Month: October 2008

Turn It Around. You'll Get More Leverage.

A couple days ago my parents bought a new chair for the computer and desk downstairs. My dad opted not to pay the $4.99 to have Office Max put it together. “It’s probably only in two pieces,” he said.

Colin and I were both home when they got there and Dad handed Colin the keys to his car and told him to bring in “the package” in the back of the Jeep. Mom, Dad, and I were talking in the kitchen for several minutes before Colin came back, somehow managing to open the door with one hand and hold this gigantic box in the other. Deeply engrossed in whatever we were discussing, nobody noticed the gigantic racket he was making as the poor kid struggled to get it in the house. After a minute or so of banging noises, a roughly 3′ x 3′ x 4′ box on legs went by us, saying “No thank you, family, I don’t need any help.”

We laughed sheepishly as Colin thunked the big box on the floor and said “Danny can put it together.”

I rolled my eyes, but my dad said “Go ahead, it won’t be hard. It’s only in two pieces.”

Dan: “You should have just paid the $4.99.”
Dad: “I’m trying to be green and save money.”
Mom: “What’s green about saving money?”
Dad: “I’m saving my green.”
Danny: “I would have paid the $4.99”
Colin: “Yeah, that would be green and save energy. Ours.”
Dad: “Office Max probably makes a ton of money off lazy people that do that. This will only take 30 seconds. It’s only in two pieces.”

I opened the box and pulled out seven pieces, a box of screws, an Allen wrench, and a bag of wheels. “You should have paid the $4.99, Dad.” “Oh well,” said Dad, “it still can’t be but so hard.”

The directions had me stumped by step two.

Connecting the wheels to the “star base” was not much of a problem. But when I put on the cylindrical part that actually holds the “chair” section to the “base” section, nothing held it there. “Mom, I can’t figure this thing out by myself.” I took off the cylindrical mechanism and handed it to her. Colin walked away before anything could be handed to him, probably to relax in the old computer chair that has now made it to his room.

Said mom: “Well it goes right here.” She placed it in the same place from whence I’d just removed it, in the same way the directions showed to do so. Nothing held it in place.

Oh well. We went on.

Assembly of the “chair” section meant using the box of screws. We managed to attach the “gas lift” mechanism to the bottom, which should have been the complicated part. Flipping it over, we began the “easy” assembly of the seat, back, and two armrests. Mom held each piece in place as I began to place the washers and screws and tighten them. By this time we’d spent twenty minutes putting together this “two piece” chair that should have theoretically taken 30 seconds. Dad was now observing again.

Dad: “Dan, use the other end of the Allen wrench, you’ll get more leverage.”
Danny: “Dad, I’ve put together a lot of crap with an Allen wrench at Goody’s and Albemarle Music.”
Dad: “Yeah, okay. But use the other end. You’ll get more leverage.”
Danny: “I will turn it over when I get to where it needs to be really tightened.  Right now I just want it to turn quickly.”
Dad: “Right. With the other end you’ll get more leverage.”
Danny: “I want it to turn fast right now while I’m screwing it in, until it gets tight. I can’t turn it as fast if I flip it the other direction and hold the long end.”
Mom: “You’re just like your dad.”
Danny and Dad: “Hey!”

By this time, the screw was in plenty far and began to resist as I tightened it. I flipped the Allen wrench around (just as I had intended to do) and my dad thought he’d won. “See. You get more leverage.” My hand flew off the Allen wrench. “See, I can’t hold onto it. You should have paid the $4.99.”

We attached the two armrests to the seat. Next was connecting the back to the armrests so it would stay in place relative to all three other components. I began with the fifth screw so far out of six total.

Dad: “Will you turn that Allen wrench around? You’ll get more leverage.”
Danny: “I will when it starts to get tight.”
Dad: (Reaching for the wrench and then stopping himself multiple times) You just need to- Will you turn it ar- I’m just gonna- mmm.”
Mom: “Do you just want to do it yourself?”
Dad: “So I don’t have to watch? Yes.”

Dad took the Allen wrench, which I gladly ceded as I stood up from a crouching position on the floor and traded places with him to watch the continued efforts struggle.

