Category: Life as a Kid

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You’re Affected…But How?

You can tell a lot about where someone’s from by the words they use and the accent they have. Do they call it “soda,” “pop,” “sodapop,” or “coke?” Is it a “lollipop” or a “sucker?” “Do they wear “tennis shoes” or “sneakers?” Is the word “y’all” a part of their vernacular?

As a kid I lived in Pennsylvania. I’m a little biased, but I don’t think I had any kind of accent as a kid. It’s a funny thing though; we had some people move to our neighborhood that came from North Dakota. There were also some grandparents nearby that had long summer visits from a family that lived in Minnesota. As I played and spent time with the kids of these Midwestern families, a funny thing happened…I started saying words the way they did.

Accent map courtesy of the Washington Post

That time spent together influenced the way I spoke. This is a pretty harmless instance of what I’m getting at, but it’s a great example of how you are influenced by your surroundings. You become like the people and attitudes that are around you.

Take a moment to stop and think about the people and attitudes that are a part of your environment. This is where you are headed. You are becoming more like them. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on what kind of people make up your environment.

It’s a two-way street, though. The new neighbors from North Dakota were immersed in a new region, surrounded by people that did not have the same accent as them. For that family’s kids especially, the accent faded with time. You’re not the only one being influenced; you also possess influence over those that are part of your life. Do you exude positivity and an uplifting outlook, or do you drag people down with your presence?

It might be time to re-examine the things and people you have in your life. What kind of friends do you have? What kind of things are you doing together? Other relationships, like family or work, give you fewer options with regard to your ability to choose whether or not to interact with them. In those cases, focus instead on your ability to make a positive difference in your shared environment.

In either case, whether you can choose your associations or not, you have a choice as far as what kind of contribution you will make to your environment.


“whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” Philippians 4:8

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Hopelessly Stuck

Photo courtesy of dearlylovedmist.com

When I was probably 6 or 7 years old, a married couple built a new house across the street from us. They had moved in, but the house wasn’t totally finished yet. When you’re a little boy, new houses in the neighborhood are fun because there’s a ton of mud or dirt piles to play in.

One rainy day I was playing outside in my yard. I had my raincoat and my big rain boots, so I was all set. Our yard already had a lawn, so it didn’t really have many puddles. Since the house across the street wasn’t landscaped yet, it had all kinds of puddles and mud to go stomping through.

I knew the neighbors, and they were nice, so I crossed the street and started splashing through the grossest part of the yard. I don’t think the gutters were installed yet, so the water ran right off the roof and into the yard, making for some thick, goopy stomping. My plan was to go knock on the front door to say hi, but it was starting to be a tough slog. The mud felt like it got stickier and sticker, sucking on my boots as I tried to pull them up.

It got to the point where I couldn’t pick my feet up anymore. The rain boots were already much heavier and clunkier than the shoes I normally wore, and now it got even worse with the mud’s suction. My boots were stuck in the mud, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

I started to panic. I tried shaking them loose, but that didn’t work (it probably made it worse). I think I was afraid to pull my feet out of the boots and walk across the mud, scared that my actual feet would get swallowed by the muck. Defeated and out of ideas, I squatted down (afraid to sit, for fear of getting stuck) and started to cry.

I don’t know how long this went on, but soon the front door opened and Joyce, my neighbor, poked her head out. With a look of worried concern, she saw me in my helpless and pitiful situation, and right away got some shoes on, came close enough to grab me, and lifted me right out of the mud.

Cherished readers, this is the story of the gospel, plain and simple. I was in a mess that I couldn’t escape on my own. The difference with the gospel is that we’re all born stuck in the mess, we didn’t wander into it because we made a bad choice.

People have different reactions to being stuck like this. Some choose to just wallow and enjoy the mud as best they can. Others look at the situation and focus on it being a futile, meaningless struggle. To each and every one of us, though, a hand is extended, offering us a way out of the muck and mire. It’s not forced upon us; it is merely offered. This hand, friends, is the hand of Jesus Christ.

