Days 21 & 22 - Evan

Bio: A good phrase to describe Evan is “warrior poet.” It’s from Braveheart, which is one of his favorite movies. It’s totally true – he’s got a warrior’s heart and a worshiper’s spirit. He’s an artist and super talented on the guitar. Evan is also one of the strongest people I know. He was just built that way – broad shoulders and super solid core. He’s got red hair but he’s not prone to anger and is in fact very mellow. (Stereotype debunked!) I lived with him for two years and he is one of my favorite roommates.

Challenge: My challenge to you is to spend the day in silence. Do not speak a word, make a noise, watch tv, listen to the radio, anything. I do realize that this is a word day and I don't want you to lose your job - so speak if you absolutely have to at work but do your best not to. I want you to spend the day reflecting on life, the past 30 years and the next. You are required to find a place (hopefully outdoors, I know it's hot but do your best) and spend an hour in prayer / scripture. And one more requirement. choose one of these: 1. Go kayaking in silence, 2. Go biking in nature, 3. Go for a walk around a lake or park in silence.

 

24 hours of silence. GO!

Reaction: Uh oh. (The first day I read this was the day of the flash mob.) Gonna be pretty hard to get through a flash mob without talking.  I may have to give myself some exceptions.

Recap: As I mentioned in the previous post, this first day did not go well. (Which is why it became a two-day challenge!) I didn’t listen to music on the way to work, which was different. Once at work, I spoke as little as possible. I did answer the phone when it rang, of course, but otherwise avoided conversations. After lunch I was overcome with sleepiness, and could have used a little background music to help stay alert. A number of these challenges have forced me to confront how poor my sleeping habits are. Man!

With little co-worker interaction, it was sort of a lonely day at work. But the day came to an end eventually and I scooted over to the flash mob and my self-declared exemption from the silence. As I said last post, Evan found out I was talking and declared my challenge failed and that I would have to do-over. I was a little peeved, honestly, because I had already spent ALL DAY at work being silent. But he was the challenge-giver, and I actually hadn’t gotten a challenge for the next day, so…

Day two was better. One, with my preparation the first day, I knew a bit what to expect. I came prepared. No radio on the way to work. Few phone calls and no co-worker visits. I didn’t even get on the internet. I didn’t even text! After another long day at work, I was determined not to get tripped up in the evening, so I did not even go home.

I went back to the Lake.

Lake Arcadia had been such a wonderful, refreshing experience the first time I decided to go back and watch the sunset again. I knew no one would be there. I parked the car outside the gate and hiked in, enjoying a second visit to the tranquil nature. Or, mostly tranquil.

I had my Bible with me and read a couple Psalms in a spot with a different angle on the lake. I sat with my back to a tree and watched the golden sun sink below the horizon. The lake had a gentle, cool breeze coming off, and I was really enjoying the moment. Then I heard it.

I think it was a deer, just a severely asthmatic one. It was this heaving, panting almost groaning noise. It sort of came out of the blue too. It wasn’t a noise that slowly built until I heard it. It was suddenly, almost explosively loud. I jumped and I think gasped a bit. My movement / noise in turn scared whatever animal was making the noise, because I heard it bolt from my left side. I never caught sight of it, but I think both of us scared each other pretty good.

Even though I’d heard it leave, my imagination started to go to work on the “I’m alone in the woods as twilight deepens” vein. I could definitely picture a lot of grisly endings to my evening. So I packed up my stuff and hiked out.

Once back home, I was worried my roommate Jerrod would be there. (He’s such a talker and would no doubt make me break the challenge. Just kidding about the talking bit.) But he was gone, so I cleaned my room a bit, took a shower, and went to bed. I slept good that night.

Day 20 - Dave & Teresa

Bio: As with several of the other couples, I knew these two as friends before they started dating, and it was awesome to watch them fall in love and get married. Also something I appreciate about them is that they still hang out with me and my crew from time to time even though they are studly married folk now. Teresa and I share several traits. We both went to Baylor, are both social, both work in communication/design, and both of us thought Dave’s house looked kind of dumpy before she moved in and revamped it. Dave and I have different personalities but get along great. He is kind of a dork but owns it and is such a genuine person that everyone loves him. One legendary ski trip he and I basically acted out the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, voicing all the characters, on the long drive home. (News flash! I’m kind of a dork too.) Dave also was my accountability partner for a couple years, and his investment in me made such an impact on my life.

Challenge: Coordinate and participate in a FLASH MOB! Recruit at least 30 people and do it in a crowded public setting. Have fun! P.S. – if someone else has you doing something similar, you can just cook us a meal at our house or take a Zumba class with Teresa.

Reaction: This is AWESOME! I love flash mobs, and now that I’m reading this, I’m surprised no one has given me this challenge before. I enjoy attention, and have to say I’m pretty good at the whole choreography thing. So this challenge is perfect for me. Now who can I recruit, and where can I do it?

