must be a slow news day today.

the washington post has this article on the Church of St. John Coltrane in today’s online edition.

being an ardent follower of Coltrane’s music, i was inclined to look into this church several years ago. it seems the african orthodox church canonized John Coltrane a number of years ago and this church formed in san francisco back in ’71. since then i’ve been wanting to go out there and check this church out.

i wonder if i could start a sister church here in cincinnati….

for those of you whose musical interest is now piqued, you’ll want to start with Coltrane’s A Love Supreme

and no, not the kind of spooning between a boyfriend/girlfriend.

i’m talking spooned in the sense of spoons stuck in our yard and in our shrubbery. :-)

lise’s in toledo for the weekend with her family. i’m home alone with the dog finishing up all coursework for school (due next monday april 3 or no graduation for scotty) and chilling out. dolby and i went over to my mom’s today around lunch time. this is normal for us.

i receive a phone call before 1 from a group of young bored teenagers asking where i am. well, at my mom’s like almost every sunday! well, bummer! we’re trying to find something to do, is the reply. drat, says i – had i known, i could have switched things around. better luck next time! tell everyone hi and i’ll catch ya soon.

fast forward to 4pm. pulling into the driveway i note that my lawn looks a bit… different. there’s spoons all over the lawn in the shape of a broken heart and lots more spoons in my shrubbery.

we’ve been spooned by a group of young hooligans.

i love you guys. this was just what i needed today. you guys kick butt!

now, hopefully they’ll stay where they are til lise gets home tomorrow or i may need to be re-spooned. :-)

update: many thanks to Adrienne (Rocky!) and her crew for the spooning – i know your hearts were broken and your spirits crushed that we weren’t home, but don’t forget Psalm 34:18 – The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

jessy is one of my girls from yet another youth group. it’s rather funny: she shouldn’t have been one of my girls at all, but she is.

lise and i were a year away from moving back to ohio from baltimore/D.C. and had left a church to start a new inner-city church in downtown baltimore. that church quickly fizzled and we were hurting. we decided we wouldn’t get involved in the youth ministry of the next church we joined. we needed a break.

after several months of being at north arundel church somehow word got out that i was a youth pastor. the youth pastor at the church was burnt out and crispy and the group was rather listless. i was asked help out in the group and i decided i’d do it, warning them that we were moving in the summer of ’01 to cincinnati – little did i know that it would turn into a 9 month stint that saw me basically replace the YP and receive an offer to become the YP permanently for that church.

jessy was 16 at that time. maybe she was 15. however old she was, she was very different from most of the other teens i had worked with in years past. she was mature. she was confident of herself. she was tall – OMG was she TALL (i still call her Amazon Woman and she doesn’t beat me up)! she was open and honest. she was lead singer in a band with three crazy boys and we all knew who the boss was. dudes, she had pipes that could out do singers who had been singing for years. she had the kind of magnetic personality that just made you want to get to know her and be around her to see what would happen.

she was (and is) beautiful. she loved (and still does love) God. her family kicked (and still kicks) butt.

she, lise and i quickly struck up a relationship that endures today. with previous groups we had years to develop relationships. with jessy’s group we had 9 months. we packed a lot of conversations, a lot of band practices, a lot of lunches at the Eastern Buffet in Laurel, Md, a lot of discipling and talking about our lives in light of God’s Kingdom in those 9 months. it was a whirlwind.

and then we moved. and it hurt.

but we still talked online several times a week. and when we would go back for visits to maryland, we hooked up and ate chinese food. and we even got to spend five days with her the next summer at the Creation Festival (the picture above was taken there). she started at mcdaniel college that fall and we continued to talk and it blew my mind listening to her speak her heart about ministering to other students at the college. she continued to blossom and grow and amaze me with her compassion and love for others.

and at one point i almost got to make good on my threat to jackass boyfriends. she hooked up with some dude that i call “hoor-geh” (don’t ask) and i was suspicious from early on. the more she told me, the more i thought i ought to pack my bags and head to westminster, md to administer a beating. i even devised a quick solution to make him repent his ways (don’t ask). but luckily, jessy dispatched him. but she hurt. bad. i still contemplate my final solution for him and wonder what i would do if i met him in a dark alley…

jessy graduates from mcdaniel in may. she is an awesome woman. lise and i miss her terribly. but i know without a doubt that whatever she does, wherever she goes, she will make her way with the help of God. she makes me very proud – we’re lucky to have her as a friend.

and hoor-geh – if you’re reading this…. beware of dark alleys…

…sorry for no posting this week. been too tired to do anything!

so in lieu of an actual post tonight, i give you..

