Baby Races

Baby Races!

There was a grand plan for this weekend. A bunch of friends of mine from Pennsylvania would be coming down and hanging out with me and some others from church for a great weekend of reconnecting and fun. I had nosebleed tickets to a Wizard’s Basketball game and everything.

As with all grand plans, this one too failed miserably. With work, personal lives and irritation about people waffling (changing their minds) the trip just kind of fell apart. On the up side I now know that at least Abby and I could meet about half way without a problem, so I’m hoping we get to meet again soon.

The grand plan did leave me with one problem though, what to do with the basketball tickets.

So, while a bunch of youth went off to ski, I decided to let the first 5 who weren’t skiing come on to the basketball game. In the end only 4 were able to come, but man did we have a blast. 4 people who barely knew each-other spent the afternoon taking the Metro into DC, having lunch in a “huge” Burger King (as Jessica called it), Christy running in front of a TV camera and bouncing around to Jared and Christy making me go deaf. Oh yeah, and the Häagen-Dazs ice cream afterward… that could never be forgotten.

While the Wizards are an ok basketball team, the 5 of us were only somewhat interested. What really perked us up though was the Baby Races!

A basketball game is very different from the Redskins football games I’m used to. The basketball stadium (is it called a stadium?) was almost homey compared to the open field that seats 93,000 people.

At the second time-out they brought out these big plastic tarps with 1 - 6 lanes labeled on them. Then brave parents plopped their babies down (these babies couldn’t walk) on one end and encouraged them to crawl to the other side. At half time this was repeated 3 more times for the “playoffs”.

I have to tell you, this was awesome. This must be why people like cockroach racing or rat races. Some babies just sat with one parent and cried. Others took off… sideways (I swear the kid in lane 2 covered more than twice the distance of the lane, passing backward and forward across other lanes). Some got half way, sat, and just stopped to look at the sights (the kid I was betting on did that… dumb kid). I still believe the winner cheated, since the parent at the other end of the lane was holding a bottle to “encourage” the baby. But really, everyone there had a blast. We were cheering on our chosen baby and I think very few people actually got up at that half time.

It got me thinking about what we do in youth group and at other events. We always seem to stick with what’s expected.

At a Redskins game we tend to see the Redskins camp kids come out and do cheers or compete to throw a football. Every now and then it’ll be cool when they present medals to soldiers serving our country. But we never see anything really unexpected.

Maybe this happens all the time at basketball. But I have to saw that I was shocked and loved it. I also loved that they shot off fireworks announcing each player… inside! They even had boxes that shot out flames which changed color (I have GOT to get me some of those for youth group, imagine shooting off flames every time I walk in the room… awesome). It was all totally unexpected but it really raised the energy level of the room.

When is the last time you went into church and the priest held up snakes as an example, or shot electricity through a pickle to make it glow (ok, Rob has done both of those in the past year, but most churches don’t). When’s the last time you went to a meeting and the leader said that before you all start you’ll be having slinky races down the steps? Or, for your last party, did you sit around the table talking or playing board games… or did you all decide to see who could jump the highest, or make the strongest cocktail?

I think we look at this world too often and do what’s normal, what’s expected. Why don’t we jump out of the norm every now and then and really make the people around us laugh and smile? I’d challenge you to step out of normalcy and create a Baby Race the next time you’re hanging out with someone.

Peace,
+Tom/Bob

posted by Tom at 5:11 PM