Move on, Casanova.

I've never been much of a Casanova. I did start noticing girls in kindergarten, though. I know I had a crush on a girl, but I can't remember either a name or a face(I do remember the crush I had in first grade ... Alicia Castro, if you're out there in the cyberworld, this post goes out to you). I do remember drawing her a doodle and waiting until we all walked out for recess to put it on her desk. When she got back, she picked it up and threw it on the ground. Good way to start the game, me.

I started dating late in life. Everyone else had been hooking up for years before I ever did. Yes, ladies and gentleman, I had my first girlfriend in eighth grade. We started going out the Wednesday right before Thanksgiving break. I forgot to get her number so I had no way of calling her; all break-long I mulled over the fact that for the first time in my life I was no longer single.

You see, this was a pretty big deal to me. I remember thinking that if I ever did get a wife, she would sit around all day and I would do all the work. I'd show her how awesome I was (and grateful, I suppose). I had taken my first step toward the realization of this goal.

Let's fast-forward, oh, a week-and-a-half, shall we? Having "hung out" with Darcie (that was her name, keep up with the story, jeeze) for quite some time (maybe ten days[not counting weekends]), I was quite shocked to receive a letter in homeroom that started "we need to talk..." Unfortunately, that was the high point of the letter. She broke up with me in letter-form, passing it through maybe eight people's hands before reaching me. Oy. Well, it was the eighth grade, so you can't really blame her.

I was crushed. Ha, not really. I didn't have enough time to really get attached to her. I did, however, get to know her best friend during that blitz of a relationship. We started dating a few months later.

Maybe I am a bit of a Casanova.

It pains me to say that this relationship that I'm about to divulge is arguably my most involved relationship to date (no pun intended.) Melissa and I started going out in the middle of eighth grade and I finally broke it off Christmas time Sophomore year in high school. Two years. Having a two year relationship isn't that noteworthy, but mind you, it started in eighth grade. By the beginning of my sophomore year, I had friends asking me if we were going to get married.

At 15 years old. Married. Bah.

This is when I started rethinking this whole thing. Melissa moved away after eighth grade to a small town an hour's drive from where I lived. Roughly, this translates to not seeing each other often, going months at a time without seeing each other. Early on I noticed an air of conflict that always hung around her, but, hey, I was back on the road to my fantasy husbandship so I ignored it. Until one friend said something along the lines of "Two years? You guys are practically married. Are you gonna get married for real?" It was then that I started looking back at all of those signs I missed along the way.

The kicker was homecoming. I never liked school dances, but we went because that's what couples do, they go to dances. So sophomore year I dress up my nicest, stupid suit and my parents and I go pick her up (oh how I pine for the days before ownership of my own driving ability). We go to the stupid dance, meet up with her old friends that don't really care about her anymore and I've tried to keep up with just to appease the old lady.

Invariably, someone would walk by unknowingly oblivious to how close they came to death.

She'd see these people (well, girls, she apparently had no beef with the dudes) and cuss them out under her breath over things that they had done two years earlier.

Excuse me?

Two years ago? You're seriously holding onto someone blowing you off 24 months ago? Wow. Wowee wow wow. Who knew you could hold such a grudge for so long? Okay, if one of the girls had, say, slipped sulphuric acid into her milk at lunch, that would be one thing. I'd accept a short sneer.

The moral of the story: MOVE ON! Don't hold on to things that make you upset. We're only here for a short time; the fact that you're angry at a person for so long only steals life from you. The other person probably doesn't even know you're upset, so they're doing just fine. Learn to grow. Get everything you can out of each day.

Suck the marrow from the bones of life. Don't cuss the bone out because it was talking to your boyfriend after second period.

Shiny and More Noticeable

Tonight was the official reception by the church welcoming me as youth pastor. It was a lot of fun, and the interactions with everyone filled up my social bar (it's been pretty low with me adjusting to living alone [I'm such a nerd, I just made a "The Sims" reference {social bar}]).

Now, I'm not one who normally talks about this sort of thing (toilet humor and related topics aren't really my schtick) but I will this time. Afterwards I go to use the restroom and as I'm washing my hands I look in the mirror and see it.

A Pimple.

It's right under my glasses line and it's pretty big. Luckily, it's not one of those "ready-to-pop" ones, rather it's more or less a raised red mark. I had no idea.

