From the Mind of MandoRon

Hilarious!

Many people hate speaking in public.  I’ve never minded, but it seems like my body used to react violently to speaking in front of even a small group.  It was a completely physiological reaction: chest tightens, heart starts beating rapidly, vision narrows, mind goes blank, sweat starts flowing, etc…  It drove me nuts!

Eventually I got over it, and my body stopped rebelling against public speaking.

The same thing happened when I started playing mandolin in church.  I’d get really nervous, especially if I was bringing in a song or playing part of a song by myself.  Five years later, I’m much more comfortable.

But then last night, I volunteered to lead worship at a Celebrate Recovery small group.  While I’m comfortable playing in public, singing is a whole other matter.  And I’ve never lead worship solo before either.

We’ve all seen the American Idol auditions where the singers are so nervous that they can barely stand.  And I’ve always found it interesting how being nervous makes you really pitchy.  That was me last night.  I’m a pitchy, mediocre singer at best.  But combined with nerves, I think I missed every single note in all 3 songs. 

And I got so focused on the vocals, that I made a ton of mistakes playing guitar.  Crazy since I know those sings inside and out.

Ironically,  I read this scripture from Isaiah 40 to them before I started:

“But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.”  (Isaiah 40:31, NLT)

If only it had said “They will play guitar and not be nervous.  They will sing and not be pitchy.”  I wonder if some of ancient scribes accidentally left off that part.

I wonder if they’ll invite me back…

Definition:

A group of guys going somewhere together for the purpose of doing nothing.  Typically involves a few life-long friends, poker chips, a grill, and for some of the guys, consuming beer and scotch.

Use in a sentence:

The movie, “Wild Hogs” was about four friends hitting the road for a mancation.

Footnotes:

1. Since 1972, guys have been banned from bringing banjos with them.
2. Two interesting subsets of the mancation, are the hunting trip and the fishing trip.  Guns and/or fly rods are featured in these mancations.

Since he was very small, Jett has shown some natural rhythm and is constantly building drum kits out of pots and pans.  He even makes his own kick drums by using a book and a plastic lego tub laying on it’s side.  When he steps on the book, it hits the plastic tub with a thump.  What has really impressed me, though, is the complex, syncopated rhythms that he comes up with.

We finally broken down and bought a junior-sized drum kit for his 6th birthday last month.  It’s got a snare, kick, 2 toms, hi-hat, and a crash/ride cymbal.  He’s been banging around on the kit trying different rhythms on different combinations of drums/cymbals.

The last few days, he’s been trying to incorporate 3 or 4 or more drums/cymbals into his rhythyms.

He’s very shy about it and stops playing when you walk in the room.  I covertly took this video last night.  You’ll notice that about 20 seconds in, he notices my phone and hides.

He starts lessons next week, and I keep reminding him that he will have to play in front of the teacher.

Like most young boys, my six-year old has developed a fascination with guns.  It occurred to me that it might be best if he understood how to safely handle a gun rather than guns being a complete mystery to him.  A while back, I told him that I would bring my .22 rifle when we went to my in-law’s farm at Christmas. 

I showed it to him for the first time a few days ago, and all he has talked about since then is guns.  He has told everyone he’s seen that he was going to shoot daddy’s gun at the farm.  It’s been pretty comical actually…  He’s been asking all kinds of questions about rifles, handguns, machine guns - even cannons!

So today we went out to the farm and shot up some cans and water bottles.  We went through about 25o rounds between my .22 semi-auto rifle, my brother-in-law’s .22 semi-auto pistol that he loaned me, my father-in-law’s .22 revolver, and his  .357 revolver.

I taught Jett to shoot the .22  rifle and pistol.  He had a blast and we had a great time bonding.  (I had fun too…)  At the end, he actually hit  some cans at about 40~50 feet!

Interestingly, I think Jett is the fifth-generation to shoot the .22 rifle.  My grandfather originally bought it for my  great-grandmother so she could shoot squirrels from her porch.  Apparently, she like to eat squirrel…  Now I’m not actually certain the my dad has shot it but I’m pretty sure that he had the opportunity when I was a kid.

I offered to teach Jada too, but she didn’t  want anything to do with the guns.  Maybe another day…