My friend, the joker

I love little kids. There. What more of a straightforward sentence could you ask for? But it's true; I love little kids, especially ones that want to sit next to me and tell me jokes, even if those jokes make absolutely no sense. I had this experience recently, last Friday night. Our church decided to have a Sabbath meeting all together for a change, and afterwards we had Sabbath treat, watched a slide show of Mr. Maguire's Haiti pictures, and played games for the young as well as games for the old (i.e. huckle-buckle-beanstalk and pictionary).

 

 

Hold it! Do you not know what huckle-buckle-beanstalk is? *gasp* Well, that's okay, most people don't. I suppose you can be excused THIS time. Ahem! Huckle-buckle-beanstalk: a favored game of my childhood in which a certain small item is hidden in a room and then everybody has to find this item. When you find it, without directly giving away the item's location, you go somewhere else and sit down while saying, "Huckle-buckle-beanstalk!" The first person to find it and sit down gets to hide the item in the next round, once everyone leaves, but everyone has to look for it until everybody has found it. That's good ol' huckle-buckle-beanstalk in a nutshell. Although it was intended for the youngsters, the only youngsters that showed up for this part of the evening were the Posts (and even then only Michael "officially" played--Gabriel said that he was looking even though he wasn't playing:) and Timmy, so a bunch of us joined in (i.e. Craig, Gretchen, the majority of the bibleschool, and me).

 

 

Played in the parlor, the game proved to be a jolly success. Even the bibleschool, even Michael seemed to really enjoy it. The only hitch was that little Timothy often had a hard time finding the special item, which in this case was a purple lollypop. Since a basic rule of the game is that you play "hot and cold" if someone is having a hard time, we all proceeded to do so when he was the only one left. However, he seemed to have a misconstrued idea of the game, meaning that he was practically convinced that he had to change directions whenever we said anything, ending up so that all he did was walk around in circles. Realizing that maybe he was too young to know about the game, I carefully explained it to him. After this, when he took a step forward, everyone of course said, "Warmer. . . " but then he would take a step backwards so that everybody said, "Colder. . ."  He kept on like this for a half a minute or more, practically rocking from one leg to the other as everybody inevitably responded with the apt answer. It was as if Timmy were the conductor and we were his choir. A simple shift was all that was required for a response; but instead of singing different notes, we simply chanted, "Warmer. . . colder. . . warmer. . . colder." Pretty soon we were convinced that he was just enjoying his power over our vocal chords. Amy then took the initiative to gently but firmly push or pull (I can't remember which) him in the right direction, which he resisted, but eventually (with persuasion) he was led to location of the hidden lollypop and found it accordingly, with some helpful hints.

 

 

For the next and last round of huckle-buckle-beanstalk it was my turn to hide the lolly pop because I had found it almost first thing the round before (just because it was in a special spot right near the door that I had checked every other round). Chad, who was sitting on one of the small couches observing, suggested with a twinkle in his eye that I stick the lollypop out of the back of his shirt collar. Once I had secured his promise to sit still, I agreed, and shortly let everyone else in so that the search could begin. This time, however, Timothy turned out to be the first one to find it! After a few minutes of everyone searching with no luck, the little fellow spotted it (it was more or less at his eye level) and pulled it out to hold up triumphantly. Fortunately, he made no exclamation or the game would have immediately ended. As a result, only four or five people noticed him and the game continued until everyone had discovered the lollypop's unique location. And thus ended our wonderful time down memory lane with huckle-buckle-beanstalk.

 

 

As I said, we had Sabbath treat, made by my very own dear mamita (Sarah provided us with the popcorn:). As I sat eating my apple pie and ice cream, little Stephen and Luke came and sat next to me; both are very interesting characters, as little boys are wont to be. Luke not only dazzled me with his extensive knowledge of dinosaurs, but he played "blow out the candle" with me on a candle that was far from being lit ("It's plastic, but we're pretending we don't know that," he told me).

