What Ben Wrote

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, and we all know what that means: Mexican food and Americans not having any idea of what the holiday’s about. From my five years in Spanish classes, I remember only two things about Hispanic history: (1) The Puerto Ricans gained American citizenship in 1917 (Yay … ), and (2) Cinco de Mayo really has nothing to do with Mexican independence. I believe the Mexican independence day is actually in September, but since I’m not Mexican, I don’t care enough to double check that with Wikipedia. And if you’d like to know what Cinco de Mayo is really all about, I’m sure Wikipedia’s got that too. I can’t remember what it’s really about.

But while to Mexicans Cinco de Mayo is a holiday about Mexican pride, heritage, and maybe family and turkey (I really don’t have a clue), to Americans it’s a holiday about Mexican food. Or the closest thing we can get to Mexican food in suburban Georgia. For my housemate, that’s Taco Bell. But for my brother-in-law, a missionary kid from Mexico, that’s those little tiendas or taquerías down the road that don’t waste any part of the pig. It’s not in the Bible, but when the Israelites were complaining about being hungry, God gave them tacos and made the mistake of telling them where the meat really came from. Then Moses wrote down some dietary laws and begged God for manna. Thus Leviticus.

Anyway, my brother-in-law Justin took us to one of those American Mexican restaurants. It was one of those that start with El or Los and end with a Spanish-sounding word. El Jabón. Los Calcetines. El Ikea. The menus are always the same. My favorite Mexican food is eleven. This is usually how ordering at a Mexican restaurant goes with my brother-in-law.

“Nos gustaría que la sopa de pollo con limón y un aseo lleno de heces fecales.” (Thank you, Google Translate.)

The waiter will ask questions. He’ll respond. They’ll laugh about something Mexican. The waiter will turn to me.

“I’ll take a big helping of eleven.”

And when they bring out the food, Justin’s food is brought out in pieces because apparently everyone outside of America enjoys assembling their own food. On the other hand, those who grew up in America assume that if it’s on a plate and was placed in front of you, it needs to be shoved into your mouth faster than you can mispronounce la comida.

Since Justin’s a Spanish-speaking MK from Mexico, he usually orders things that make you double-take the menu because it seems nearly impossible that whatever he just ordered could be made in America. Yesterday, Justin’s lunch was served in a literal toilet bowl. But not just any toilet bowl. It was a toilet bowl that was too hot to touch because that was a representation — for the misfortune of his wife — of their toilet bowl the next day after Justin ate the contents of his Mexican toilet bowl. But don’t get me started on the contents because my sister and I spent the next twenty minutes or so alternating between laughing and gagging over what they resembled.

I kid my brother-in-law and his Mexican cuisine because I’m sure it genuinely tasted marvelous, but I’m sure all of this means that I’m not called to do overseas missionary work. I’m pretty comfortable justifying that by calling my future in youth ministry cross-cultural missions. I mean, I don’t think I’d want to eat their food either.

As the sun set over the mountainous horizon, I strummed lightly on the guitar singing aloud.

Farther along we’ll know all about it.
Farther along we’ll understand why.

I sang a song of encouragement as children played in a field, their innocent youth evident in their running and frolicking. I smiled and stood as they laughed.

So cheer up my brothers. Live in the sunshine.
We’ll understand this all by and –

“HEY!”

I jerked my head to the left where my employer stood shouting at the children in the field and was quickly snapped back into the reality that I was working at a wilderness program for troubled teens. They weren’t so much running and frolicking as they were chasing and tackling and attacking and laughing maniacally. At the order of my employer they dropped into a push-up position.

You hear a lot about the innocence and purity of youth, but this experience I had working at the wilderness program seemed to prove otherwise. Heck. Even working at a day camp proved otherwise. Children can be awful. They don’t live carefree in the moment like America’s Funniest Home Videos would like us to think. That child swinging a bat at his father’s crotch knew exactly what was coming to him, and what was coming to him was edited out of video. Children are usually worrying about the immediate future, and complaining about it.

