On An Adventure I Went

The last Saturday of June, I went on an adventure. I, along with one other adult, packed seven young people, and all of our luggage, into a van and began a two day half-way-across the country trek. Our final destination was Greenville, Illinois: home to Greenville College.

The young people, who ranged in age from 11 to 18 years old, were a part of our church’s Bible Quiz team. Rather than bore you with the details of what Bible Quizzing is about, let me point you to this excellent description.  http://rdistaffen.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-exactly-is-bible-quizzing.html. 

The trip went safely, despite that incident in the parking lot of a Chick-fil-A in Pennsylvania. On of our younger travelers exited the van carrying his electronic game. Using peripheral vision, he followed the group as we headed in to eat lunch. He was doing fine, until he reached a particularly challenging moment in his electronic universe. At which point he lost all contact with the reality around him and stopped walking-- in the middle of the parking lot. Consequently causing a line of cars to form through the parking lot and halfway up the highway.

It took multiple people calling out the youngsters name before he finally realized the dire predicament he was in. He stepped out of the line of traffic and immediately refocused on his game. This led the adults to give some serious directions to the entire group on what was expected when walking through parking lots.

I have worked with teenagers for decades. In all that time, I have learned one important thing when giving directions, repeat everything, repeatedly. This is important, especially when dealing with teenagers. This age group seems especially prone to either an excess buildup of earwax, an overactive ability to tune out the adult voice, or they are easily prone to distractions. So, when directions are given, it is important to repeat, and after repeating, ask the teen to repeat the directions back. Then, when the teen realizes they have no clue, repeat the process again, until they seem to have a clue.

This direction giving, along with the confiscation of all hand held electronic games, prevented any further parking lot mishaps and ensured the health and safety of the younger members of the group, along with preventing stress headaches and panic attacks amongst the adults.

It was enjoyable to laugh with each of the teens. I have known one of the graduating seniors, whom I will call Joe, since that is his name, since he was in seventh grade. He holds the dubious distinction of being the only person I have had to reprimand for playing tug-o-war with a chair in the middle of a Sunday School class.

Joe has matured into a fine young man, with an amazing sense of humor. He took this picture of me when I felt safe on the trip.

During the quizzing competition, a competing team introduced one of their team mates and mentioned that the young lady had the nickname “Pumpkin”. The young lady did not look thrilled about the name, so I mentioned, “It appears as if you want to squash your new nick name.”

She nodded yes, vigorously.

Joe, who, as I mentioned before, is now a mature young man, leaned back in his chair, stroked his bearded chin (I told you he was mature) lightly and said, “I wonder where that nickname stems from?” (I told you he was funny).

What do you call a dog with no legs?

There is a corny joke that goes, “What do you call a quadriplegic dog?” Nothing, because he won’t come anyway. Eldest and I went to Imagine RIT, a huge event at Rochester Institute of Technology, where we found a group of students who designed a specialized wheel chair for quadriplegic dogs. I suppose the new answer to that old joke would now be “Lucky; if he has one of these.”

My trip to Imagine RIT was a father/daughter date with Eldest, and the first exhibit we saw was a “homebrew” vacuum tube amplifier for a phonograph. The sound from the amp was amazing-- full, vibrant, and rich. The schematic for the amp was on display, and Eldest and I looked at it. I swelled with pride as she was able to identify the different symbols and the components they represented. With one notable exception, she could not identify the symbol for a vacuum tube. This was not surprising, as she had never seen a vacuum tube before.

As Eldest and I considered which displays to visit we consulted the map and we saw a display that we decided we would enjoy visiting. It was out of the way and difficult to find. We asked a student who promptly gave us directions to get us lost. As we wandered aimlessly up and down hallways for hours without any other humans in view, we discussed why the layout of the entire school was so complicated. Eldest observed, “This is a school for smart people. It must be that if a student cannot find their way to class they are expelled.”

We left the building, and as we walked outside, I noticed a unique architectural design that was easy to spot on the map. We rushed back into the building and there was the display we had been looking for. It was closed. I believe the student could not find where he was supposed to be and the Dean of Students has since expelled him.

Speaking of unique architectural features, we entered one building and found a staircase with the digits of pi engraved onto the steps. This delighted Eldest to no end and we had to take many pictures of pi.

Eldest taking pictures of pi

Take cream add dry ice and stir

Ice cream, delicious.

 On the floor above the pi staircase, young chemists were making homemade ice cream by dumping dry ice into cream and stirring. Eldest and I tried some and found it delicious. It also occurred to me that with the pi staircase and ice cream on the floor above, it was like pi a la mode.

On the way home Eldest and I talked about all the amazing things we saw. She said her favorite display of all of them was the “disk-turny-thingy.” I thought hard, running through all of the displays we saw and finally asked her what she meant. She said, “You know, the one with the vacuum tubes.” Apparently, not only were vacuum tubes foreign to her, but so were vinyl records on a turntable. She, however, claims that this is not the case, she simply could not remember the word “phonograph” and did not want to use the phrase “record player.”