If you’ve come to realize that you’re stuck in the mud and would like a way out, I urge you to look into what Christ did for you. He’s gently knocking on the door of your heart. He’s not going to force the door open; He waits for you to open the door. Won’t you consider letting Him in?

It’s better than being stuck in the mire. What do you have to lose?

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How Fast Can That Skateboard Go?

When I was in early elementary school, the only kids in my neighborhood that were anywhere near my age were girls. I got pretty sick of watching them play Barbies. That’s why it was so exciting when a guy named Mario moved into the neighborhood. He was a few grades ahead of me, but he was my first neighborhood buddy that was a guy. It was great to finally do guy stuff…we would go exploring in the woods, play street hockey, build forts, get muddy, you name it.

One day Mario had an idea. He had a skateboard that he decided to modify. You have to understand that today’s skateboards looked nothing like the popular skateboards of back then. Today’s models are lightweight to make it easier to get them off the ground. Back then, the bigger and sturdier, the better. If a mechanic from that era misplaced the creeper that he or she would use for sliding under a vehicle, they could’ve used a skateboard as a substitute without much of a problem.

Mario’s idea was to take this giant skateboard and nail a big piece of plywood on top. After he did, it was big enough for us both to sit on it at the same time and ride down a hill. I’m not sure how we came up with the name, but we called it “The Beta Mobile.” We didn’t really know why, but it sounded cool, so we went with it. To test it out we took it over to the hill in front of the house where I grew up. The modern-day street in front of that house has speed bumps (probably because of the stuff we did on that hill), but back then there weren’t any. The hill had two parts; the first one was long and had a gentler slope, while the second one was shorter, but dropped pretty quickly.

In classic little-boy fashion, we didn’t look for a smaller hill. We just climbed on and didn’t really give much thought to how to slow down if we needed to. I sat in the front, and he sat behind me, bobsled style. We shoved off, and away we went.

We built up speed down the first hill, and we stopped accelerating as the hill flattened out, but then we hit the second hill. We sped up to where it felt like we were going to lift off the ground. To a kid that was accustomed to getting roped into playing house, this was awesome! I was having fun until Mario had another idea. Off to the side there was a house whose owner had paved a little portion of her yard so she could park another vehicle off the street, but in order to keep rainwater from running into her yard, the part that bordered the lawn formed into a big ridge. To Mario, this ridge looked like a nice big jump to try to hit with the Beta Mobile.

“Hit that jump!” He yelled, leaning toward it.

“Noooooo!” I yelled back, leaning the other way.

The way it worked out, I guess I was sitting in the better spot for steering, because we stayed on the road and flew right past the jump. The Beta Mobile slowed down as the road started sloping upward again, and we came to a stop, satisfied that we would be able to do mega-cool things with the Beta Mobile.

As we walked back up to the top of the hill for another run, I forgot about the jump. We decided we’d try to go a little faster this time, but this time we switched places and I was in the back. Again we shoved off and started picking up speed.

We flew down the first hill, and as we started down the second one, I remembered the jump, remembered that we had switched places, and I had a terrible thought. It was too late, though. As we drew near the jump, I leaned away from it about as hard as I could, but it didn’t matter. Mario had the better leverage for steering, and he pointed us toward the jump. We hit it going nearly full speed.

What happened next was something straight out of a Calvin & Hobbes comic. The bodies of two grade-school boys and a gigantic piece of plywood with wheels went tumbling and flipping through the air, crashing onto the lawn. As we lay motionless, moaning on the grass, the front door to the house across the street opened up, and a man in his 80s stepped outside, applauding and shouting “yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!”

That was the last time I got on the Beta Mobile with Mario.