And when they’re not worrying about the future, they can be even worse. What’s stopping you from blowing up at a counselor when you’re not considering the sentences you’ll be writing or push-ups you’ll be doing as a result? Not to mention you’ll be eating practically nothing but collard greens, beans, and grapefruit for the next week.

Some of the guys in the program complain about the immaturity of the younger guys, but they need love. They need boundaries, but they really need love. Because when you’re a teenager whose childhood was ripped from you by abusive parents, why would you want to grow up? Growing up means hatred, pain, and neglect. But if an adult can enter their lives and demonstrate God’s love to them — the unconditional love of a true Father — then perhaps they can move on from their past and learn to love like that, too.

So a couple nights ago, I lay awake during one of my last shifts at the program playing the celebrity name game. Growing more and more deaf to the sound of the running river outside and the last of the raindrops falling onto the tarp ceiling, we fell asleep in a chilly cabin listing off names of celebrities whose first name begins with the same letter as the previous last name. And my willingness to share a simple and safe moment like this with the guys left an impression that perhaps someone cares about even their silly little games.

“William Shatner.” “Sandra Bullock.” “Bob Saget.” “Spongebob Squarepants.”

So I’ve been dating this girl. “But Ben,” someone, somewhere might actually maybe say, “your sarcastic blogs about singleness and relationship advice are so funny and good.” Why thank you not-so-subtly self-indulging fake reader, but I suppose every dog has his day and every adjective clause has its hyphenated phrases. And this dog’s hyphens came in form of a girl who has the most beautiful feigned laughter when he tells boring jokes and has just the sweetest smile at his misfortune. She’s great, but technically I’m still single, so I’ll pump out these blogs as often as possible until that’s not the case anymore. Fret not fake readers.

Anyway, I feel as though there has been a huge shift in how relationships are pursued in today’s day and age. The Facebook timeline gives you the opportunity to easily look into your past without the feelings of self-absorption that came with minutes upon minutes of scrolling down your wall to achieve some sense of high school nostalgia. So I took a look at my life in 2007, and I found some interesting things. Among some awful high school junior humor and repeated statuses, I found posts where my sisters and some friends were asking me about some girl I may have been interested in or something, but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me who that was. And that’s what I’m talking about here. Dating is different because of social networking sites. And that’s because of the three little letters: FBO.

“Facebook Official” is something that’s new. Don’t know if that girl you met is taken or not? Well, if you know her last name, or have some mutual friends, or know what school she goes to, or have the patience and creepy determination to search through pages of Madisons to find the profile picture that looks vaguely like her, the answer to your question is just a click away. I mean, there used to be more risk, right? Before, you had to ask if she had a boyfriend and that makes your intentions pretty darn obvious. Now, people don’t become official until they’re official on Facebook. Heck, that’s how they announce they’re official now.

People rarely paint themselves in a negative light on social networking sites. At least, not on purpose. (I’m looking at you, you who post only selfies and passive aggressive statuses.) And they don’t want to paint their relationships in a negative light either, right? No one posts pictures of the arguments they have with their significant others. That would be almost as dumb as the friend who was there to document the moment photographically. In our media driven society, relationships look perfect. They look that way in books, movies, and online. And now everyone’s looking for “the one.”

Well, I’m lucky to have found someone who is just perfect for me. Ha! Just kidding. No one’s perfect for me and I’m not perfect for anyone else. It’s not because I suck. It’s because everyone sucks. Big thanks to Adam and Eve for messing that up for the rest of us, but it really makes trusting in God make more sense. I mean, what would I need God for if all my needs were met by another person? The fact that we as humans don’t fulfill each other is kind of a cool thing, and I’m happy knowing that only God completes me. I think it’s time we start moving past the jealousy that social networking and media induce and start embracing that idea that relationships can’t possibly be perfect. That’s what makes them rewarding in the moments that they work: both people had to work at it.

You’re out with some friends doing whatever you do with your friends — eating dinner, watching a movie, deep sea diving — when someone decides that the time is right for a candid shot. Everyone is so photogenic at this particular moment, so the photographer takes out her iPhone (let’s be real: when is it ever a dude?) and gets ready to discreetly Instagram that sucker. But as she was getting up from the table or interrupting the movie or adjusting her snorkel, everyone notices. Everyone.

