Sunday was the big day of turning 19. Partying started the day before, on Saturday, when I got to hang out with my sister at Playland and all glorious "fun-ness" of the sort. Then... I lost my cell. Ick. My sister offered to buy me a new one (my sister is seriously awesome ;) ) and so I headed over to her place after church the next day (yesterday).

We went and got a "new" phone from the Rogers Wireless in Lougheed Mall. The guy at the counter turned on my phone and, after the oh so wonderful Rogers logo and theme song, the wallpaper appeared... a wallpaper that couldn't have been manufactured with the phone because it was a picture of an East Indian man in a turban.

"Ahh... so this is...normal?" I asked the man at the store.
"Yeah." He said. "That's Ted Rogers...the guy who owns Rogers."
"So...why is he in his house....?"
"He likes to get close and personal with his customers."
I nodded, bemused, and left the store with my sister.

We headed off to my car and, as I sat in my front seat, noticed something in the music section of the phone. I clicked the one song named VAHEGURU000_1.mp3 and listened as a soft romantic (I think!) song started playing in Punjabi.
Thank you Ted Rogers?

I started to wonder what other treasures were on my "new" phone and found a whole photo album from a Sikh festival from mid-August. Fun?

And the one contact on the phone was named Manjit. Therefore, my phone is now named Manjit and I am forced to keep the picture of the lovely man as my wallpaper for at least a week. This is gonna raise some interesting questions to say the least.

Neither my sister nor I had eaten yet that day, and so we headed off to Denny's for a much-needed brunch at 2:30.

As we were nearing the restaurant, we noticed a funny smell... Must be the area, we thought.

We pulled into the parking lot and I looked through the windshield to make sure that I was pulled all the way into my spot when I realized...

I can't see.

There's steam all over my window.

My car is internally combusting.

I popped the hood and got out of the car, hoping beyond hope that if I stared at the engine long enough, the car would just get better. I'm good with cars like that.

A slight frying sound emitted from the front of my car.

Hmmm...

A man ran over (of course...way to be damsels in distress haha) and took a look at the car.

"It's overheating!" he cried. "Get water!"

I rushed into Denny's got some water, but it wasn't enough.

We grabbed more

and more

and more

pouring it into....

wherever it pours into.

(here's a note for all of you car lovers who want my head at this point... I did not do the pouring. Someone who knew what he was doing was. There was a place to pour it and he poured it there...I am only ignorant of what to call it)

My sister was on the other side of the car and looked down to find a waterfall of water and coolant spilling forth into the parking lot.

Hmmm....

Some band came off something too. Again...I'm ignorant.

"The only way to get this band off is to jack up the car and remove the wheel," he said forlornly. "My work here is done."

My sister and I stared after his vehicle as he drove away.

Might as well go into Denny's.

After a luxurious brunch (where I got a free birthday meal!) we attempted to call the owner of the car, but realized something very grave.

All of my contacts were on my other phone.

Hmmmm....

We asked for a phone book.

"What's her last name?" my sister asked.

"I...don't...remember..."

I searched through whatever seemed close, looking for a familiar name to match a familiar address.

Fail.

I flipped to the front cover.

"Surrey White Pages."

She lives in Burnaby.

I called 411...

And still couldn't remember a last name.

"I'll call one of my friends to look it up."

My fingers hovered over the keys of my cell phone, Manjit looking at me quizzically from his resting spot on my screen.

I couldn't remember any numbers.

I had been in the world of speed dial and contact lists until I was thrown back into the stone age of good old-fashioned memory--and I was drowning in it.

I remembered my friend Melissa's home phone and called her.

She gave me the cell phone of a friend from high school.

I called him and got the owner's numbers.

No response.

Two hours later, she was able to call me back and sent someone out to look at it.

Not drivable.

No...

Moral of the story, I am now car-less, but I got to hang out with my sister all day AND I got to experience a Denny's parking lot for 4.5 hours. Who else can say they've had that experience??

I was able to hang out with some friends later that night and everything was good, but it just goes to show how life can throw you curve balls...

Funny thing about that saying...

When someone's throwing a curve ball at you, and you have no intention of playing baseball, why would I try to catch the baseball?? I would run away as fast as I can. I don't want a hard, round object traveling at 90 miles per hour anywhere near me. I'm just saying.

But really, God is good regardless. I learned a lot (like the fact that patience is always a good thing and the importance of learning car terminology for the sake of my readers) and consider this another colourful chapter in the story of Breanna. Life won't always go the way you want it to, and I'm sure I'm gonna learn more about it in the months leading up to my internship and definitely while I'm on the field, away from all of my normalcies.