 

 

As for Stephen, he dug into his dessert with noisy relish, expressed by the "hmmhmmhmm" noises that he made as he devoured his treat. The funny thing is that when I started to copy him he acted as if I were the strange one, and he practically insisted that he hadn't been making a similar noise when I told him that he had been. Then he started to tell me every joke that he could think of at the moment. After all, "We have a joke book that's the size of our couch," he informed me. Even though part of the time I couldn't always tell what he was saying (or even if I did, it made no sense), I often laughed anyway, just because it was so fun to see him enjoy his jokes so immensely. I wish I could remember all the jokes that this clever little six-year-old told me, but here are a couple as I roughly remember them.  

 

 

"Have you heard this one?" Stephen asked. "Uh, my father is Chinese, um, yeah, and my mother is Japanese, and I'm Japanese-Chinesey!" Or maybe he said, "You're cheesy!" Whichever version he said to me, someone was pretty sure that the latter was Stephen's altered punch line when they heard him tell this joke.

 

 

Or,

 

 

"Um, my daddy is a mosquito, my mommy is a daddy-long-legs, so that makes me a sheepie!" he laughed heartily. This time I was quite stumped, so I confessed to him that I didn't get it.

 

 

"You don't get it?" if he was surprised, he didn't show it too expressively. "Well, I turned into hot water--get it now?"

 

Oh, of course!

 

Not.

 

 

Or all that's what I think he said. Don't ask me to explain the joke--I'm probably more clueless than anybody. However, it still managed to tickle me, mostly because Stevie was so tickled. After all, who doesn't like to laugh just because a kid thinks he's so funny? I imagine people have done it with me plenty of times.:)

 

 

A purely informational post

For the benefit of those noble few of my readers (or perhaps there are many of you, I couldn't say) who read my blog more than just for entertainment/edification and would actually like to know what's really going on in my life, I believe I owe you a brief report. After all, who knows? Maybe you're thirsty for a general view of my recent life, however dull or interesting it may be. I can't say it's extremely interesting, but for communication's sake I think I'll clear up the general idea of "what I'm doing" right now.

First of all, in case you can't keep track (and why should you?), I'm in my last year of high school. *cheers* It's a little weird, actually. I've been having a lot of "lasts," like "last first day of school" and "last day I'm doing school during apple sauce day," etc. What is one to do when one no longer has any more school to do? Never fear, I'll find something.

Right, so I'm in my last year, and it's perhaps one of my most laid-back years yet, at least for high school. For one thing, I'm no longer taking HomeSat, so I have SO much more flexibility. For another, since according to the number of credits required to graduate from our local high school, I already had enough credits before the year started, it's pretty much a low key, "fill in the gaps" year. I've already taken my necessary maths, I have the necessary sciences and three years of foreign language study, plus I've already taken the SAT, so now what? Well, we decided to have me take an economics, classical physics, and music theory courses, all of which I've already finished (I started music theory in the summer and the others were short enough so that with just a little diligence I knocked them off by/around the first week of this month). So basically I have left an American literature course (a college level kind where you have to read entire books, not just excerpts from a text book), vocabulary, writing (I'm doing two different books and working on at least one good sized project for this), and home economics. Plus I'm going to try to do a little more art stuff, which I still need to work on doing. Anyway, this is just a great year where I get to do most of stuff that I want to do and count it for school! So all's good.

Hmm, another general fact from my more or less recent (that is, like the past three months) life is that I have a new violin! Indeed, that dear little instrument that I've been playing for the past eight years has now retired, and I have a much better instrument. I say "have"; the fact is, I don't really "have" it yet. My parents have paid for half of it and it's on loan to us from our friendly local fiddle shop and they said that I could pay for the rest of it by coming in to do background music for their adjoining Italian restaurant! ay, ay, ay! Nothing has happened yet, but we're hoping to meet with the lady before too terribly long and set some dates (she said something about Valentine's Day. . . I hope I can start sooner so that I can get a little more paid off).

