Pwnd

Last night I was totally pwnd by the 5th and 6th grade Thrive class. Never in my life have I had a group of kids destroy me like that. Granted, they weren't all bad the entire time. Some of the kids were even good the entire time. The problem is there were 10 of them and 2 or 3 of them were not only bad they were influential. There's one thing that I'm 100% certain about, that will never happen again. Mothers will be called and kids will be asked not to come back the next week if they ever act like that again. Up to this week the kids had been relativity well.

On the positive side I don't think they will ever forget my visual aid for when we talked about the helmet of salvation. Think military Kevlar helmet and a large knife. And if that sounds dangerous to you, your wrong. It's not. It just looks dangerous which is the whole point of wearing a helmet. Next time we are going to talk about the breastplate of righteousness. I'm bringing a military flak jacket. But don't worry, even if I get the urge, I will not be shooting any of the children. Next time they will be well behaved, I'm sure of it.

A guide on How to Deal with the Paparazzi

Now mind you I have never at any point in my life been famous. No one makes a living taking pictures of me in awkward situations. If I want people to see me in awkward or embarrassing situations I have to take the pictures myself and then post them on facebook. Even though I ma in no way qualified to do so, I have written the following guide on how to deal with the Paparazzi.

1) Make them homemade cookies. Put laxatives in the homemade cookies

2) Everyone has a mom. Get the name and phone numbers of the paparazzi's moms and then call their mothers and complain about how their sons are bothering you.

3) Drive a 1986 Honda. When the paparazzi recognizes you say your flattered but your someone else and hit them up for gas money.

4) Hire someone to follow them around taking pictures.

5)Invite the paparazzi over to take pictures of your new baby. When they get there insist that they agreed to babysit, give them $10 for pizza and go see a movie.

6) Give them photography advice and insist that they are doing it all wrong.

7) Travel with a fat guy who walks backwards in front of you mooning the paparazzi.

8) Answer all of their questions using the Socratic method.

9) Where a hijab.

10) Only travel with people who are much more famous and interesting than you.

Devils Advocate

I was recently accused of playing the devils advocate so in honor of that accusation I wrote this blog.

Devil's Advocate: Someone who takes a position he or she does not agree with for the sake of argument. This process can be used to test the quality of the original argument and identify weaknesses in its structure.

The Devils Advocate was the common name for the position of Promoter of the Faith (a canon lawyer) in the Catholic church. It was the Devils Advocates job to argue against the canonization of a candidate. The Devils Advocate (Promoter of the Faith) would argue against God's Advocate (Promoter of the Cause) in the decision of rather or not the title of sainthood should be bestowed upon a candidate.

The Devils Advocate, although not always well liked, did play an important role in the Catholic chuch. Being called a Devils Advocate reminded me of a time when Iplayed the part of Devils Advocate in a very literal way. This happened years ago in the Sr. High Sunday School class that I substitute taught. The teacher had the idea of putting the divinity of Christ on trial. There would be two lawyers, witnesses and the teenagers would be the jury. I played the part of the devil. I tricked the witnesses into quoting scripture out of context, confusing prophecy, and twisting the truth. And, in the end, the unexpected happened, the devil won. At first that may sound like a Sunday School fail. After all, this was Sunday School and God is always supposed to win, right. The students went home confused, questioning their faith. A lot of them had never read the scriptures for themselves and just relied on what they were told. Jesus is God because the pastor said so or because their parents said so. But now, what was true? This forced them to wrestle with and take ownership of their own faith. They went home and they read the scriptures for themselves and in the end saw past my tricks. In the end I lost and God won.

Video Tour of My Art

This video is about 3 minutes long and the quality doesn't do the art justice but it will give you an idea of what I have hanging. If you want better quality come over and see the stuff yourself.

Video Tour of my Art Gallery (hallway) from Dan Thoms on Vimeo.