But God is good, and that's a fact that can never change.

This story is based on 2 Kings 2:11 as well as 2 Kings 2:23-25... I'd suggest reading these first to fully comprehend the loveliness (or graphic horror...joking of course ) of this story.

AND just to make it easier for my wonderful readers...

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=12&chapter=2&version=72

 

Now I’m a traveling kind of guy, and so one day I decided to go to this place called Bethel to do some relaxing before I returned to therapy. Not intense therapy or anything, just some anger management courses and the like. No biggie. So I was walking along a beautiful forest trail and, unfortunately, I began to feel quite light-headed. The sun was so intensely bright that it blinded me and my head began to pulsate with heat. Had I been better prepared for my trip, I obviously would have brought along my cloak with the hood on it, but it, unfortunately, was at the cleaners. (I would have washed it myself, but you know new fabrics. Don’t want that colour running!) So there I was, starting to slightly hallucinate with the heat and stumbling along my way. That wasn’t the worst of it. You see, I’ve had this problem since I was a young child. When I was born I, obviously, had no hair. My parents didn’t fret until my second birthday came along, then my third, and fourth, fifth, sixth; still no hair. Something was incredibly wrong. They told me I was special, that maybe God had a plan for me… like the opposite of Samson… just not weak… or something like that. That didn’t stop the teasing at school. “Hold still.” My schoolmates would tell me. “Just tilt your head a little…there. Sorry, I thought I had something in my teeth. Thanks for the mirror!” and “Elisha, cover up! Your head is blinding me!” You’d think that in the house of God I’d be treated a little better, but whatever.

            Not only have I never had hair, I also kind of have this flaky scalp disorder. It all began when Elijah (my former mentor who left me) went up to heaven in a chariot of fire. You see, I was going to go with him, but I accidentally tripped and went headlong into the side of the chariot and, consequently, burned my scalp. Temporarily knocked out by the pain, I was forgotten and the chariot left without me. I swear, in the dictionary under the heading “Depressing”, there’s a picture of me.

            So ANYWAYS, I was walking along and not quite myself. My head was peeling/burning/reflecting dancing sunlight on my surroundings when I came across a small child playing on the side of the road.

            “Why hello little one,” I said with a smile. “Are you enjoying the—“. My sentence cut short as a sharp pain distracted me. The child pulled his foot back to kick my shin again when I screamed bloody murder and he ran off into the woods. Stupid child. I mean… Lord, please forgive me… Ahem, such pious thoughts.

I continued on my journey and began to hear strange whisperings in the woods around me. Not exactly knowing whom they were coming from, I cautiously proceeded on my way when, all of a sudden, a girl with solemn brown eyes appeared in the road in front of me. She tilted her head to one side as her eyes moved from my sandaled feet all the way up to my, at this point, not so attractive scalp. Her mouth twitched into a crooked smile. Unsure of whether to keep going or turn back, I fixed my gaze on hers. She seemed innocent enough… or was she? We stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. She furrowed her brows; I did the same. She furrowed them further; I furrowed as well. Further and further we furrowed until my brow muscles shook with the tension. Beads of sweat formed on my brow as I concentrated on keeping the difficult expression. The whisperings from the surrounding woods began to grow louder. Small dark figures emerged from the woods, but I wasn’t about to look up from my intense contest. The whisperings began to form words—words that took me back to my childhood—words that have forever haunted my mind. Bald…head…They made me shudder in pure horror as I broke my stare and focused it on the large huddle of beastly children. They began to close in on me chanting bald…head…bald.. head.. bald head bald head BALD HEAD…Faster and faster they chanted the horrendous words. I held my hands to my ears as I cried out in agony. “Stop!” I cried. “I cannot bear it!” They paid no heed… but heaven did. Somehow amidst the strange chanting, my terror-filled shouting reached the angelic host. A new angel was on duty, poor guy, and he was, more or less, an HSL student (you know, Hebrew as a second language). Thinking that I was calling out for a curse of bears, he summoned two of them from the neighbouring woods. Having poor eyesight as well, he thought that I was being attacked by a large army and so ordered the bears to attack the monsters… I mean children. To make a rather graphic tale more or less G-rated, I’ll skip the gory details. Let’s just say that not many of them made it out alive. But hey, don’t blame me. It’s not like I’m the reason they got their due, I mean unjust punishment. If you don’t believe me, just ask a little half-blind angel named Pedro.

 

©BRH 2008

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