Ah, and the violin? The violin is the sort of instrument that has actually been sitting unused for awhile in an attic, but this lady sent it in to have it fixed by an expert, who said that it was worth more than she had first thought. My violin isn't much to look at, but it's excusable given where it's been sitting and that it was probably made in the 18oos in Germany. So yeah, it's old; and it can blow my old student instrument partly out of the water.

The last brief thing I'll mention by way of informing the benighted as to my doings is that I'm working at a horse farm. Yessirreee, I've been working there for nearly four weeks now, getting up at about five-thirty week mornings to leave at six o'clock to drive with Kate down the road about two miles to feed our neighbor's horses. And do other less pleasant duties. Thankfully, the "less pleasant" duties don't bother me, and it's fun getting more comfortable with the handsome beasts. Since I've already been asked what we actually do, I'll tell you: we give the horses (there are three of them) their hay-type stuff, their grain, and their beet pulp. Then we shovel the barn, get their hay, get their water, and possibly put out new shavings. Finally, when they're done eating, we take their night coats off, let them out, shovel their stalls if they need it, sweep the inside of the barn, and mix up their beet pulp for the next time. That's the basic gist of it. It usually takes us half an hour to an hour, depending on if we have to get the horses, if they behave themselves, how much manure we have to shovel, etc. You get the idea.

Oh, and I think the horses are thoroughbreds. They're the kind that have lots of ribbons hanging up in the barn for the shows they've been in. Once, I even counted them while I was waiting for the massive water buckets to fill up (I hoping I can add something to my non-existent muscles:); I counted aprox. 112 ribbons, if I remember correctly.

Apologies for a post that's not very exciting. I'm not in a very exciting mood, but I thought it might be beneficial to let ya'll know what I'm employed in most of the time that I'm not writing here.

Our amazing (haha) volleyball

Last Tuesday night, I went to play sports with the bibleschool like I do every Tuesday night. But this time, there were no second years. *gasp* Alas, all five of them were away on Kingdom History trip. *gasp* Which meant no second year guys. *gasp* And no Jane. *gasp*gasp* And that night, Craig, Josh, and Diane decided not to come to sports. *gasp*gasp*gasp* So what did this mean? It meant that there were only six of us to play volleyball (which is all we ended up doing): Mary, Heidi, Sarah, Kate (for only part of the time), Shawn, and me. Wow. Talk about interesting.

The positive thing about playing volleyball with only a few people is that you actually get to hit the ball a lot, plus you get exercise. And the great thing about the group (everyone was great, don't mistake me) was that Shawn, who of course was leading sports and is one of the most amazing players ever, was playing. The bad thing was that no matter what combination of teams you came up with, Shawn's team always won. Always. Of course it wasn't his fault, it was ours. But still.

After a few games, Heidi jokingly suggested that we try to have all of us girls (minus Kate, who had left) on a team against Shawn. This idea highly amused us, so we agreed, and Shawn was just as game. Haha. It was amazing to watch him. Of course he still got three hits, so when he got the ball he would bump it to himself, then set it, then spike it. Only he had put the net down to girls' height, so he tried to follow the rules of a guy to spike it behind the ten foot line. He didn't always succeed in being able to set himself there, so sometimes he would set it over the net, which of course really threw us for a loop since we were so fascinated with watching him play. After all, we were bad enough already.:)

Unfortunately, I don't think we fully exploited our one advantage: that Shawn was only one guy. We should have served it to every corner of the court that he wasn't, but somehow it didn't quite happen. Mary was especially cute when she accidentally served it right to Shawn and then cried out, "Oops! Wrong person!" hehehe

I think we got about five points in that game before Shawn won. Yeah, I know; talk about pathetic! But we still had a great time and it was almost more fun watching him, so all in all it was worth it.

