Spades

This really has nothing to do with anything. Nothing really witty or profound here. Just an expression of how much I love playing a good game of spades. It is one of my natural highs.

I came to know the game my first year of college. I was a freshman at the University of Florida, my girlfriend had just broken up with me, and I was a lonely soldier. I had made some good friends in the campus ministry there, and thankfully they surrounded me with love. One of the ways they did this was with our Monday night hang-out time. About a half dozen of us had this ritual -- every Monday -- where we'd come together & first watch "Monday Night Raw." We were WWF wrestling fans. The Rock. Chris Jericho. We loved it. As soon as the show went off at 11 PM, we'd break out the cards, the goldfish crackers, and the store-brand Mountain Dew, and we'd play spades for hours. Sometimes to 3 or 4 in the morning. Those nights are some of my richest memories of college at UF.

(Also, however, they left me sleep-deprived. You could imagine how, when I transferred to Harding, I was excited to have a curfew. My first thought was, "They're giving me a bed time! Yes!")

I love everything about the game. You have a partner. Your chemistry with that partner is vital to your success. You bid your hand, but as a team you have to work with whatever is in your partner's hand also. Inevitably there will be moments in the game where you squirm trying to play to your partner's strength though inadequate in the sense that you can't know what is in your partner's hand.

I love the table smack talk. I love the laughing that it induces. I love spades.

I especially love playing when there is nil hand in the game. When I go nil, I love the excitement of trying to slough off high-valued face cards when you're not allowed to win a trick. I love the challenge of trying to cover a partner who goes nil, and protecting them from winning with those high-value face cards. But I especially love setting a nil hand. My friends in my UF days used to tease me because in my euphoria of setting someone else's nil they said my face would look like it was going into a little trance.

Last night up at the church building a few of us stayed late to play a couple games of spades. I had a blast. We may have to make this a more regular event. Because I love spades -- for me it is a natural high.

Cheering

I think it was ever since I learned about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test that I've begun to see people with a whole new set of eyes. I've come up with other categories in ways that I sort people out.

For example, I've got this theory that people are either "laughers" or "joke-tellers." I'm a laugher -- I enjoy laughing, and when I try to tell a joke I have to really work hard to hold back from laughing at my own joke. I'm just a laugher. Bob is a joke-teller -- no doubt about it. I think I was Bob's best friend for a spell at Harding, because it seemed like he would seek me out to test his new material. He knew he could always get a laugh out of me.

I figured out a new one a few weeks ago. My favorite kids in the world right now are Daniel's kids, Corban and Anna. Corban is like me: he is a "watcher." He & I like to watch movies together. But I've noticed that Anna doesn't like watching movies. Anna likes to dance & be the center of attention herself. Anna wants to be "the one being watched." It occurs to me that people gravitate toward one pole or the other.

Another way I think about that last one is in terms of sports: there are "players," and there are "fans." I had a buddy at UF named Joe who hated watching sports. Joe was a body-builder, and he always liked to say, "I guess I'd rather be playing a sport than watching someone else do it." I'm the opposite -- I'm definitely a fan. I like to root people on; I like to cheer.

Cheering is a natural high for me. Few things get my juices flowing like watching a really great sports event: like, Monday night's Fiesta Bowl, last month's SEC Championship Game, or the 2008 U.S. Open. I get a real thrill out of rooting on my favorite player(s) in those events. I'm known for getting kind of loud, too. Whenever I'm watching a baseball game in particular, I love watching a homerun happen live so much that at the crack of the bat I'll yell, "GET OUTTA HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!" In my living room I do this. I just love cheering.

Sometimes I think that the four letters "INFJ" just don't seem to fully encapsulate all the ways to describe me.

Natural Highs: Walking With a Toddler

Taking a not-quite 2 year-old for a walk.

I have a favorite baby at church. I'm sorry if the other young mother at my church is reading this, but she probably knows its true anyway. :) Her name is Cassie. She will turn two in the spring of '09. And outside of her parents, I may be her favorite person in the world that she sees on a semi-regular basis. It makes several of the ladies at church jealous on certain days when she's shy: she will come to me & let me hold her, but hardly anyone else. She is the cutest little friend I have.

Cassie has the most charming smile. It could charm the socks off anyone. It did my Mom. Many of you may not be aware that my Mom was not a fan of the Churches of Christ. It would take a big event to get her through the doors. But once when she came to visit the church where I preach & she met Cassie, she wanted to be there every time the doors were open. My Mom loved little girls. She used to joke about how she'd buy anything if the person selling it slapped a little girl on their commercial, like in this Cheerios commercial. Wouldn't matter if it was anthrax! Mom would buy it.

I guess that sort of explains why the first time I saw Cassie's cute smile at church again after my Mom's passing that that was one of the more emotional parts of the grieving experience. I realized how Mom loved that grin, and how she wouldn't ever see it again. She wouldn't get to watch Cassie grow up like I was going to.

Still, I enjoy anytime I get Cassie to myself without one of the other kids or Church members harassing her to hold her. Whether it's holding her & her playing with my glasses, us playing her "Sharing game" (She's holding something -- anything -- and then she hands it to me, and then I hand it to her, and then she hands it to me...), or whatever we do together.

But my VERY favorite thing is when I get to take little Cassie for a walk. Cassie started walking some time ago in the summer, and she loves to do it. I'll stink my index finger down toward her, and she'll wrap her little hand around it, and we will walk around the church building. We'll walk down the hallway, through the fellowship hall, down another hallway, into the auditorium, around all the pews, back into the foyer, back through the hallway. It doesn't matter where we go. The fun is just in sharing the walk with her. It's a total natural high.