50 Fun Things to Do on the First Day of Class

1. Smoke a pipe and respond to each point the professor makes by waving it and saying, “Quite right, old bean!”
2. Wear X-Ray Specs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to focus the overhead projector.
3. Sit in the front row and spend the lecture filing your teeth into sharp points.
4. Sit in the front and color in your textbook.
5. When the professor calls your name in roll, respond “that’s my name, don’t wear it out!”
6. Introduce yourself to the class as the “master of the pan flute”.
7. Give the professor a copy of The Watchtower. Ask him where his soul would go if he died tomorrow.
8. Wear earmuffs. Every few minutes, ask the professor to speak louder.
9. Leave permanent markers by the dry-erase board.
10. Squint thoughtfully while giving the professor strange looks. In the middle of lecture, tell him he looks familiar and ask whether he was ever in an episode of Starsky and Hutch.
11. Ask whether the first chapter will be on the test. If the professor says no, rip the pages out of your textbook.
12. Become entranced with your first physics lecture, and declare your intention to pursue a career in measurements and units.
13. Sing your questions.
14. Speak only in rhymes and hum the Underdog theme.
15. When the professor calls roll, after each name scream “THAT’S MEEEEE! Oh, no, sorry.”
16. Insist in a Southern drawl that your name really is Wuchen Li. If you actually are Chinese, insist that your name is Vladimir Fernandez O’Reilly.
17. Page through the textbook scratching each picture and sniffing it.
18. Wear your pajamas. Pretend not to notice that you’ve done so.
19. Hold up a piece of paper that says in large letters “CHECK YOUR FLY”.
20. Inform the class that you are Belgian royalty, and have a friend bang cymbals together whenever your name is spoken.
21. Stare continually at the professor’s crotch. Occassionally lick your lips.
22. Address the professor as “your excellency”.
23. Sit in the front, sniff suspiciously, and ask the professor if he’s been drinking.
24. Shout “WOW!” after every sentence of the lecture.
25. Bring a mirror and spend the lecture writing Bible verses on your face.
26. Ask whether you have to come to class.
27. Present the professor with a large fruit basket.
28. Bring a “seeing eye rooster” to class.
29. Feign an unintelligible accent and repeatedly ask, “Vet ozzle haffen dee henvay?” Become aggitated when the professor can’t understand you.
30. Relive your Junior High days by leaving chalk stuffed in the chalkboard erasers.
31. Watch the professor through binoculars.
32. Start a “wave” in a large lecture hall.
33. Ask to introduce your “invisible friend” in the empty seat beside you, and ask for one extra copy of each handout.
34. When the professor turns on his laser pointer, scream “AAAGH! MY EYES!”
35. Correct the professor at least ten times on the pronunciation of your name, even it’s Smith. Claim that the i is silent.
36. Sit in the front row reading the professor’s graduate thesis and snickering.
37. As soon as the first bell rings, volunteer to put a problem on the board. Ignore the professor’s reply and proceed to do so anyway.
38. Claim that you wrote the class text book.
39. Claim to be the teaching assistant. If the real one objects, jump up and scream “IMPOSTER!”
40. Spend the lecture blowing kisses to other students.
41. Every few minutes, take a sheet of notebook paper, write “Signup Sheet #5″ at the top, and start passing it around the room.
42. Stand to ask questions. Bow deeply before taking your seat after the professor answers.
43. Wear a cape with a big S on it. Inform classmates that the S stands for “stud”.
44. Interrupt every few minutes to ask the professor, “Can you spell that?”
45. Disassemble your pen. “Accidently” propel pieces across the room while playing with the spring. Go on furtive expeditions to retrieve the pieces. Repeat.
46. Wink at the professor every few minutes.
47. In the middle of lecture, ask your professor whether he believes in ghosts.
48. Laugh heartily at everything the professor says. Snort when you laugh.
49. Wear a black hooded cloak to class and ring a bell.
50. Ask your math professor to pull the roll chart above the blackboard of ancient Greek trade routes down farther because you can’t see Macedonia.

for all of you high school seniors, this is something to print and take to your first day of college classes.

i ought to note that i pulled a couple of these, sometimes to hilarious results, at Cincinnati Christian University. this is your license to go forth and do it thyself.

this is JM. a frequent reader & sometimes poster in rustypants speaks, she is always one of Scott’s Girls.

in fact, she is the original.

thirteen long years ago i was drafted into leading a group of 7th & 8th graders through one of the most mind-numbing bible studies ever created. and i had NO intention of working with junior highers. no friggin way. i signed on to teach 5th and 6th grade, but when i showed up that first night, i find that i’ve been “moved up” – and i was not happy about it at all. i’ve never worked with kids before! i don’t want to start with the WORST age group of them all!!

too late. i’m stuck. grumbling and grousing, i go to my assigned classroom.

and in walks JM.

now, JM is not her real name or even her real initials. her name is jeanna. her middle name should have been marie. but it wasn’t and isn’t. but i’ve always called her jeanna marie and thankfully she goes along with it.

so in walks JM with a huge smile on her face and thus begins a 13 year long relationship that has been part of the reason i love youth ministry so much.