Oh, and afterwards Shawn offered to set the ball for me and any of the other girls who wanted to practice spiking. So Sarah and I took turns trying to perfect our sweet spike. I have a long way to go. . .

P.S. If you haven't read the following post(s) yet, please don't feel like this is the only one to read, because you might not want to miss what I already wrote today! :)

An imitation of style

Today for my creative writing course we were asked to write a story that imitated (and possibly exaggerated) our favorite author's style. Although I didn't choose my favorite author (I'm not even sure who it is), I did choose somebody that I thought would be extremely enjoyable to imitate. I had no idea what to write about, but then a memory of mine burst upon me, so I'm basing this little story on an experience I had, even though it's a little different. I don't think I could ever perfectly imitate any good author, but do you care to guess who I was thinking of as I wrote this?

I woke from my nap, frightfully refreshed, ready to flap through the day and take on any heavy-weight challenges Fate might be cooking up for me. As there were no heavy-weight challenges presenting themselves for getting knocked off in my bedroom, I decided to pop my head into the hallway in case I could spot any villains that needed to have their noses bottled. Seeing neither villains nor noses, the rest of me followed.

I was just determining that the house seemed to be like a freshly brushed mouth having spewed out all other inhabitants, when, hallo there, I spotted Megan. She seemed to be doing some spewing herself, and I thought it must be downright catching. I was just about to breeze away before she could notice me and accuse me of snooping when light dawned on marble head that a girl had just expect-a-somethinged in the hallway. Since the picture just wasn't clicking, I knew something must be wrong. Wheeling around, I decided to blast straight ahead and like a good chap see if I could offer any aid to a m.i.d. I pride myself on my vast chivalrous abilities. Why, all a poor girl needs to do is say, "I need your help, Archie," and my whole person will melt into buttery assistance. That's how I feel toward maidens in distress.

I sailed toward Megan, trying to be discreet and nonchalant. I'm pretty sure the qualities were oozing from my pores till I absolutely reeked of it. Megan's orbs were fixed over the edge of the balustrade--she obviously hadn't caught whiff of me yet.

"I say," I said. "Is everything all right?"

The m.i.d. jumped and the brown orbs were fixed upon me as if I had just stuck a cold fish to her neck. The thought flitted through the old cranium that perhaps she would have preferred a cold fish to her neck than to seeing me, but that of course was nonsense so I waved the idea away.

The frightened rabbit look in the m.i.d.'s eyes disappeared when she realized it was me, but instead of being replaced by the comforted look that I would have expected a real maiden in distress to put on when she caught sight of her noble hero, a look of mirth crept into those dark orbs. Then without a word she slid off, leaving behind an enigmatic laugh as the only vapor that betrayed the fact that she had been there. A moment later, she reappeared to my flummoxed self as she glided in with an air of mystery about her like a halo and a glass of water in her hand. Still smiling, she let the contents of her glass trickle over the railing.

Peering over the rail, I gaped. Yes, indeed, I gaped. I don't think I've gaped quite like that since I saw cousin Louis's pet hamster dash backwards and do the Virginia Reel.

What I saw Megan aiming at down below was a sink, and in that sink was some water (from the aforementioned glass that the supposed m.i.d. was pouring), and next to that water was something that looked frightfully like toothpaste and spittle. Yes, my maiden in distress had expect-a-somethinged on purpose just because she was brushing her teeth. It's a jolly good thing she was a good shot, too, or who knows what sort of tempests could have resulted if she had spewed on some hapless bystander?

I don't think it's a rotten thing to say that from now on old Archie is going to think twice before offering his benevolent services to maidens in distress.

A Spanish-English Dictionary

The other day in my creative writing course I was studying similes and metaphors. Oh, what fun to be able to come up with one's own similes and metaphors! It's like discovering a new kind of flower. It is digging a well that turns out to be a fountain.

 

In the process of this noble study (don't worry, I have studied similes and metaphors before:) "we" were given the simple task of taking a few common objects from around the room and coming up with a simile for each one; then we had to explain it.