After ten more minutes, Dad still hadn’t managed to line up both the screw holes both the left and right side of the seat back at the same time and get a screw through one of them without turning the seat back to a position that would leave it impossible to finish the other side. Finally, I placed the seat back in the correct position, my mom held it there, and my dad started to screw it together.

He turned the screw. And turned the screw. And turned the screw. “It won’t go in there.”

Danny: “Maybe you should turn the Allen wrench around and get some more leverage.”
Dad: “Danny!”
Danny: “Or you could have just paid the $4.99.”
Dad: “Danny!”

By this point my mom and I were laughing too hysterically to really be helpful anymore. I’m not even exactly sure what held the components of the chair together until Dad actually got it screwed together.

It turned out to be a really comfortable chair, and a good hour of family entertainment. But next time they buy a disassembled piece of furniture, I’m going to Adam’s house. And next time I buy a piece of furniture, I’m paying the $4.99.

Door-Holding Follow-Up

COA definitely wins in friendly attitude revolving (no pun intended) around doors. Include a “Gracias, Señor,” and a “Thanks,” to the appreciation tally. To the other-people-holding-the-door tally can be added a guy that hung on to the outside door to the AE Building stairwell, which would not normally open from the outside (and therefore saved me from going through three other doors), plus they guy stood there for a full ten seconds before I got up the brick steps to reach him. Way to go above and beyond.

"Scratch That"

I remember this time when I was in junior high. We were on vacation in Atlanta during Christmas break, getting to hang out with family and friends there. In fact, it probably wasn’t more than six months after we had moved away from Atlanta, because as I remember I was still weirded out by the fact that my best friend was dating the girl I’d broken up with because I’d moved.

But weirded out or not, it didn’t affect our relationship at all. The two of us were happy to hang out together, and one night during the week we went to the mall. And by “we went,” I mean that my mom dropped us off and then came back to meet us at the entrance to J.C. Penny sometime before 9:00.

I thought my friend was the coolest guy on the face of the earth. He saw every movie that hit the theatres. He played trombone (which was infinately less dorky than the clarinet). He wore funny t-shirts and a backwards ball cap, and actually had 20 pounds on me that allowed him to fit into JNCOs. For a not-quite-thirteen-year-old in 1998, that was as cool as it got.

We looked around at PacSun and wherever else he thought was cool. And at some point we stopped at some trendy smoothie shop that had just opened to get a snack.

They guy working there was probably sixteen, but he seemed immensley older and cooler than me, or even my best friend. I don’t really remember anything about him except that he had spikey blond hair and a black apron and he had the kind of chill, trendy vocabulary that I understood, but never would have strung together in cool sentences in the same way.

I also remember him because he genuinely smiled at us the whole time we were there.

Most people working at hole-in-the-wall food joints in the mall will only talk to you for the bare minimum amount of time and with the fewest, least enthusiastic amount of words that it takes to recieve an order and hand you a meal, all the while with a totally slack expression. That goes double when they are dealing with two twelve-year-old boys, who they seem to assume are too idiotic to understand the menu and count change on their own (and which I was always prepared to take offense to, as my mom encouraged me to order my own food from about as early as I could actually remember what I liked at different places).

At any rate, the guy actually treated us like we were his buddies, and didn’t seem condescending at all. He probably just laughed to himself after we left, but he did seem like a really nice guy. And my friend just totally fed off his cool demeaner and trendy slang. I recognized that for what it was even then, but I still wished I was as cool as either one of them.

After we had both ordered, my friend decided to make a change. He had asked for an orange soda with whatever he got. He probably decided he was running low on fundalation, something else I recognized for what it was even at the time, but made no mention of (in sociology, that’s dealing with a “faulty performance,” which we do because we assume at some point in the future we will need someone else to ignore a faulty performance on our part- I did pay attentionin Mrs. Belloat’s class!).

At any rate he said (and this is one of the few things about that night I remember so clearly), “You know what… scratch that orange soda.” To which the cool smoothie maker responded “Scratch the orange soda? Okay.”