The perfectly candid moment is gone as the photographer says, “Just carry on.” You and your friends look around. The person to your left is posing like their in an engaging conversation with the wall across the room, and the person on your right is trying to stabilize himself on a nearby reef so he can resume trying to catch fish in his armpit. (I really should have just picked one setting for this example.) Everyone is pretending like they don’t notice the camera, but it’s no secret.

So you choose to be bold and break the boundaries of a candid shot. When the photo is taken, this is you.

Blurriness brought to you by Instagram filters.

And suddenly you think you’re the bee’s knees of the group. I figure that this is what I’ll start doing in every “candid” photo I’m in from now on. It’s a subtle photo-bomb, but it makes me look either clever or like I’m the only one not having a good ol’ candid time. Even still, I suppose we’re all faking something in these photos.

I once read a tweet that was along the lines of, “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t fake. # lol #fakepeople #genuineness #nofilter.” It might be my nature to be cynical about passive aggressive tweets, but I think that this person was a little off. I mean, it’s silly to assume that you’re the only genuine person in the world because most people are striving for authenticity and integrity. They’re just also striving to make themselves happy, and that can be selfish.

I worry that we label people before knowing them, and I’m no stranger to that problem. I can be too quick to write people off as being fake, but then again, to how many people do I look fake? And how many people recognize when I actually am being fake when I don’t want to be?

We tend to judge people by what they do instead of by who they are, which is frustrating for Christians. I mean, the Bible’s got a lot of rules in it. We like to romanticize it by calling it a love letter or saying it’s God’s story, but we couldn’t deny the fact that it has a lot of rules for us to follow. But judging people is easy when other people’s sins aren’t as easy to justify as our own. It’s no big deal I just gossiped about that friend of mine, but if anyone ever gossiped about me, well they just had no right to do that!

To be blunt, I think it’s time we grow up. We can’t always be playing the victim. And how can we be so unaware of our lack of genuineness? Integrity isn’t natural. It’s intentional and it takes practice. Let’s take note of the growth in each other.

Time after time after time, people talk about the friend zone and the unfortunate men who land there. The internet has guides on how to get out of the friend zone, and I’ve seen so many times screen shots of girls who write on Facebook, “Where are all the decent guys? lol” only to get the ever popular response from the guy friend, “Right where you left them: in the friend zone lol.” But what’s he really saying other than, “I wanna date you”? I know I’m a guy, but I’m writing this to girls. There are plenty of reasons to keep that guy right where he is:

1. He’s probably not the decent guy you’re looking for.
Just about every guy has at least one friend who is a girl. Can it be true that not a single jerk has a gal pal? (I’m really just trying to avoid the phrase “girl friend” to avoid confusion.) If almost every guy has been friend zoned by at least one girl, then by the logic of some of those posts we’ve probably all seen, almost every guy is a gentlemen. But, come on: that can’t possibly be true. There have got to be some jerks who have weaseled their way into a friend zone. It’s best to leave them there. Every guy assumes he’s a good guy because no jerk looks at himself and says, “I’m an awful person. I should really change my player ways.” Every guy believes they are an angel and if a girl could just see that, then maybe they won’t date that other loser instead. In reality, if a guy’s calling another guy a d-bag, he’s probably one too.

2. He’s a whiner, not a pursuer.
I’m mostly talking about the guys who whine on to the internet about this stuff. If he spent half the time making efforts to pursue you that he spends complaining on the internet, he might make some progress. But instead, he makes friend zone memes and tries to make you look stupid on Facebook. It kinda makes sense that he doesn’t really value a friendship.

3. You just don’t like him that way.
There’s a reason you don’t take his hints: you’d just rather not. You see a good friendship with this guy and he probably has a lot of attractive qualities to you, but he’s just not for you. Guys really do want to escape the friend zone, but the reason they’re there is because they have become hopeless believing that as soon as a girl says “You’re a really good friend,” it’s all over. Really, it’s only over when the girl says “I don’t want to hear from you again” or “It’s over” or “Why are you under my bed!?”

