ANGEL DUDE

Do you guys believe in Angels? (Half- Baked-jail cafeteria scene…I Love that movie.)

But do you? I don’t really know if I do or don’t. But, If there are such-a-things, then I think maybe I have met one. I don’t know, I’ll tell you this story, then you can tell me what you think. You can just put your comments down in the “Comments” link at the bottom of the page. I’m interested in your theories……

OK. So here’s the deal. Timothy, my 1976 Toyota Corolla, had just once again decided that it was way too hot in the Sun City (El Paso) for him to be carrying the 4 of us on his back. So he decided to break down, right in the parking lot of a Pep Boys, on the West Side of town. After a couple of hours of us trying to get him back on his wheels, we finally gave up. We decided that we were gonna hoof it the 5 miles to my apartment.

It had to be about 150 degrees out that day. I’m talking HOT. So here we were walking down a main street. When the notorious “Thumper“, decided we should hitch a ride. I think he was really joking when he threw his thumb up, but it wasn’t 5 seconds and an old El Camino pulled over to pick us up. What was really weird about that was that we were all thugged-out. We really looked like we had just stepped out of a scene from “American Me” or maybe “Blood in-Blood Out”. And this dude, was WHITE to say the least. I mean the epitomy of goofy whitedness. What was he thinking. He really was putting himself in a potentially dangerous situation. Lucky for him, we weren’t near as criminal as we looked on this particular day.

Now, when I say this dude was WHITE. Let me describe him to ya. He was a pretty big guy. He had kind of long straggly hair. He was wearing a “flap-hat” (I know you remember those) that was like pink and baby-blue. He had on rose colored sun-glasses, goofy teal colored shorts that were much too short, a tie-dyed shirt, and some flip-flops. It was like he did his shopping at the Salvation-Hippie-Army.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, he had just pulled over and said, “Get in.” So we did, one of my friends jumped in the front seat, while the rest of us jumped in the bed. He yelled, ” Where ya headin’?” over his stereo, which was blaring “Petra”(a Christian rock band of the late 80’s and early 90’s) of all things. So, I explained our situation and gave him directions to my apartment. Since we all did go to church, and we all knew who Petra was. I had to bring it to his attention, for some reason, that we knew who he was listening to. And that opened up a whole can of worms that I really didn’t want to open.

So this dude(We’ll call him Terry, for some reason that’s the name that keeps popping in my head) gets all excited. He starts telling us,” Dude, I knew you guys were Christians.” He talked with the inflection of a total surfer, my best reference would be “CRUSH” the sea turtle in “Finding Nemo”. He rambles on about what a coincidence and what-not for the whole 10 minutes to my apartment. We were really tripping out on this guy. You don’t really meet a whole lot of people like him in El Paso, Tx.

So we finally roll up to the crib and we start piling out of the “Ghetto Sled”. Then Terry says,”Hey dudes, I never part paths with other brothers in Christ without praying first. You dudes cool with that.” It was kind of strange, and I really wanted to go ahead and “part paths”, but he was entertaining to say the least so we invited him up. But we sure had an embarrassing surprise in store for us.

Apparently, some of the “Homies” had broken into my house that day to play a practical joke. I opened the door  (with Terry right behind me)to find my whole apartment decorated with about 100 or so pictures from a “porno mag” all strewn about the living room and kitchen. I believe there was even some mayonaisse involved to suggest the worst. I looked behind me to see that it was already too late. Terry had already let himself in. In the words of Popeye, “How embarraskin”. But Terry seemed totally oblivious to the situation, while he was aware of my embarrassment. Before I could even try to explain, he quickly cut me off saying,” Dude, I had friends like that in college. Don’t even worry about it. Hey, let’s get to prayin’ then I’ll be on my way.”

So as rediculous as it might sound, here we were. Four “thugs” and a wannabe surfer-hippie-Christian, all holding hands in a circle, standing on a floor covered in naked women. Then Terry started praying. Basically I was kind of just looking around, checking out this crazy scenario, and not much paying attention to what Terry was saying. That is, until Terry stopped praying in mid-sentence…..

Terry pointed right at me and said,”Whoa, Dude, No Way! Dude, I had no idea I was in the room with such a man of God. Are you excited? Dude, you are gonna lead so many people to Christ. This is AWESOME.” Now, I had been told this kind of stuff all of my life, being a PK and all. To be honest, I was quite “over it” at this period of my life. In fact, the reason for my lifestyle during this period of my life, was to get all of these “so-called prophets” off of my back. So of course, I was cynical. I said, “Really, and when does this all happen?” To which Terry replied, ” Dude, you are gonna be like a pastor of thousands in the Dallas, Tx. area. I don’t know when, but you’ll see. You’ve been called buddy-boy.” Then he left.