Why in the heck am I telling you this story? Because the other day I used the phrase “scratch that.” Nobody other than me would take any notice of that. I don’t even realize when other people use that phrase. But it is a phrase that I just would not incorporate into my own vocabulary at all. It slips out when I’m trying to sound cool.

It’s not even a really cool phrase. But I strongly associate it with the spikey-haired trendy teenager and my cool friend that didn’t want an orange soda. I wonder how many of these things slip into our speech or our thoughts unconciously. It actually surprises me that I remember why this one entered my pwn personal lexicon, and interests me to no end that even though I know where it came from and why I say it and can distinguish it from other choices of oration, there it remains in the pool from which I draw my words.

Two-Sided Ministry

Something I missed when I came back form Ecuador was the active aspect of ministry, having a consistent outreach opportunity back here. Basically as soon as I came home, the Celebration service was put on hiatus, and thanks to school I didn’t have the opportunity to go to the Benjamin House or La Casa anymore. But thankfully, it has given me some very cool one-time opportunities in the last couple of months and has made me think about what I rally think ministry is and what a church should be.

All that aside, tonight was my second night going back to do the chapel service at the Benjamin House, and I’m immensely thankful that that has worked out. I know it was God’s timing for Toni and I both to be there last week so that I could do it by myself tonight, and what a ministry that is to those twelve awesome people. But I also know what a ministry it is to me.

One of the best things about worship there is that if I can’t find a page I’m looking for in the Bible,  or if I screw up the chords on my guitar or if I just can’t find the key vocally (I massacred “Amazing Grace” tonight), it’s okay. Not because I’m not giving my best to them and for God, but because they are so forgiving. And they are so honest and passionate in their worship. When Ben put his hands up tonight during a song or when Jason listed off nineteen prayer request, it’s not because they are thinking about how anyone else in the room looks at them or for any attention for themselves. It’s because they are taking everything that they are to God.

That was actually something I prayed about this morning, and it’s encouraging to see it lived out. I always ask for a volunteer to pray at the end because I know I’ll never be able to remember all the requests, and not for lack of trying, but simply because there are a ton of them. But Jason seems to always nail everything anyone says, and honestly, I’ve never heard a more heart-felt and eloquent praise brought to the Lord than the one he closed his prayer with tonight. By the time Ben says “Dis….MISSED!”my mind is racing with ways that they both encourage and inspire me to be grow in my faith.

Billy says my blog has recently become a rant against things I don’t like. I hope that was a little more uplifting.

I Grew Up With Technology… And I Still Appreciate It

All summer long, people would ask my mom “have you heard from Danny?” They would expect her to say that she gotten a hand-written letter a few weeks back and that I was otherwise totally out of contact eating wild jungle plants and sleeping on the ground. The last two weren’t too far from the truth for a good chunk of the time, but what people were surprised about was when she would say “Oh yeah, I talked to him on the phone for an hour last night.”

Just because I’ve “grown up with technology” as old people tell me all the time (despite the fact that a good portion of the wealthy octogenarians I know have had personal computers, cell phones, iPods, e-mail addresses, and GPSs,  far longer than I have) doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. As much as I acted like it was totally normal, it blew my mind a little bit that I could hear my mom’s voice going in a North American telephone and coming out of my computer speakers in Ecuador, and then a few weeks later that she could dial an Ohio area code and the phone would ring in Quito.

This afternoon I talked to Mike via Skype chat. He’s in Morocco. Trey sent a text message to Billy during church. Billy’s on a boat somewhere (and the in-church text was about church, so we’ll let it slide). I signed into facebook a few minuets ago and could immediately see that 33 of my friends were online. 33 people, some of whom I haven’t physically talked to, much less phsyically seen in years, and I can tell what they are doing, if and where they are still in school, if they are in a relationship, and sometimes their phone number, where even six years ago I would have thought I’d never have any chance to communicate with some of those very people. And aside from that, my short list of online friends covered seven states plus Ecuador.

Last Sunday I was proud of having been to four church services at four different churches in one day. I’ve had days where I have spoken (as in with my voice: I’m not even counting text and other correspondance) with people in four countries in a shorter amount of time.