 

For instance: (and pardon me if this isn't perfect)

 

A camera is like a lightning bolt--it reveals moments of the past the same way a flash of lightning reveals figures in the darkness.

 

However, my favorite one is this:

 

A Spanish-English dictionary is like Craig--look him up and he'll tell you how everything I say translates into Clyde's English.

 

This simile may seem odd, but I think it's strangely true, at least at times. As much as I love my dear brother Clyde practically to death, there are times when our brains simply do not operate on the same wavelength. Our personalities have never been alike, and although we appreciate eachother a lot more than we did many years ago, there are still times when what I'm saying makes no sense at all to my brother. I may be laying out an argument for a situation, and that argument may seem perfectly logical to me, but Clyde may just stare at me as if I'm looney. This is where Craig comes in. Always the Mercy and mediator, he understands each of us almost as well as we do ourselves. I don't know exactly why; maybe he understands Clyde because they're both guys and they're closer in age. Maybe he understands me because we're fairly alike in personality. Anyway, however he does it, he manages to tell Clyde what it is that I'm trying to say, revealing to Clyde that I am more than just an inarticulate female animal. Not there aren't times when I'm not articulate or when I might not make any sense, but these times are much more infrequent than Clyde might suppose. Light dawns in my dear brother's eyes, and now we understand eachother.

 

What would we do without Craig? But at the same time, what would I do without Clyde? And while I'm in this philosophical questioning mode, what would I do without Chad, Kendra, Dad, and Mom?

 

Let's not go there.

Fanaticism is contagious

Last week I got to do something I've never done before: wave signs. You cannot believe how much fun it can be! When I originally thought of sign waving, I pictured standing out in the cold for hours while the seconds dragged by as you gripped your brave sign with cold fingers. But this was much better than I would have expected two years ago. Sadly, I missed my first opportunity on Saturday when the whole bibleschool and more went to Keene (I slept in a leetle late that day, heh heh); however my golden chance arrived the following day on Sunday afternoon. Excited, I planned to go with Dad and Craig to Peterborough to wave signs partly because we heard that McCain (!) and Kurt Schilling (!!) were coming!!! So we left a few hours early to offer our support--oh, and Ben and Bobby came along. We passed the one busy intersection in Peterborough (which was crawling with sign wavers and huge inflated puppets, mostly Obama supporters) and decided to plant ourselves on the large island where Rte. 202 meets Rte. 101.

 

        Uncertain but eager to be enthusiastic, I joined my brother and the two bibleschool guys, united in our cause which was displayed proudly by our signs. Have you ever waved signs before? Frankly, I don't think it would be an easy job to do by oneself, but when you're with three other energetic people (two of which happen to be very choleric:), fanaticism is contagious! It wasn't long before we were warmed up to our job, whooping, screaming, jumping, waving, smiling, and "thumbs upping" everyone who passed, delight warming us whenever we saw a fellow McCain supporter, which was not infrequently, though it may have helped that it was the same day as a McCain rally. Occasionally, we ran next to cars as they turned past our island, leaping about and bobbing our signs madly. Ben even held up our "Honk 4 McCain" sign for awhile and it got some happy responses. One guy, laden with signs for the democratic party, passed us a couple of times, but finally shrugged and gave us a honk, probably just to give us credit for our broad smiles and enthusiasm. Another person the guys saw fighting with the driver to honk.

 

Some of our rallying cries sounded something like this:

 

"Votes for McCain!"

 

"Let's have it for McCain!"

 

"True leadership over charisma!" (that was one of Ben's favorites, and some of us took it up)

 

"Let's have it for experience!"

 

"McCain's the man for America!"

 

"Remember to vote for McCain on November 4th!"

 

"Vote for McCain--you know you want to!"

