person. Yet you handle "people" problems without filtering your decisions through someone who is. You admit that you aren't a strong administrator...yet you don't filter your logistical decisions through someone who is.

None of us are above any of us because of our title or the parking space we occupy on Sunday. So, if this is you, please stop it. Get over yourself enough to start caring more about the kingdom and those of us who are in it than your own stature. Stop making excuses and submit yourselves in the same way you expect others to submit to your strengths. Your title doesn't automatically infuse you with all the gifts and strengths. So why act like it?

Just a thought.