"Never be a tightwad when your fear is the price for awesomeness."
--Me
I got to my soccer class late today. For the big-numberth time.
Nic Arrhenius, my coach, happens to be an Olympian. He threw discus for Sweden in Beijing. Not bad, huh? He’s probably the coolest coach I’ve had, though I once had a pretty cute coach in basketball--that wasn't too uncool either.
“You’re late, Bentley,” the big guy said.
“I know.”
He’s grinnin' though. I love people that can pick up the “irresponsible kid that really doesn’t mean to do things bad he just kinda does” vibe from me.
“You’ve got, lets see…absence, tardy…tardy, tardy, tardy, absence, tardy today…you’re approaching failing out, man.”
“Shoot…yeah. I was wonderin' about that.”
I asked him how bad my grade was getting docked, since usually you drop after a couple absences (and a few tardies add up to an absence), and about how making things up worked again. I figured it must be pretty bad if I was already approaching total failure.
“Well,” he smiled, “actually because of the swine flu going around this semester the entire department cancelled all docking penalties having to do with attendance.” (As if other people having the swine flu had made me move to class in slow motion--lol.) He laughed cause he knew exactly how much I was getting away with and didn’t deserve to, but also because he was glad I was. Mercy can’t rob justice, but the best people wish it could, I think. Coach is the best. “You always feel like he’s on your side--probably because he is,” I mused once in my notebook after he didn’t count me tardy when I was “pretty close”--haha (for probably the third time at that point). I just love it when people are cool like that.
“So, uhh, where am I at then?”
“Well, there are three classes left, and you’ve got 4 absences” (counting the 6 tardies that count as 2 absences between them, besides my real absences), “and there are only three class periods left.” Then he started laughing out loud. “Basically, if you can make it to class on time for one of those three class periods, you won’t fail soccer.” “And I’ll get an ‘A’?” I asked, grinning. “Yeah, you’ll get an ‘A’.” A well-deserved one. Heh.
Pray for me my friends--with your help I can make it. And for those of you who've already borne the swine flu just to help me out, thank you--you've done enough.
Speaking of suffering, I’ve always wondered about how to feel about blessings that come because other people have suffered or done something wrong. Kinda weird. Sorta like the time I was in O’Flaherty’s Pub in Dingle, Ireland, and it looked exactly like the Shire everywhere outside on the Emerald Isle and the inside of the pub was wooden and quaint and had mugs and tables whereon lively spry hobbits would certainly dance and I wanted the people there to do so more than anything. A local band was even playing authentic Irish folk music and singing ballads. THIS WAS THE SHIRE SO HELP ME. But no one would dance. A few people who’d stayed at the hostel longer than my friends Emma, Whitney and I had come down with us for some traditional Irish pub-tales--I asked them if people ever danced. “Not usually.” I furtively watched the old people drinking their ale. I knew they had it in them. They’d dance. If they’d keep drinking.
“So shoulder the sky, my lads, and drink your ale!” I thought, but then I felt bad. That’s not a good wish. But it’s not like I could help anything. Well, I suppose I could stand on a table myself and quote scraps of D&C 89, but I figured that wouldn’t do much but irritate people and engender opinions that the church was narrow-minded and ludicrous in that scene. Maybe I was wrong. Whatever the case, I stayed another hour and a half nurturing the guilty hope that they‘d drink themselves into dance. If it wasn‘t wrong for them to do it (where there is ignorance there is no law), was it wrong for me to benefit from it? Nah.
Like the way some other BYU chums and I would pay our non-member, Korean roommate Jae so he could buy Little Caesar’s for us on Sundays. He wasn’t sinning. And we were just giving him the opportunity to serve, and bring others joy, and be a Christian. “Give the gift of giving” as a recent BYU devotional speaker calls it. So all of you judgers out there, I ask you whether you have given as much as I. Probably not. And you didn’t get pizza either--we did because we did what was right (3 Ne. 13:33). For those who didn’t judge, I confess we actually didn’t pay him off but it would have been funny and probably the right thing to do.
But anyway these Shirelings wouldn’t DANCE. They drank for hours and wouldn’t DANCE! I wanted Hobbit-time! What's the point of all that alcohol, all those spirits, if it doesn't put any spirit in ya? Anyway, my masterplan failed and someone finally me if I wanted someone to dance so bad then I should. So I did. All by myself.
It was pathetic, but it was semi-bold. I imitated the bit of LOTR scenes I could remember, which didn’t work because I mostly remembered two hobbits carousing arm-in-arm in circles (and no one was dancing with me) raising mugs to the hearty cheers of onlookers (except my audience was just staring awkwardly); then I tried some postmodern moves that definitely didn’t go down; then I threw in a shimmy; and then I called it quits. It was all I had. But right before I slunk away in shame--which I definitely did--I stuck me neck out a little further to see if I could entice some old English lady onto “the dance floor” with me. Cold-blooded. Grandma was an ice queen. How often do you get a lively, brawny, visionary American inviting you to dance a jig? The call went unanswered, but it did not go unissued. I did what I could.
I had dreams of rousing the entire tavern into a scene no less merry nor glorious as I do not doubt but what Merry and Pippin would have done--boots stomping, hands clapping, chandeliers swinging, fires roaring, ale pouring, and laughter bursting from every looking-on heart. I wanted to be like my heroes, but I failed.
I think I failed because I feared. I think the onlookers could sense that lack of total commitment. I was willing to stick my neck out, but not to go down on the ship burning. In the end, I was just a little bit bluffing.
When I go back someday, I’m not sure what I’ll do, nor how it will “go down in Hobbit town.” Maybe I’ll learn a few moves to legitimize the dance floor as such. Seriously, what if I just jumped on a table and started jigging in my heartiest most happily abandoned way? Could they resist that? Maybe. But maybe then I’d bust out an irresistibly lively song on guitar (which I haven't learned yet :), an invigorating folk song that will have all the lads and lassies looking at each other with romantic volatility (even the older ones). Maybe that will fail too.
So the songs and dance steps I'll learn won't be a foolproof masterplan but that isn't my real hope for next time. My hope is that next time, when they call my bluff, I won’t be bluffing, and then before they know it they won’t be dancing in my dreams alone but on their tables as they always should have been. Why? Why, well haven't you heard Merry and Pippin's warcry? “For the SHIRE!”
And if they don't, I'll dance on my burning shipdeck, saluting, until it sinks into the grim-bluest grave. "Oh Captain, my captain!"
But fear not, my friends: they'll probably dance. And I'll probably get to class on time--at least I'm going to try.
Epilogue
And if for some inscrutable reason you desire a more eminent/credible source to cite, try this powerful quote by Murray often misattributed to Goethe:
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"
- W. H. Murray, from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)
