Last night Zaque participated in a youth activity at church where they played “bigger and better”. They divided into teams of about four teenagers, and each team was given a standard #2 pencil. Then they were supposed to go out to the surrounding neighborhoods and talk to people to see if they could “trade up” for something better. Whoever had the coolest thing at the end of the night was the winner, so to speak.
One team headed off to the home of one of the kids, and came back with their SUV. I don’t think that was in the spirit of the game, though…
Anyway, Zaque’s team walked to our neighborhood and saw an older woman sitting on her front porch smoking a cigarette. They walked up to her, explained who they were and what they were doing, and asked if she’d be willing to trade for a #2 pencil. She agreed, went into the house, and came back with a nice souvenir pocketknife. Very nice!
They went to another house and knocked on the door to find an “older dude”. That’s what Zaque said– he could’ve been 30 or 60, I don’t know. Anyway, this guy apparently used the phrase “right on” quite a bit, so after the boys explained what they were doing, he kept nodding and saying “right on”. After thinking a moment, he told them to wait while he found something in the house.
Returning to the door, he gave them sixty dollars in cash. Yeah. Apparently Zaque and his friends were dumbfounded… they didn’t expect that at all. Of course they were pretty happy about it! They were going to leave, but the man asked if they’d be willing to pray with him for a minute. Since they were from a church, he thought maybe they could all pray together. Zaque said they knelt in a circle, held hands, and the guy delivered sort of a rambling prayer that, at points, asked that the boys be blessed as they walked around the neighborhood looking for good things.
After that I guess they decided they didn’t want to give away cold hard cash, so they went straight back to the church. Splitting that four ways worked out pretty well, and Zaque said it was a “really fun activity”. Now I’m sure he’ll blow it all on Hot Cheetos or something.
Still, that’s admittedly better than a #2 pencil.