This story has nothing whatsoever to do with our life on the Montana mountaintop but I thought it might give a little insight as to why I turned out the way I did... past crazy adventures (and trauma) and all that..
Scene set up: Me in my late twenties, already have two kids. Going with a group of people from Sugarcreek Baptist Church (near Houston) on a 'mission trip' (read: totally fun vacation) to a small church in Edmonton, Canada. We were showing them how to 'do' Awanas and some other kid's programs that we had at our church.
While we were showing them all about Awanas, we also entertained these wonderful people and had so much fun I can't even tell you.
One day, for reasons that have been completely lost to me, we decided to put on a race for the enjoyment of our new Canadian friends. Also, for some reason, we decided to run this race in costumes - horse, camel, giraffe and zebra. I cannot remember for the life of me what this had to do with Awanas or Christianity in general but anyway, it was over 30 years ago so...
I was part of the camel duo, and as luck would have it, the back end. Meaning, I had to run bent over at the waist, with my hands on the hips of my girl partner who got to be the camel's front end. It is worth mentioning here that these costumes were OLD and ratty and smelly so this could be considered a sacrifice of sorts earning me points in heaven.
We four animals (8 humans) lined up at the starting point, and then we were off! Well, the other three were off and running. Me and my dromedary partner got our legs intertwined and collapsed in a heap. Getting back up without taking off our costume was difficult to say the least but we wanted to maintain the illusion of being a camel so we made the beast of it. Our falling down and trying to stand back up was apparently, HILARIOUS to the people watching. Hump! I mean humph!
Once we were up, we looked ahead at the other three running fake animals (I could see out through some side panels in the costume), and they were so far ahead of us that we might as well quit. But no! We valiantly started running, tried to anyway, and then my partner, MUCH to my shock and surprise, takes a detour, veering smoothly off the track, cutting right through the middle of that field, straight towards the finish line. What could I do but follow?
I looked out my little side panel and could see when the other floppy-headed beasts realized what we were doing. You could almost see the surprise and anger on their fuzzy faces! They all did a double take, and then doubled down and started running faster, because we were definitely going to win.
The roar of the crowd erupting into laughter when our camel self veered off the track to cut across was deafening. Please imagine if you will, this tattered, be-humped camel with the head flailing around, deciding to take care of matters by..... cheating! How this inspired confidence in our Christian brothers and sisters who invited us to come help them, I'll never know.
But it did make them laugh.
And we won.
Which is all that really matters, right? ;)
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