I was kind of floored. It took me a minute to get it together. When I finally did, I realized that I had a few more questions for this guy. I ran outside to flag him down, but alas there was no trace of him or the El Camino. Wow, he was quick. I was left with so much unanswered. The funny part about all of this, is that about 3 nights later at a Bible study at my girl-friends house, the Pastor of her church pretty much re-played the whole scene for me.

Now, I am nowhere near being any kind of Messenger of God. I’ve definitely got my issues. But I can say that when I have shared this particular story with others, the general concensus has been that I was visited by some sort of Angel. Hey, who knows where my life is leading. If you told me 10 years ago that my life would be the way it currently is, I wouldn’t have believed you. What I can say, is that I will never forget the day that “Timothy” broke down.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. If you have an opinion (or even some kind of prophecy). I’m all ears, or eyes in this case. Let me know what you think…..CHEERS

Tags: American Me, Angels, Blood in-Blood out, El Paso, Finding Nemo, Half-Baked, Petra, TX.
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FIRST DAY IN EL PASO

This is where it all began. This is where my life changed and twisted in a totally different direction. My Dad had recently announced that we were moving to El Paso, Tx. Here we were living outside of Frankfort, Ky., living the “Country” life. But it was time to move on. My Dad said that God had spoken to him, and told him that he needed to be reaching those “Heathen-Catholic Mexicans”. I always suspected that my Dad’s life-long friend, who was stationed in El Paso and was trying to start a Baptist Church, was really the “Voice of God” he was hearing. But I guess that was neither here nor there. I mean God does work in mysterious ways, right?
So we loaded up a moving truck, piled the five of us in the car, and took off on our 2,000 mile journey to our new home. I don’t remember much of the actual trip, but there was one moment that kinda sticks out in my mind. We were about 60 mles away from our destination. My sister and I had just figured out how many licks it really took to get to the tootsie-roll center of a tootsie-roll-pop. I was honing my Rubik’s cube skills, my sister was mixing it up and timing me with a stop-watch as I solved it, that was actually the first time that I solved it in under a minute (:58 to be exact). My mom was drawing the beautiful mountain scenery with her colored pencils on a sketch pad. She was a gifted artist, always very creative. My very insightful (almost psychic) sister got my attention, pointed at Mom, and with a sad look in her eyes told me, “We’ll never see Mom draw again.” I thought that was a weird statement from a 7-year-old, but turns out she was right. El Paso seems to suck the creativity right out of you. Must be the water.
About an hour later we pulled up in front of our new house. It wasn’t much. It was the first time any of us had seen it. You see, the members of the church had picked it out in our absence, and seeing as that the church had only 9 members, they couldn’t afford the rent for much better. LUCKY US! To tell the truth, I was actually pretty excited, the newness of anything pretty much excited me. We all went inside, decided where everything was to be placed, and left it to the movers to set up our “casa”.
Here is where the “Culture Shock” actually set in. Looking around, we could see the curious neighbors checking us out. It seemed like they all knew who we were already, there was pointing and talking, but we couldn’t understand a word being said. Then finally, my prized possesion (my bike) came off the truck. I jumped right on it and started riding in circles in front of the house. I soon got bored with that and I really wanted to go exploring, (must of been the country-boy in me). I asked my Dad if I could ride around the block real quick to check things out. Dad was excited and in a good mood so he of course said,”yes”. I think I was probably being annoying, trying to help. So anything to get me out of the way seemed like a good idea.
I took off on my bike, wide-eyed and full of excitement. I got to the end of the block and noticed there was a park right at the corner. I pulled into the park, excited that there was a place to play all my sports, whenever I wanted. There was a basketball court, a big field for football, and a playground. JACKPOT! Then I heard someone say, “Hey!” I looked around the corner and saw a group of Hispanic kids on bicycles, they were dressed so weird to me, all wearing T-shirts and khakis with their hair all slicked back. I later found out that they were referred to as “Cholos” or in this case since they were between the ages of 10-13 I guess theywere really “Cholitos”. Then one said to the others,”That’s the keed who stoole mi bicicleta.” I had no idea what that meant, but the way they looked at me and started running/riding toward me, I knew it wasn’t good. I took off like a shot, with about six of them right on my trail. I guess my reflexes or my legs were too slow, because they caught me pretty much immediately. After about 20 blows to the head and body, they finally wrestled my bike away from me and were gone. As theywere leaving I heard one of them laughingly yell, “Welcome to the hood, white boy!” That was when it really hit me that “I wasn’t in Kentucky anymore.”
That day really was the beginning. I got beat up alot more in the next few years. I also went through about 5 more bikes in the next 4 years. It got to where I knew I was getting a new bike for Christmas every year, and so was some kid in the next neighborhood. MINE!

Tags: Add new tag, Baptist Church, Cholo, El Paso, TX.
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