As I said, I think that’s completely amazing. And that’s just inter-personal communication. That’s to say nothing of downloading content to my Xbox or having iTunes’ Genius tell me what music I’m missing or looking up the lyrics to a song in spanish when I can’t figure out what I thought was a nonsensical word that turns out to be “para alabar” mumled all together.

I wonder if we are rapidly approaching the oft-warned-of future state of humans existing only in the form of disembodied heads in front of screens that respond to telekinetic input. Probably not. But even though it doesn’t scare me, I do appreciate the technology around me, despite how many old people think I take it for granted (mainly because they think I maneuver through it all so easily, which is totally not as true as it seems).

In fact, thanks to wordpress, paypal, intersabre, domainsite, facebook, and a score of other communication utilities and companies, all I have to do is finish typing this paragraph and click “Publish” and I will start blowing other people’s minds, and my own as I think about at least three places where this will automatically appear and be read by family, friends, and even people I haven’t seen in years. Amazing!

Click.

Door-Holding: A Totally Unscientific Study

I hold doors for people. It’s just something I think you should do. Recently, there was an entry in another blog I read that mentioned holding doors as one in a top 5 or 10 list of manners that need to make a comeback. I agree. But before I read that article, I didn’t realize how much people don’t do something that comes automatically to me.

I can mentally hear my dad saying “grab that door!” but only to drag me out of a conversation or contemplative state where I’m not paying enough attention to notice a shopper at J.C. Penney piled high with bags and struggling to make her exit. I’m sure he must have ingrained those three words into my subconcious from as soon as I had accumulated enough mass to actually win a struggle against the heavy doors in most public places (which Mike Turner would tell you was when I was about 17).

So, now aware of my own good habit and another blogger’s judgement of American society to be lacking in the same, I’ve been paying attention when I approach an ingress or egress around other people.

My data collection would warrant a C in either of the experimental science courses I’m taking this semester. No rhyme or reason to it, except taking note of people’s reactions when I happen to think about it. But I feel like after a week of taking note, I can draw some conclusions and tack science up on my blog right up next to the English language on the list of things I massacre.

School seems to win in terms of everyone following propper door-holding etiquitte. I have to pass through three sets of doors in two buildings on my cross-campus walk to 9:30 Spanish lab twice a week. And even at 9:29 I’ve had professors, students, and the seeminly sole maintenance guy left on campus all pause for incriments of time ranging from a heartbeat or two to  an akward handful of seconds in an even more akward behind-the-back doo handle grasp to let me catch up to the open door, and I find myself doing the same thing.

Apparently, most stores have either automatic doors or a garage door that just stays open, but restaurants (I have the worst time spelling that word in Spanish or English. I think the “u” is poorly placed in both languages) tend to have heavy swinging doors and you are almost always approaching them along with other mealtime patrons. Several places in Elizabeth City (Ruby Tuesday’s Applebee’s and, strangely enough, the Ehringhaus St. Burger King) have two sets of double doors. This gives you the opportunity to hold a door and have one held for you, as long as whoever goes first is so kind. I’ve never seen anyone have the first door held for them and then fail to hold the second.

Just today I did the door-holding swap with a guy as we walked out with our double cheeseburger and whopper meals (is it stalkerish that I listen to what is handed to the other people in line?) and he smiled and gave me a manly nod as he passed through the outer set. I turned to face the parking lot and had to catch the door again when I realized there were two women coming in. As I hung onto it for them for just a couple seconds more, one said “thank you, sir” (the “sir” sounding more like she was talking to someone older and respected as opposed to something automatic or humorous- which is almost making me rethink the beard) and the other told me to “have a blessed day.”

Other public places fair pretty well, although at the bank, I’ve noticed people tend to be surprised if you hold the door for them. Especially because people tend to be almost racing you to it, making sure they beat you to the table with the deposit slips first, so they can have a head start filling out their life story on the thing and making it into and through the line in the shortest time. Verbal responses over the last two Fridays have ranged from “Oh!” to laughter (as we did the double-door-swap) to a totally shocked “Thank you!” all from males and all older than me (and this even at the downtown branch that is exponentially more friendly in general than it’s Ehringhaus Street counterpart).