Awesome. I totally went through this whole reception like this. Everyone staring at the new youth pastor. Perfect timing, me.

Whoever said that you'd no longer deal with blemishes when you stop being a teenager sits on a throne of lies. I could maybe blame it on a steady diet of pizza for the past week (not intentionally, though that's another story altogether). Maybe it wasn't as big a deal as it seems like it should have been, but if I had known about it I could have put some Karmex on it to make it shiny and more noticeable.

If Karmex had made their product in such a fashion, I definitely would have used the Karmex Medicated ARROW.

Uncle Bob Says, "Samantha, NIV is the DEVIL!"

I have pinned up on my wall a sheet I tore from a tract. As a new youth pastor, I had the exhilarating job of sifting through all of the stuff that had accumulated throughout the previous youth ministries. One pull of a file cabinet drawer revealed something that I did not expect to see: a "This Was Your Life" tract. Only God knows how long it's been since I've seen one of these; it was most likely a hazing missions trip day on some non-descript urban street, passing them out to homeless people and affluents alike. The point of the tract is simple, and the illustrations are humorous (intentionally? Probably not.) Essentially, a man that sinned his whole life dies. He is then shown his life of sin and is cast away. The last page is a "don't be like Harry" (let's just call the man in the tract Harry) page that outlines a simple salvation process.

Actually, I do remember the last time I saw one of those. It was in a bathroom. I thumbed through it and noticed something strange: on the last page, over the part that led in a sinner's prayer, a white sticker was placed and inked by hand were the words "GET BAPTIZED." (!!!) Hmm... the tract leaver must have been Church of Christ.

There were maybe forty or fifty of them in the file cabinet. Underneath, there were a couple of tracts that were obviously made by the same company. The sheet on my wall is from the one called "Samantha the Witch." You see, Samantha liked Harry Potter. Her and her friends were dealing with stuff in their lives and because of the fact that they couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and real-life, they decided to try witchcraft. The dialogue and portrayal of the girls looked more like a storybook for SNL. Frankly, it was absurd. I could almost see the little white-haired woman or rosy-cheeked Southern Preacher typing out those laughable lines("Harry Potter does it, I think I can too!"), nodding a bit to themselves because they had truly captured the process by which a normal group of girls gets caught up in witchcraft.

Samantha is saved by "Uncle Bob" (Who's slicked back black hair and thin pencil mustache mirrors the Fred Armisen's Fericito in the SNL skit "!Show Biz Grande Explosion!") and he gives her a coupla pointers. His best one is the one on my wall. I will type it out EXACTLY as it's written: "Samantha, you'll need a Bible to read every day ... a King James Bible. It's the only English version Satan hasn't messed with."

Wow. The first thing that came to mind when I read this was when I worked at a Christian Bookstore my senior year in High school (oy, that feels like such a long time ago). I was working with a woman who was looking for a Bible. I could tell that she was very traditional, so I pulled out the NASB and New King James and began telling her about the differences and the similarities. She nodded for a moment; I don't think she was really listening. Without warning, she scoops the bible up and reads the spine. " NEW King James? No thank you, I only read the real Bible." Here is where she throws the Bible back on the counter and storms out of the store.

I really don't understand this viewpoint. Okay, I grew up making this argument, but that was because I made it out of ignorance. It was what I was told. "Only read the Authorized 1611 KJV, Aaron. All the other ones are written from inferior texts." I didn't know any better, so I'd nod and accept this statement as gospel. Turns out that it's not true, and if anything, it's the other way around.

Okay, having a favorite translation is fine. Mine's the NIV (it's the first one I actually read). Many people older than me grew up in churches that only used KJV out of tradition or the fact that there weren't really any other options. There were paraphrases, true, like the Living Bible, or the Cotton Patch Bible, but these were inferior, essentially they were a man sitting down with the KJV and rewriting what he thought it meant in contemporary english. The effort is commendable. Jesus didn't speak in the high language as portrayed in the KJV. He was a carpenter that talked like a carpenter.

My home church used to have an Easter production. They went all out, rebuilding the sanctuary and bringing in sheeps, goats, and camels. Funny, though, everyone in the production spoke normal english, but when Jesus spoke, he spoke in King James English.