 

And so forth, accompanied by plenty of whoops and screams. Sometimes you never realize how well a guy can scream until you get him going in a political rally; for instance, the week before I was out with the students (we were putting out signs after we participated in the Bible reading marathon in Concord) and somebody passed us with a (hopefully happy) honk, followed by a scream, and I said or at least thought, "That girl likes us!" Then I realized that the scream hadn't issued from a girl, but from Ben!

 

Sometimes our cries were more improvised, depending on the cars and license plates we saw.

 

"Massachusetts for McCain!"

 

"Dogs for McCain!"

 

"Hey, nice car! Nice cars for McCain!"

 

"Goats for McCain!" (yep, I really saw a goat:)  

 

"Young people for McCain! Old people for McCain! Everyone for McCain!" (that was Craig's line)

 

One lady rolled down her window and told us that she was undecided. This was all the chance the guys needed. Immediately they ran closer and started to list all the basic reasons she should vote for McCain. She told them they were very persuasive. They pursued it, listing more reasons, so that finally she announced that she would think about it. That was enough for us, so we all cheered.

 

Another great thing about sign waving in a smallish town was that I knew some people! It was fun seeing my brothers' old driver's ed teacher, as well as some of Clyde's basketball players; I even saw the mom of one of my violin teacher's pupils.

 

Once or twice, we even managed to convince somebody! Like the time this girl pulled off the road and came toward us; we started yelling at her to vote for McCain until she finally threw up her hands and told us that we had convinced her. Then she laughed and gave us a sign that said "Live Free Vote McCain" before leaving. It was none other than Andrea. Another time this blonde guy came walking toward us and so we pointed at him with vehemence to vote the right way, but it was only Aaron, so our efforts, however joking, were fruitless, since he was probably going to vote for McCain anyway. Nevertheless, whatever we did must have done something, because this Aaron cousin of mine stuck with us the rest of the day.

 

Darkness soon crept in after a couple of hours, so we proceeded to the traffic lights where we paused for a few minutes to throw our efforts in with the rest of the bibleschool who had arrived to swell the ranks of sign wavers. As the guys, who as I already told you were yelling plentifully, spread their fanaticism, one little boy with an Obamah sign started to yell back. However, his mother quickly stopped him, saying, "He's making a fool of himself and you're not to be one too!" To this, Ben responded with the cry, "It's okay to be passionate about what you believe in!"

 

"Your mother would be ashamed of you!" some women yelled at Ben. Ha. "They don't know my mother," he said later. :)

 

Pretty soon we peeled off and made a dash down the street for where the McCain rally was located. Here there were a bunch of people in line waiting to get in, as well as many Obamah supporters standing around holding signs. We kept ours aloft, though, and with Craig's declaration, "Red Sox fans for McCain!" (he was wearing his hat) we stood our ground.

 

Very shortly afterward, however, a little boy came up to Craig and said very politely, "Excuse me, I'm a Yankees fan and I'm for McCain so it's not just Red Sox fans for McCain."

 

"Aw, you're right," Craig answered, touched by this boy's correction. "See, he's a Yankees fan and he's for McCain too!" He said this pointing at Bobby, then repeated more loudly, "Baseball fans for McCain!" After this Bobby revealed his Yankees hat hidden beneath his hood ("Not that I'm ashamed to be a Yankees fan," he had told me earlier, but I agreed that politically it was wiser to keep it hidden while campaigning in New England) and the dad of the little boy wanted to have their picture taken with Bobby and his McCain sign. Then for some reason the dad wanted to take my picture with my sign, perhaps because I had a little American flag tucked behind my ear (who knows?), and he thanked me for the "photo op." Um, sure, no problem! :)

 

We wandered around for awhile, trying to figure out what direction the McCain bus would come from. In an alley we passed a handful of Obamah supporters, who started screaming for their candidate as soon as they caught sight of our signs. We yelled right back at the same time. The volume contest (who can scream their candidate's name the loudest?) was brief and completely lacking of spite, and it was rather remarkable how such contact, which might normally be unpleasant, was pretty good-natured and almost enjoyable.