Recap: I got this challenge on a Wednesday, and I knew right off that to do the flash mob I wanted to would take more than a day to put together. I wanted music, dancing, craziness! So I decided to give myself a little extra time to plan and coordinate. I decided to do it on Friday. Friday’s challenge had not been delivered yet, while Thursday’s had, so I could make this challenge work for two days!

I thought of several possible locations, like the mall or downtown somewhere, but ruled them out. People have done stuff at the mall before, as well as downtown. I wanted my flash mob to be original and unique, maybe at a business one of my friends worked at. Then I had a brilliant idea. My friend Morgan worked at Lifeway Christian bookstores off NW Expressway. Easy, central location, with a captive audience of someone who would totally enjoy a flash mob. I bet they’ve never had a flash mob there before! Also, just in case her management had a cow about it and fired her, Lifeway was a second job for her and was not her main source of income. Morgan is a fiery free spirit, and I felt sure she would adore a random visit from her friends. Location picked.

Next hurdle was people. I was glad Dave and Teresa said “recruit” 30 people rather than “30 people must participate.” I got to work on inviting my 30. Lots of texts and e-mails. Several people were interested, and several more were not. Flash mobs are sort of divisive activities.

However, as I talked with more and more friends about the plan, it became apparent that I could catch the largest group of them on Thursday rather than Friday. I didn’t want to double-down on challenges, but it didn’t look like I had a choice. I planned it for right after work on Thursday, everyone meeting up at 5:00 in the parking lot around the corner from the Lifeway store.

I wanted to make sure Morgan was there, so I put my sneaky hat on and sent her a message asking about hanging out Thursday at 5:00. “Sad, can’t. L Have to work” was her reply. Perfect.

Now for the dance. I have wonderful friends, but they aren’t all rhythm champions. And we had essentially zero time to rehearse. So I needed a dance that everyone already knew and that was simple. Incredibly simple. Addictively simple? BAM. Welcome back to 1995, it’s time for the Macarena!

So all the pieces were falling into place. Dance: Macarena. Location: Lifeway Bookstore. Guests: 30 invited, about 8 for sure show ups and possibly 3 more able to come. The plan was going perfectly. Which meant it was all about to fall apart.

I arrived at the meeting place about 30 minutes early. A big, abandoned Circuit City was next to the Lifeway store, so I parked the car and tried to calm my beating heart. In order to pull off this challenge (technically from the day before), I knew I would have to break the new challenge I had opened that morning from my friend Evan. (More on that in the next post.) I decided it would just be a short period anyway, and he wouldn’t need to know.

Brave and bold friends began arriving – Jason, Shyla, Amber, Michele (who drove in from out of town in time for the flash mob), Hugh, Jenny, Kat, Andrew and Samantha. It was blazing hot outside, so we huddled under the decaying circuit city sign while I went over the plan. We did a Macarena practice run. Everyone did great.

I had brought a mini boom box with me and a CD with latin-ish music on it. The plan was this. We would wander into the store in groups of two or three. The first group (Andrew and Jenny) would locate Morgan and pretend to be interested in some merchandise at the back of the store. The rest of us would then filter in while they distracted her. I would find an outlet and get the CD ready, push play, blow a whistle I’d brought with me, and we’d form a triangle in the front of the store and do our dance.

We were waiting to see if anyone else would show up, and Jason called our roommate Evan to see if he wanted to come. Evan, the guy whose challenge I was supposed to be doing. Evan, who told Jason to tell me that no, he wasn’t coming and that I had to re-do his challenge because I’d cheated. Which was true. Busted.

Then Hugh started to get a little freaked out. Apparently he gets really nervous about public craziness, which is understandable. I told him he could take pictures/video and document the event if he felt too uncomfortable to participate. He considered this for a moment, then decided he still couldn’t do it – he would be too embarrassed just watching us be embarrassing. So he left.

Sensing my flash mob beginning to fall apart, I initiated the plan.

Andrew and Jenny went into the store. A minute later, Amber and Michele went in followed by Samantha and Kat. Jason, Shyla and I were in the last group. Waiting another minute was actually excruciating, because we watched this frumpy looking middle-aged lady go in the store, and I just knew she would not enjoy our upcoming spectacle. But what can you do?

At last our time arrived. My group went in. A quick look around the store showed not many people were in there, which was disappointing but I guess I should not have been surprised. It was Thursday afternoon at a Christian bookstore. I moved quickly into the book section to hide the boom box and scouted for a power outlet. I found one amongst the framed art section (why do Christian bookstores always have gratuitously large religious paintings for sale? Who buys that stuff?) I went over and plugged in the box. But the power light did not come on. No juice.