As you look around for ways that you can do more with your time and energy to glorify God, you’re going to have the opportunity to partner with fellow believers. For small endeavors it probably won’t be such a big deal, but as you move on to bigger projects, be sure that you’re on the same page with your co-laborers. Talk about your vision for what you’re working on together. You might both have good intent, but if you’re “leaning in different directions,” it’s probably not going to work out the way you’re all envisioning.

Follow God’s prompting, but game it out ahead of time with your partner(s). If you don’t, you might end up in a spectacular wreck, sprawled out in a daze, but your audience might not be so enthusiastic as the one we had that day.

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Half Speed Ahead?

Definitely not me, but that’s maybe how I saw myself…

When I was a kid I rode my bike everywhere. I was all over the neighborhood, sometimes I’d go outside my neighborhood, and sometimes it felt like I went miles without being more than a few hundred yards from where I started.

One day I swung by the house of some friends of mine, but they weren’t home. Suddenly finding myself with an unexpected chunk of free time on my hands, I looked around, hoping to get an idea for what I should do next. The house had kind of a cool porch that was pretty long and narrow, and the end of it dropped off probably about a foot and a half down to their driveway. Sitting there on your bike while waiting for someone that’s not coming to answer the doorbell gives you time to come up with bad ideas.

I didn’t really have any experience doing tricks on my bike, but I thought it would be cool to ride my bike off the edge of the porch and down onto the driveway. This was probably in the late 80s or early 90s, when you started seeing more “extreme” commercials…probably for Mountain Dew or something. BMX was starting to be on TV and in movies a bit more, and those guys could do some pretty cool jumps with their bikes. My morning was wide open, and nobody was going to come out of the house and tell me not to do it. What better time than now?

I visualized it in my head a few times, but probably in slow motion, which came back to bite me in the end. “Ride down the porch, and when you come up to the edge, just keep going.” I imagined myself flying off the porch and landing perfectly on two wheels, then hitting the brakes and skidding into a cool turning stop. And in my mind, that’s when everybody in a nearby house would suddenly look out their window, come out the front door, or drive around the corner to see my amazing stunt, then call my house and tell my Mom or Dad just how cool it was to see me do it. It made sense to me, and now all I needed to do was to give it a try.

I lined up and started slowly pedaling toward the end of the porch. I was a little anxious, but excited that I was about to do something so epic! I pedaled, still slowly, and came up to the edge. Then the reality of physics and gravity taught me a mean lesson: they don’t always work the way I want them to. If the back tire of a bicycle is supported, but the front one isn’t, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what’s going to happen. My front wheel dropped out from under me, and my body got in a fight with the ground. Bloodied up a little, I looked around in every nearby window, front door, and the curve in the road to check for witnesses. Hopefully no phone calls home would be happening after this.

This trick didn’t work for the simple reason that I failed to commit. I didn’t know that it wouldn’t work if I was going slow…it would only work if I was going fast. Intentionally pedaling fast off the edge of a porch takes a certain level of commitment. If I had known that, I don’t know if I would’ve tried it, but a jump like that is only going to work if you can overcome being timid and can build up enough speed to have both wheels leave the edge at nearly the same time. I tried the trick, but because ultimately I wasn’t fully committed, I ended up getting hurt more than I would have if I were totally dedicated to doing it.

If you feel God nudging you toward a certain path, being partially committed might only get you hurt. Pull out all the stops, jump in with both feet, use up the full nine yards, and any other cliché that it takes to convince you to give everything you’ve got to the effort you know He wants you to pursue. Partial effort can easily translate to complete failure.

If you’re coming off a failure, don’t let that stop you from trying again. A lot of times it’s easy to give a half-hearted effort, and then when you fail, you point to that failure and say “see what happened last time? I’m not trying that again!” That’s failing on purpose.

You’ve got the benefit of experience now, and hopefully you learned something about what to do differently this time. If it’s something you’re supposed to do, give it another shot. As long as it’s something God’s pushing you to do, I like your chances of success.