This paragraph is for the dudes. Guys, if you’re in the friend zone, cherish it. It’s such a great thing to be the friend of a girl without any pressure to perform or impress. If you want something to change, make a move. Seriously, go for it. The friend zone’s not a malicious trap that girls intentionally set up for guys. And if she says no the first time, don’t think it’s over. Girls want to be chased after. It’s how they subconsciously test whether or not you really love them. (It’s like how kids test the boundaries by breaking them. They want to feel secure that the rules will stand against them.) But be careful ’cause sometimes they actually do want you to leave them alone.

I never knew I was a light sleeper until college, but I suppose that’s because I’ve never had a roommate until college. Growing up with three older sisters and no brothers, I had the privilege of always having my own room when my sisters would periodically swap with each other. Jenny, the middle sister, was usually the one to share a space with either her older or younger sister, and to this day has not let that fact go. But I remember a short time in which she had the room next to mine to herself. We would knock the beginnings of songs on the walls and wait for the other to finish the pattern. And sometimes the song wouldn’t be ended because either our parents told us to go to sleep or perhaps one of us got there on our own.

All four of my college roommates have been heavy sleepers. In the middle of the night, my first roommate’s phone would go off every minute reminding his knocked-out self that he’s got texts that he still hasn’t read. It was as if his phone were a mother who read somewhere that waking him up by loud force was unhealthy. So she’d whisper in his ear, “Hey. You have a text,” over and over again. And his roommate in the bunk below lay awake wondering if it were okay with him to violate his privacy and check the message or if he should just ignore it and try to get some sleep. Well, this mother wasn’t shutting up, so I got out of bed in a huff as if my sleeping roommate knew better than to let this go on as long as it was and pushed the button to shut off the ringer, but not before accidentally looking at the screen to find the name and last initial of my crush at the time. Then, I lay awake some more until I finally remembered his girlfriend’s name was coincidentally the same as my crush’s.

Things didn’t work out between that roommate and I (and neither did things with my crush, by the way). So my sophomore year, I roomed with my best friend, who was an even deeper sleeper. One night, if you were to walk in at the right moment, you’d find me with my head in the pillow and him unashamedly singing Mumford & Sons to the darkness. He has a good voice, but his sleeping self is no Mumford, not even his sons.

If you walked in on a particularly Sunday morning, you’d find something much different. You see, he was scheduled to teach Sunday school that morning, but crossing the threshold between sleep and awake was proving difficult. His alarm wasn’t doing its job, so I took on that role, sat myself up in my bed, and said his name. No response. Typical. I said it louder. Still nothing. Great. I had to start exerting effort. I shook him a little since it had worked before. I shook him harder, but he just flopped around completely unresponsive. I became worried about his livelihood and shouted, “Help! I’m dying!” I would’ve been more relieved he was alive had his unconscious response not been, “Who cares?”

I was gonna need some help, so I employed the help of a friend down the hall, but not before pulling off his sheets and taking away his pillows. When we returned, his bedding was back in place. Together, we beat the living crap out of my roommate with some heavy duty pillows. Still, he was not waking. I turned on his Xbox hoping the sound would jolt him awake. I pretended to be his girlfriend and told him I was breaking up with him. I probably woke up the whole dorm screaming his name. Nothing. I decided it was last resort time. I went into the bathroom and filled up a small cup with water, looked at my friend who gave me a “you just gotta do it” look, and I splashed it on my roommate’s face.

“WHAT THE — !”

“He’s still not awake,” I said filling up another cup.

“Yeah, I am!” was the last thing he said to me for two days before pulling the covers back over himself and falling back asleep on a drenched pillow.

We overcame that, though. What’s a little harder to overcome is my current next door neighbor. I’m staying with Jenny until I go back home for break and like mother like daughter, I guess. Her dog Sadie next door is barking her brains out in her cage believing me to be a heavy sleeper. If only she barked loud enough to let me know she seriously isn’t not liking this whole cage deal, maybe I’ll let her out. Ain’t gonna happen, girl. She doesn’t know I’m a light sleeper, and she still won’t know when she wakes up at three in the morning to try again. She can sing and pound all she wants, but until I leave this place on Tuesday, I’ll be persistent in leaving that song unfinished.