We had just finished a church outing going to Valley Fair, a theme park and the bus was as noisy as ever… everyone was tired. A few people were TRYING to sleep, but most of the kids were yelling and throwing things, like kids do. We were only about 20 minutes from my house… but that wasn’t our destination. We were headed back to church… about 45 minutes away… and I was thinking how much that stank.. we were going to drive with in three minutes of my house… and I was going to have to WATCH it pass… you could SEE it from the highway. It was late… and my mom was going to have to drive 25 minutes INTO town, only to have to drive us right back… if only we could just get dropped off… I was ready to go home… Sitting in the very back of the bus I thought about it… Pastor Chad wanted to get back to church as soon as he could, and so he didn’t want to take the detour to our house, but he had said, that if there was a place that my mom could meet him on the side of the highway without pulling off, then he could maybe do that. But he didn’t want to pull off… and so my little brain was working… and when I say little… I mean very little…cause what the next thing out of my mouth was… was kinda stupid. There is a bar right near our house. You can see it from my bedroom window. It’s right off the highway, and sometimes my parents would drop us off in the summer and let us run home from there. The bar has been there as long as I can remember… and never has there been any trouble for us with it… I consider it relatively safe and while I wouldn’t go there alone at night, it wouldn’t bother me to get of with my siblings… So I came up with a very easy solution to my problem… Pastor could just stop off right by the turn, we could jump out… and run home ourselves… We wouldn’t even have to wake my mom up! She could sleep right through it… no phone call in the middle of the night… It works good for everyone! Easy breezy! A brilliant solution…! I wanted to explain it to pastor Chad but one problem… he was driving… And I was in the back… The bus was so full that I couldn’t get to the front without crawling over dozens of coolers and backpacks and everything else under the sun… and it was so noisy that my first few yells of “Pastor Chad..! Pastor Chad!” Couldn’t even be heard… A bit frusterated that no one was paying attention I stood to my feet...As much as the packed quarters could allow and is, and put my hands around my mouth, and in my loudest most attention catching voice I yelled out, “PASTOR CHAD! CAN YOU DROP ME OFF AT THE LIQUOR STORE???!!!!!”
The once noisy bus became completely silent… I had EVERYONES attention...for about two seconds and then gails of giggles erupted…It took me a few seconds to realize the implications of that statement… and then OH MAN! I was SOOO embarrassed… How dumb can you be…? I sank back into my chair… trying to disappear… after about five minutes of jokes on church youth group outings to local bars and hangouts, I was about ready to die… I’m not sure what Pastor Chad thought… but he drove me right to the door of my house…!


(2000..? 2001?)