(don't) MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

It is important in life that you do not always mind your own business. After teaching 5th and 6th grade Thrive tonight, Myra one of my non-biological nieces, and I made a quick stop at the McDonald's drive true. Although it turned out to not be so quick. Side note: America is getting fat because they are going through the McDonald's drive through at 9:30 at night. There were about 5 cars in front of us and one behind us. As we sat there we could hear a voice, a loud angry voice coming from the car in the rear.
"Why are you f***ing sighing when I talk to you?"
"I was just sighing, that's all."
"What's f***ing wrong with you? Don't you sigh when I talk to you? Do you hear me? Don't you f***ing sigh."
And it went on and on it went. He yelled and cursed and yelled and cursed. Finally I was the next person in line. She was crying by now and he was still yelling. And that's when I made the decision to put my car in park, take off my seat belt, open my door, and walk back there. That's not something that I normally do nor is it something that I particular enjoy doing. It's a good way to get beat up.
I put my hand on his window and looked in. She was a mess. Her hair was covering her face and she was sobbing. He looked up at me and I said. "Is everything all right back here?" As he looked up at me and I could tell, he wanted to kill me. If we weren't in a public place he would have punched me right in the face. And let me tell you, that's a fight he would have won and not just because I'm a pacifist. The look in his eyes was pure evil.
"Mind your own business." he said.
"Is everyone all right back here?"
"Mind your own business." he said again through clenched teeth.
"Look, if I hear a women crying I make sure she is ok."
"I said mind your own business."
"If there's a women crying I make sure she's ok, are you cool with that? Ok. Ok."
As he glared at me I walked slowly back to my car. There was really nothing I could do. If a man will treat a women like that in public how does he treat here at home? And he did all this with their small child in the back seat. I guess at least she knows someone cares. As I pulled up to pay for my food I asked the cashier if I could pay for the peoples food behind me and he said sure. And then I left. That was it. If you think about it say a quick prayer for these folks, whoever they are. They need it.

Your It

There are normally two reactions. There are the parents who see us and are scared for their kids safety and there are the parents who say, "just ask if you can play too." When the kids and I go to the park we play tag. And when we play tag we play hard. We run fast, jump far, go the wrong way on slides, fall down, get up and then run some more. I always come home with bruises but that's ok. Some things are more important than that ever looming to do list. Tag is one of them.

Random Stuff

- The guy in front of me at the dollar store paid with a $100 bill. Big ballin. He could have gotten 98 more items.

- I saw a little girl walking down the street in a Halloween costume today. At least I hope it was a Halloween costume because she had blood coming out of her mouth.

- Two of the girls in my 5th and 6th grade class wanted to fill their bowls up with water and drink like dogs. I said ok and they did.

- I went to a costume party dressed as my friend Adam. I didn't tell him that I was planning on doing this. He showed up at the party wearing the same shirt as me and a headband similar to mine. Coincidence, perhaps, strange, yes.

- I bought three cordless phones at the thrift store for $3. One needed a battery. So heres a math question for you. What is a better deal?
a) You can buy a new battery at Best Buy for $18 or b)you can buy a new phone with a battery in it for $16. If you chose a or b than you were wrong. The answer was c)buy the battery directly from Hong Kong on eBay for $3. And if you were wondering, but is it hand made the answer is why yes it is. The auction says it is a hand made battery.

- My microwave meal says the the internal temperature of my food should be 165 degrees as checked by a food thermometer. Using a food thermometer would kind of defeat the entire purpose of eating a microwave meal now wouldn't it?

- I slipped on something, fell in the grass and hurt myself. I thought that I was unlucky until I saw that there was a dead slug on my knee. That's one unlucky slug.

What I've Learned (from teaching 5th and 6th grade)

Things I've learned from teaching 5th and 6th grade on Wednesday nights at the Vineyard Westside.

1) If you do a craft involving paint one of them will cover both of their hands with paint.
2) If one kid covers both hands with paint at least two more will follow suit.
3) If three kids cover their hands in paint one of them will take it to a new level and paint their face blue.
4) The three with paint on their hands will then smear it all the way down the handrails so that another 10 kids can also have painted hands.
5) No matter what you do one of them will say in a dramatic tone, "Why are you doing this to us."
6) Eight 5th and 6th graders can eat a combined 40 s'mores.
7) If you let them serve themselves ice-cream at least four of them will take approximately 25% of an entire container.
8) They will have licked half of it before you can tell them to put it back.
9) A 5th or 6th grader cannot eat that much ice-cream. Shoot, I can't eat that much ice-cream and I can eat.
10) If you do anything outside at night the neighbors pit bull will be annoyed as will the pit bulls owner.
11) A room full of 5th and 6th graders has more energy than the rest of the church combined.
12) The key to teaching 5th and 6th grade is to take lots of deep breaths.
13) One 5th grade girl can eat 10 s'mores. That's over an entire pack of Hersey miniatures.
14) If they had an anthem it would start with, "look what I can do." and end with, "mine is better."
15) Teaching this class is both mentally and physically exhausting.
16) I have one goal for this class. I want these kids to know that life is bigger than what they want.
17) This will be worth it.
18) This is worth it.

Where you wearing Pants?