JM was in 7th grade. just starting 7th grade. i have no pictures to prove it (yes, you just heard her sigh with relief) but we began this friendship when she was 12 and i was 23. i had no idea what i was doing as her bible study leader but she never held it against me. over that first year we had a lot of fun in this class learning (there were only three of them – she, daniel and another girl who i can’t remember…) and figuring out our relationship with God together. daniel was a general pain in the butt and the girls routinely took him to task and it was awesome. JM’s dad was a big influence on me and discipled me for a summer – an experience i never forgot. she was young but wise and she had an outlook on life that was hard to beat.

and then, after one short year, she was gone.

her family moved to the middle of illinois just before she started 8th grade. i remember the sunday before she left – i gave her my Bible, some fumbling words of wisdom and a big hug. she gave me a pad of paper that had “From the desk of Scott” on the top and a pen. it was the greatest gift i had ever been given (and i still have it – i couldn’t open it because i wanted to keep the note she had written on the back of it). i cried that night for the loss.

and then a funny thing happened.

i started getting letters. not email. not phone calls. letters. hand written, telling me about her life, asking questions, being encouraging, agonizing over some things, thankfulness for other things. and in some were pictures. i still have them. from 700 miles away i was watching that sweet little 7th grader become this beautiful young woman. and it blew my mind.

and then, seven or eight years ago, we discover that we have AIM. and we begin talking online. and what was a youth pastor / student relationship began to evolve into a friendship that i value very much. JM hit college and grabbed life by the horns. the more we talked and shared, the more i learned about who she was becoming and her compassion for people, hearing her sensitivity and loving/caring attitude, the more proud i became of her.

meeting her boyfriend (now husband) rob for the first time was a blast. i have no idea what he thought of me but seeing how happy she was with him was all i needed. i can almost guarantee that he was given The Speech (“hurt my little girl and feel my wrath, yada yada”) but i don’t recall giving it to him.

and then getting to be a part of her wedding a couple years ago – well, that took the cake.

JM continues to become more beautiful, inside and outside. she continues to make me so proud of who she’s become, the decisions she’s made, the way she loves her man and the way she loves God.

and all this, friends, is part of why i love youth ministry. and JM.

i am sometimes amused by folks who are part of a segment of the population that shun and hate stereotypes who then stereotype those who they perceive stereotype them.

far from being one who would cry, “why can’t we all just get along” – my cry would be, “oh, why can’t we all just grow up!?”

haha – but then would i be labeled “intolerant”?

i just received word a couple minutes ago that i’ve been accepted into Xavier University’s Masters degree in Special Education program! i’ll also be in the Licensure program – this’ll end up being quite a few extra classes but hey – if i want to be certified to actually teach what i learn….

i’ve been on the edge of my seat waiting for weeks to hear so it feels pretty darn good to have the word! woo-woo!

very exciting news! now, does anyone have a spare $25,000 laying around that i can borrow?

i wish i had something interesting to talk about.

i find out this morning whether i’ve been accepted to xavier university’s grad program for special ed.

seeing Crash get the Oscar for Best Picture sunday night was good. if you’ve not seen this movie yet, run – don’t walk – to buy it and watch it. lise and i were really surprised at how powerful it is, bought it after renting it (and watching it twice) and have watched it several times since then. it’s just that good. if you’ve ever seen our diminutive DVD collection you know we don’t get this excited about a movie very often.

the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon puzzles me. i’ve told people that i don’t care to see it and sometimes i get funny looks, as if to say, poor, intolerant bastard – but the truth is: it’s not a subject i really care about. despite wide public acceptance of the film and the topic of male cowboy love, i’m just not interested. is it because i’m some stuck-up christian? haha – nope. i’m just not interested in a movie about two guys who cheat on their wives for years to have sex with each other. if that makes me an intolerant bastard, then…. well, i’ve been called worse.

spring break is around the corner and lise and i will be heading to maryland for several days. looking forward to it a LOT. we need a break.

dolby is still eating poop.

and speaking of dolby eating poop, he needs a quick trip to the toilet that i call “the backyard.”

stay tuned – something interesting is bound to happen!

don’t forget, friends – parts three and four of the monty python best-of is tonight on PBS starting at 9pm! tonight – john cleese and terry gilliam!

to hold you over: the parrot sketch.