 

Passing a lady during our same wanderings, a lady (and obvious McCain supporter) told us, "They can keep their change, we want to keep our dollars." Hardy har har, way to turn their own slogan back around on them!

 

After awhile we decided that we wanted to go in past security, so we waited in line for a few minutes. As we did, Bobby, who was complaining vociferously of his thirst (try yelling for a couple of hours and you'll understand), called across the side parking lot to some media guys, asking if they had some water. To our vast amazement and amusement, they said they did, so Bobby ran over to one of the vans parked nearby (the kind with a satellite dish on the roof) and came back with a bottle of water that he shared all around. That's Bobby for ya.

       

        Once past security, we joined the masses of people flooding the remaining length of the street, which was probably about a block or less. We found Andrea (and eventually Gretchen and Aunt Sharon) and stood around waiting for McCain's arrival, which wasn't much later. However, we weren't just wasting time either. Everything has blurred together in my mind now, but I vaguely remember continuing our loud vocal demonstrations of loyalty to McCain, being the loudest group around, waving our flags and signs, and dancing to the music that played over the loudspeaker (don't worry, Andrea got permission from her mother first:). That is, we more just hopped to some of the music as it played; Bobby, who was probably the only one among us who really knew some of the songs being played, joined in singing with some other dudes nearby--all McCain fans. Before long, the bus had arrived, and we waited, breathless, for the famous man to appear. There he was! Everyone jumped up and down screaming, waving signs and flags. This time we weren't the only ones being loud. . . oh, and Bobby got on Ben's shoulders to see better. What's more, McCain actually stood outside and TALKED to us for a few minutes before going inside where the real meeting was! That made us very happy, since the chances of getting inside had been pretty slim. One lady we happened to talk to later said that she had arrived at 11 that morning so that she would be sure to get in, and she did; she even got to ask a question. She also told us that her husband thought she had sounded amazing when she asked it (those are my words, not hers), and she wondered jokingly if she had missed her life's calling.

 

After seeing the great John McCain and Kurt Schilling, many people left, but some still crowded around the screens set up on the street to show us what was going on inside. By now (it was about 6:30) it was pretty cold; I had long ago regretted leaving my gloves in the car and I tried to keep myself from getting too numb. And it was no wonder, for we found out later that the temperature had dropped from about 43 degrees F at the beginning of our sign waving to about 29 degrees when we left the rally.

 

Long story short: we came, we saw, we went home. After McCain was done speaking, we hung around, hoping to get a glimpse of him leaving. Now that a lot of people had left we would have been able to be pretty close when he came out. We waited. . . Daddy and Gretchen both got interviewed by somebody from People magazine. . . then the bus pulled away! Alas, John McCain had left by a back entrance, and now it was our turn to leave, a little disappointed. Daddy went home with my mom, who had arrived at the actual rally shortly after we did, but I stuck with Craig and the three bibleschool guys. I was glad I did, because Craig took us to Dunkin Donuts and I was able to thaw out with a cup of white hot chocolate. . . the perfect finish to a great day.

 

I must say that the whole time t'was a delight--there's something remarkable in being able to share common beliefs and excitement for a cause with friends, even if they're not your best friends or your own age or even if most of them are guys. Still, we were promoting what we believed was right and there was some comradery as a result, even though normally I might have been an outsider. It's really a lot like being a Christian, or what being a Christian should be, so it seems to me. Each of us believers have faith in the same amazing God and ultimately we have the same goal; that should be enough to unify us no matter what our differences are! That may sound easy to say or maybe it sounds wishy washy, but I think it's a neat thought to keep in mind. This day kind of depicted to me what it's like to have a common excitement with other people--shouldn't we be just as excited about God?

 

Huh. A fan for God. A fanatic fan for God--and haven't I already said that fanaticism is contagious? Just think, if we were all truly fanatic fans for God. . . . . how long would it take the world to catch this contagion too?