Application Humor

So I'm applying to go to Europe next summer and the application requires consideration of an applicant’s "sense of humor." Please read below my responses to the request to "Describe why you believe you have this characteristic."

I mean, have you seen my nose? Walk around with this sucker on your face and you have to have a sense of humor. 

I’m in the band. Have you seen what I have to wear for eight hours on game days?

I have this great joke involving the constellation of Pegasus and baseball.

Link to blog.

Do inside jokes count as humor?

I grew up in Caldwell County, in a town that was too cheap to pay for the extra side to the town square, so we had a town triangle. Apparently the county was broke too, because we lost the l and the d in our name.

I watch The Office.

Your mom?

That’s what she said. Last night. Ooooooh! (OK, that’s really what she said.)

How do you tie your shoes in space? With an astronaut!

So this guy is walking around his neighborhood and he notices this three legged pig.

Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead!

I have often been described as endearing. I take this to be a good thing, though people may have just been laughing at me. I laugh too! It helps ease the awkwardness.

Take My Feet

I like dusty feet.

I was going to say that I like dirty feet, but that's a little less poetic sounding. It's just as true, I guess. I love looking down at my feet and laughing at my surprise at their color. I love it when my feet are covered in dirt. I love summer, when you can spend your entire day barefoot out in the garden of this Creation and I love the feel of cool bricks in the fall. I mean, I appreciate shoes and I love the way my converses look with my dress pants, but nothing beats standing on grass and feeling the blades stick up between your toes.

I love tired feet, too. I hate the ache, but I love it when I have tired feet. It means that I've been doing something. Right now, I have these awkward blisters from standing all day at a football game (Dinkles, you may be the world's greatest marching shoes, but you have not saved my feet) and all of me aches, but it's an ache that says, "Hey, you accomplished something today. Wear me as a badge of pride and I'll be gone in the morning."

And it might just be this soul that I inherited, but I feel like tired, dirty feet at the end of the day are better than anything else. And sometimes I wonder if my heart got to aching like my feet, would I be more willing to work for  better world around me? Because I can watch the dirt of this world cover my heart and soul with a light dusting as I live and as I love, but I never feel that ache. I never go through the trouble of loving someone the entire day long, until I go to bed with that ache of an overused muscle to accompany my thoughts to sleep. I know I beg for God to create in me a clean heart, to wash the dust off me each day, but maybe I should be asking for a tired heart, a heart that's being used. A living heart. Maybe that's why they sing about hearts of stone.

I don't want to feel guilty, you know? I don't want someone to guilt me into being better, because it's not going to happen. I think I'm pretty awesome right now. I got my senior sticker, I have a job I love, I'm taking classes that are interesting, the football gods have been appeased and have decided to smile down on Chapel Hill and send those pirates and tigers (and bears oh my) back home a little sadder than when they came, the weather has been gorgeous and I've gotten enough sleep. On top of that, my birthday was beautiful (I'm convinced that God allowed Facebook to be invented so that on our birthdays we could all have a mini-reminder of the people who love us), my grandparents and parents came up for the weekend and I had a great show on Friday with awesome friends who came to listen to my Pegasus-baseball joke and a great game on Saturday and an awesome observing session tonight, and this is the second beautiful weekend in a row like this. I got tickets to a talk I wanted to go see, my Europe application is coming together. Life is good. And I feel like I'm getting what I deserve. I'm like Aladdin floating down on the magic carpet. Things are finally starting to turn out right.

So I don't want someone telling me that I can be better. I know that I can, but I don't feel like I need to be. I can only think of one thing that's missing and I am honestly content to just wait and see how life surprises me on the romance front (oh, dear blog readers, I have a story, but I shall have to sneak it in later because if I talk about it, it won't happen). But through all these beautiful things, I have this nagging feeling that my feet aren't tired enough.

I want to make life beautiful for someone else, preferably many someone elses. Now I just need this desire to be strong enough to make me do something about it.

The Church at Auvers

Listen, I know you can't help everyone. But it's kinda driving me crazy that you can't. High school boyfriends? It'll all work out in the end. Grad school applications? You know, God will guide you to the right place, you just gotta trust. Money? The money is always there, and if it's not, you know, God is good, all the time. It'll work out. I promise.

But there are some things I can't promise. I don't know if your family member is going to get better and I know it's hard and I know I can't help. I am, in fact, entirely unencouraging because my former college roommate is going to buy me ice cream if I have cancer, so there's only an upside to that. I don't know how to be an upside for you. I can't make your aunt listen to you and understand you. I can't bring someone beautiful into your life to help you through everything you need right now. I can't pick you up off the street, train you for a job and get you a job and a house. I can't bring anyone back. I can't help. And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

And not that everything in my life is a reference to something else, but I was watching Doctor Who and the Doctor had to leave someone and go on and be the Doctor somewhere else and the man said something like, "We've fought monsters together and we've won. I'm not sure I'll do so well on my own." I'm watching the Doctor's face and I think I understand it because your heart breaks, you know, you just want to take them all and protect them all forever and you can't. You can't always be there and you can't fix everything. How do you leave someone when you know you can't help? When you know what they're headed towards? You can't fix everything.

But give me a time machine and a sonic screwdriver and I'll sure as hell try.