Saturday, November 03, 2007

Splinters and barbecue





I am sitting here distracted by the Blue Collar Weekend on the comedy channel. Have you ever tried to start writing while listening to Larry the Cable guy talking about how ugly his sister is? That means I will have to write during the muted commercials. Why is it my TV always gets LOUDER during commercials? Do the broadcasters think if they double the decible output during the commercial that you will hear it even if you mute it?
Our praise team traveled to the isle of Palms Baptist church today. We were invited to provide the singing fo their Fall Festival. We had a caravan of 7 cars and trucks with one trailer. We arrived at approximtely 1 pm and got everything set up within an hour.
After some opening songs we took a break and I was able to sample their fine Baptist Cuisine. We had barbecue , hot dogs, cole slaw, barbecue beans and lots of cold drinks. I must say that I sampled a little bit of everything. i warned everyone that I was eating some of the baked beans and that I could not be held responsible for any spontaneous internal combustions later on in the afternoon. I dont think they really understood what I was driving at.
Ok, so I am in line getting my food and I make it out of the tent with this plate that was loaded with goodies. I walked across the grass to the first picinic table I could find and found myself standing there staring at this picnic table. Something in my brain had me frozen in place as I contemplated what my next move was going to be. There was something just not right with the seats. All of a sudden I realized that the picnic table I had chosen to sit at was for the toddlers. I thought that there was little to no chance that I could get my FOOT into that chair much less my rear end.
I looked up and several men stood there and said , Yeah , we dont think you will fit into that tiny little seat either sir. LOL... I quickly spotted a larger , taller and more accomodating table that I could actually sit at. My wife was heading over in my direction and I wanted to make sure she did not sit down at the kddie table so I waved her over and told her to have a seat on the opposite side of me so I would not flip over the table. I was afraid this lgiht weight picnic table was going to turn into a teeter totter gone wild and flip upside down with me in it. Luckily my wife sat down right in time to keep me from wearing the baked beans on my face.
Now that the table was anchored firmly to the ground with no chances of it flipping I decided that I needed to oouch around and get more comfortable. I am here to tell you that I WISH that I had been wearing real polyester before that maneuver was over. At least with real polyester I would have had a chance to partially deflect the wooden darts that were being shot into parts of my posterior that I have not seen in a long long time. Imagine the shock I had once the nerve endings kicked in on that move. I was no longer focusing on my baked beans or barbecue and my brain was wondering why it was really necessary for me to make that fast lateral movement to one side to begin with.
After the food was consumed and I managed to extract myself from the picnic table I made sure to make a public service announcement to all in attendance. I told them that sudden lateral movements while planted on the wooden seats was not a good idea. That announcement was enough to make several people laugh which is cool. I am glad that they had so much fun with the new found information on my part.
Did I mention that this is a Baptist church and we attend a pentecostal church? Did I mention that most of the attendees were of the older generation? Lets just say that the contemporary praise and worship music we were playing was a little bit too progressive for some of them. My wife told me later that even though the facial expressions never changed and you could not tell if they were even paying attention their foot was tapping. I think that means they were getting into the music which is cool. At one point I said something that sort of was hoping for audience participation. At some point during about 20 seconds of silence the lead singer said something like "its ok to throw spit balls at us if that is what you need to do. I came up with one better and said, better yet just throw some of them there good cookies at us and I can have some more desert. Well that got their attention and some folks actually laughed at it. I am not sure if that was because they were having cool images of throwing cookies at a fat man holding a mic or my scrambling around trying to catch them.





James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
http://moffittjc.blogharbor.com/blog
james.moffitt@comcast.net

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