Have you ever had a bad or confusing dream? I had one of those last night. Now this dream may not sound bad to you but it was to me. In my dream my brother told me that he no longer wanted to go to auctions. He said that it was a waist of time and wanted to focus only on high value items. From that point forward he would only be leaving left bids* at auctions. Now that is what you call a dumb idea. For one thing leaving bids is generally a bad idea. The live bidders always have the advantage and the auctioneer, if dishonest, can run your bid up to make you pay more. Plus, I enjoy live auctions. So I would just like to say to the dream version of my brother Phil, that was a dumb idea.

Speaking of dreams I came up with this theory. Have you ever had a memory that you weren't sure was real? Was it a dream or did that really happen? Well, next time that occurs ask yourself this simple question, "In this memory was I wearing pants." If the answer is no than it was probably a dream.


*Left Bid- A left bid is a bid written down and given to the auctioneer when a person cannot physically attend an auction. The auctioneer then is supposed to bid for you against the live bidders.

...or die trying

I just can't seem to figure this thing out. I'm not used to that. Teaching, leading, watching, moderating... 5th and 6th grade Thrive may kill me. And the thing is I've taught these grades before. I used to have a class of 12 every week, by myself. The thing I don't understand is what I need to be doing differently. It's not that the kids aren't having fun because I'm pretty sure most of them are. The problem is almost nothing that I plan works correctly. Tonight for instance. I got there tonight and immediately had to relocate the entire classroom. During the coarse of the night I realized that there was no air in my room, no trash can, no pens, no paper towels, and no cups. Kind of reminded me of when I first moved out of my parents house into my own apartment and realized I didn't have toilette paper. Don't ask. Then the PS2 that I brought wouldn't work. So, we played a game (the non-video type). Problem is, the kids kept cheating so we had to quit. The blindfolded relay race worked, kind of. It took about 10 times longer than I expected but it did work. The snacks kind of worked except we had no cups. One of the kids located some bottled water for us because like I said, there's no air up there and it is really, really hot. The quiz worksheets worked. They worked last week too so I know those are a keeper. The class discussion worked for the most part. I had good notes to use but I just couldn't figure out how to use them. So, anyhow, I'm an optimist, I'll get this thing running smoothly or die trying. Next week I will try something different. If however I do die trying, set my body in the foyer as a warning to anyone planning on having kids.

Ps. No your kid's not being bad at Thrive.

Há alguém aqui que fala inglês?

Have you ever been to a party where you didn't know anyone? That doesn't happen to me very often. Last night however, I went to a party where I encountered something of a similar nature. I went to a party where I couldn't understand anyone. Everything was in Portuguese. Now, this shouldn't have been a surprise considering it was a Brazilian party. Side note, I think I would like Brazilian music a lot better if it were in English. (But then again I guess it wouldn't be Brazilian if it weren't in Portuguese. I regress.) Luckily for me as the night progressed the conversations and music gradually transitioned from Portuguese into English. (I think that transition happened because American guys realized there was a party full of Brazilian girls going on). This party had a lot of two things, dancing Brazilian girls and steak. I have one distinct memory that combines these two things. I was looking over at the grill where there was a hot steak waiting to be eaten. In front of the grill was a rather attractive girl dancing. As I sat there I kept thinking to myself, "She's blocking the steak. Ok, move a little to the right. Ok, good now, oh no she's back in front of the steak." I didn't want to push her out of the way but that was some good steak. Side note number two, quite a few people at the party thought I looked like this guy. Huh, who knew, I look Brazilian.


Há alguém aqui que fala inglês?
Yes

This Weeks Service - Two Tumbs Up, Two Thumbs Down

Let me first preface this blog by saying I thought this weeks service at VWS was fantastic. However, I had a friend with me today who had a slightly different opinion. His name is Michael and he has been living on this planet for four years now. Before that he didn't exist because he is only four years old. I warned him that he probably wouldn't enjoy the service but he insisted. After the first song he looked up at me and said, "That was a good song, I liked it." But as soon as the second song started he looked back up and said with a look of dismay, "Another song?" After the third song he wanted to know if we were going to sing forever. Finally all of the songs were over and he asked "Are we going to watch a movie now?" When I told him that some guy was going to talk to us now he wasn't thrilled. During the short video clip he kept asking, "What's funny, what are you laughing at?" Eventually Michael fell asleep.

I know a guy who once told me that he thought that we were doing church incorrectly. Everyone should be in the same service he said. Separating the parents and the children is the wrong way to do things. I told him, "Ok, I guess we will just have to eliminate adult church and all the adults can come to kids church." Ryan, Jon, I give today's service two thumbs up. Unfortunately my rating is negated by Michael's two thumbs down. Better luck next week.