I’ve heard horror stories of friend being ranted at for holding a door for a woman who turned out to be a feminist to the extreme that she wanted to open it for herself (and then the friend trying to politely explain that they hold doors for everyone, men too). And I have both thought “that guy should have held that door for me,” and “I should have held that for them.” But it seems to me that most of the time people know what to do when confronted with both a door and a fellow human being. I hope the non-door-holders will take a hint, but I’m thankful that in my experience, they are the few as opposed to the many.

H.G. Wells once said “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” And while controlling energy consumption is great too, I’ll settle for seeing a door held.

Sermónitos

We need a suffix in English that means “little.” “-ito/ita” is so useful en español.

I wrote recently about how I am nourished by my church family. I’m pretty sure there’s a better link I could use than that one, but there’s one reference for the moment.

Anyway, it was really cool to be at church yesterday both at First Baptist and First Methodist and hear several mini-sermons from various church members. Judy did her spiel about giving, and Diana Gallop gave her thoughts on the spiritual discipline of Giving. It stuck with me enough to at least make it into my argument at discussion group, which was actually on a totally different topic (seriously? in that group?).

I actually made it into Steve Harris’ “State of the Church Address” at First Baptist (granted, it was an unnamed reference) and I’m not even technically a member of that church.  And then there was Adam’s discussion topic, which actually turned into less of a single discussion and more into Danny-and-Adam-start-with-a-topic-and-give-a-series-of-three-speeches-each-that-have-a-tiny-amount-of-connection-while-Jerry-concurs. I actually think we just stumped Jer and I’ll be interested to see both what he eventually comes up with (another internal processor… I think I know one of those already…) and if he flips out at much as me at his name being reduced to three letters just then. And Adam and I, though we were actually agreeing with each other nine out of ten times, actually made some interesting points. I leave judgment on the profundity of my own to him, but he got me thinking.

Just the fact that I’ve been open to that recently and been slammed with the depth of faith of the people around me has been really good. Challenging, yes, but what I asked for as well, and not a bad counter to that spiritual superiority thing that lurks up once in a while (that exact point is the one I’m sure I’ve written about recently and can’t find, and on which I’m expanding).

FBC Kids Missions Class

For the last two Wednesdays I’ve gone to First Baptist to talk to the kids’ missions class. First off, I can’t even begin to tell you how cool I think it is that they even have a kids’ missions class that studies missions and missionaries and different countries every week.

Cameron describes her view of missionaries (before becoming one) as people who were “just a little bit too excited about Jesus” and that even among great Christian people in the Church, the last thing you’d ever want to be was a missionary. I have to say that I felt pretty much the same way until only a few short years ago, probably mostly because of my lack of experience with career missionaries and a similar lack of understanding both of what goes into and comes out of missions.

How much more fruitful my two short-term mission experiences in high school would have been if I’d had a better understanding of the whole idea of missions for years by then.

And I hope that those dozen or so kids actually did take something away from my and Jerry’s experiences other than how cool they’re going to think I am because they all think I’m fluent in Spanish and can play anything by ear (I’m translating the postcards they wrote and Heather gave me the key for a 3-chord song that thus was really simple to pick up).

What’s cool is I feel like they did take something from it. And that’s way more due to Heather than to me or Jerry. I taught them a couple songs (I should have videoed all the gringitos doing “Yo Yo” for Sarita) and told them what they meant, but all these well-trained little critters actually asked what it meant, delving a lot deeper into the theological realm than I’m used to for mostly second- to fifth-graders. I told them about eating cuy, and they weren’t any more grossed out than most of the high school seniors on my teams. They seemed to grasp pretty well the idea of people living in the jungle and lacking many of the things people here don’t tend to think they could get along without.

And through that, a bunch of elementary-schoolers actually understand pretty well the purpose and importance of missions, and that we are all missionaries, whether in a foreign land or at the corner of Dyer and Main.

I’m proud of them. I’m a little jealous that they have this at their age. And I’m fueled, hopeful, and desperate for that “active ministry” I mentioned to Dana and Teddy.

Kids Missions Class

🙂