I went to the next outlet over. Tried it again. Still no power. I looked around. Amber, Kat, Michele and Samantha had formed a group one row into the books and were staring at me and whispering nervously. Each passing second frayed all our nerves more. I did not anticipate how fast my heart beat would be at that moment. Preparing to be brazenly loud in a quiet, dignified setting got my blood running!

I crossed to the other side of the store and tried some outlets on the far wall. No juice. Drat. The music wouldn’t work. It would have to just be our voices. I went back to the holy knickknacks section and set up the video camera.

All eyes were on me from my team, waiting for me to initiate. I took a few deep breaths to calm my very rattled nerves and moved to the center. Better just to get it over with. I saw Jenny and Andrew coming towards us, which meant Morgan was about to get the surprise of her week.

“Who’s ready for a Morgan mob?” I shouted (cleverly), though my voice sounded less confident in the stately bookstore than I’d hoped.

My wonderful friends rushed out and we created our ragged formation. Morgan stepped out and gasped, laughed, and clapped. We did the Macarena.

Well, here, see for yourself. (Video forthcoming)

It was fun. Not as Hollywood polished as I had pictured in my head, but whatevs. She loved it, we did it, great challenge. Done and done.

Day 19 - Mom

Bio: My mom is a great lady. Here are things I love about her: I can make her laugh faster than anyone else, and her laugh is contagious. She values truth greatly, stands firm on it, and fights for it. She can turn any food into a tasty meal. She is shorter than me. When she makes a mistake, she genuinely apologizes for it, and I have watched her live this out since I was a little boy. Because she had two boys, she’s tackled a whole slew of boy things with gusto, including climbing a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado and spending bug-infested summer nights out camping. She has gorgeous red hair. She has a twin. When she and my Dad have problems, they work through them. When my brother and I tag team, we can totally fluster her! My Mom has a deep and honest relationship with God.

Challenge: Dear Ben, July 19 would have been Pop’s 98^th birthday. It would be nice if you would put some flowers on his grave. I can tell you how to get there. Love, Mom

Reaction: Pops was my grandfather, who passed away in 2007 in his late nineties. I had a couple distinct responses to this challenge. One, relief that the challenge wasn’t heavy on time commitment or activity. Two, surprise and, in a way, delight that the date had fallen just right for Pop’s birthday. Three, some sadness at the reminder that he is not with us any more. His passing still feels recent.

Recap: I drove by a flower shop after work and picked out two really brightly-colored flowers for the arrangement, purple and yellow. Pops was a super grandfather, and he loved getting people’s attention through jokes or magic tricks. He was very good at magic tricks. He could amaze me with his slight-of-hand, pulling coins out of my ear and making stuff in his hand disappear. Pops was a Baptist minister for several decades, and he loved people, loved talking to them and making them laugh and being part of their lives. I was glad for the chance to brighten up his grave marker on his birthday – he’d like that.

I drove over to the cemetery and found he and my Grandmother’s headstone, which reminded me of a Pops story. When Pops bought that headstone in the 1990’s, he left it in his trunk for the winter months (better traction, he said.) So he was trolling around town with his headstone rattling around his trunk. Frugal and practical, two of his most admired characteristics. (He couldn’t resist a sale, so whenever we needed soda, we’d visit Pops’ garage where he had a ton of 12-packs he’d acquired at sales.)

As it was a typical July day, I was sweating from the two-minute walk from my car to the gravesite. The sun was approaching the horizon, tinting everything with a golden hue. One unique thing about the headstone is that all the other ones on their row are facing west, but Pops and Grandmother’s are facing east. I hadn’t realized that before, and it brought a smile to my face. How appropriate.

I put the flowers down and messed with them a bit, moving them here then there until I liked where I’d placed them. I stared at the headstone. It is very simple, just names (Harold P. and Alice F. McGlamery) and years of birth and death. Not even the month or day, just the year. Again, frugal and practical. Many of the other headstones around them lack ornamentation- we Oklahomans are not easily given to unnecessary flourishes. I briefly considered whether I was sad their graves did not have flowers more often. I live close and could bring stuff by more often. But their headstone is good indication of how they wanted it to be. A simple marker of lives well-lived. Pops and Grandmother left behind something far better than a fancy gravestone. They left a legacy.

Both lived for Jesus faithfully, though they also had specific areas of faults and failures. They loved each other, not a mushy fairytale love, but a even-if-we-quarrel-daily-we-stand-by-each-other love. They were married for over 60 years. They raised good kids and spoiled their grandkids (but not too much.) And in their final years, when age and health slowly took away their independence and vitality, they kept their hearts focused on the hope of restoration and renewal in Christ.

So I sat for a moment at their graves, and said a few words in memory of Pops. I’m not sure if the ones who have passed on can hear what we say on earth anymore or not, but I told him how much he meant to me and how much he taught me. And (despite my over-dramatic nature), I left it at that. I got in the car, turned on the air conditioner, and drove home.