LTP: May 2013

When you are a confident loud cocky person there aren't too many things that can embarrass you. Not because things that you do aren't embarrassing. Ask your family if you embarrass them. Was Miriam embarrased when I pelvic thrusted across the room in that busy store? Is Natalie embarrased whenever I bust out singing Justin Bieber in a quiet restaraunt?   It's just that you yourself aren't embarrassed by these things and that's why you do them.

When something does embarrass you please believe it has to be mortifying. I myself only have one moment in my life that I wished that the earth would quit messing around and swallow me up.  That was the time that Martha Maddux had me dress up like Abraham Lincoln for the 4th of July celebration at the old New Haven. Even before I was about to walk down the aisle of the packed sanctuary I knew that this was my most embarrasing moment. Not good. The other half of the booty twins Michael Paradise has had his fair share of moments. (Tesha Banks called us the booty twins because she said we were "attached at the booty". Aren't you glad that the Bible says that a man will have a friend that is closer then a brother instead of saying a friend that will be attached to your booty.) Michael and I have close to the same personality. The difference is I say way more things that he wouldn't say. Maybe it's because he is a pastor. Maybe it's cause he has more discernment. Maybe it's cause I just don't give a flip, it's probably this last one. Whatever the reason Michael is pretty careful and that's why I think it's funny that he has had two of these life changing horrible moments when I myself have had only had one. His latest one was while he was in college.In order to celebrate girls we went to a place that had Karaoke on a Saturday night. Michael's performance of Billie Jean that night still gets discussed while we are arguing sports and I have to bring something up to show that I am way cooler then he is. When I pull the Billie Jean card the discussion ends and Michael cries a little bit. That is how bad this performance was. (To be fair Michael is a good singer but this song was way out of his range, that added to the fact that all the ladies were there watching him struggle through the part where he "danced on the floor in the round".)

The first terrible moment is worse then this one. It took place about ten years ago in a mythical land called "Union College". A place where young men go to discover their dreams.   We had made the trip up to Lincoln for a prayer conference. The picture below was taken a couple of minutes before this story takes place. This is what happened. There was a break from the prayer conference activities for dinner. It happened to be a pizza feed under the clocktower. Michael and I had ran up to whoever's room we were staying in to change clothes for the upcoming pizza feed. Michael decided that he was going switch the underwear that he had on. He was wearing Pete Maravich style red mesh shorts and he thought if he changed to some tighty whities from the boxer's he was wearing there would be less of a chance of people seeing his underwear when he was running around eating pizza. (That last sentence is called foreshadowing. Ask Dr. Fitts about this.) After we changed we went to get the pizza. There were around 200 students from all the academies under the clocktower eating pizza and we were all sitting around having a good time. As we were sitting there talking to some girls (Yowit can you remember which girls we were talking to? There were so many. Just kidding Natalie and Alana) we decided to do what we do to impress the ladies. Bust out in a rap song. That's right when we were in high school we had rehearsed rap songs that could happen at any moment. And if you don't think this impressed the girls then you are just kidding yourself. Girls eat up this rap stuff. We decided to perform the rap that we knew the best. Here is us performing this song last year at Michael's camp.

We were getting to the point in the rap where the people that were standing around enjoying their slice and making small talk turned to see what was going on. And then it happened. But wait first some backstory. If Michael and I are Batman and Robin (please don't try to decide which one of us is Batman and which one of us is Robin. This will hurt our already fragile friendship) there would be only one person capable of playing the Joker in our lives. Only one person so diabolical that happened to be there to foil all of our biggest plans. Only one person so confident and mean. That person is Michael Lee Larson AKA Mikey. When Mikey was a senior on the last day of school he dumped a huge bowl of ice cream on my head ruining my favorite shirt. When I was a freshmen in college he ate all the snickers bars that my mom had sent me for my nineteenth birthday. Mikey stole Paradise's spot on the basketball team. Mikey had control of the whole Frishman family and they attacked on his command. When our Dis House team played his Mark/Travis/Mikey team in Union College intramurals he blocked Paradise's shot and yelled out our team slogan "We Must Protect Dis House". That was low and it caused one Alana Paradise to say "That was mean". Mikey did all of these things with his "Mikey smile" plastered on his face. I don't understand how Mikey and I are still on speaking terms.

Ok back to the year 2000. Like I said everyone was starting to take notice of the sick lyrics that were being spit at the northwest corner of the concrete under the clocktower. All of a sudden there was a wooshing sound that caught our attention. I stopped rapping and looked to see what had happend. It seemed like the next few seconds were in slow motion. The crowd was very quiet. I looked into Michael's face and noticed an interesting exspression of panic and fear. I looked down at his shorts and...THEY WEREN'T THERE!!! Mikey had snuck up behind Paradise and pulled his shorts all the way down and what were viewing now was Michael Paradise wearing his Superman T shirt and his Fruit of the Looms. All of the oxygen from under the clocktower had been sucked up when everybody who was watching gasped in disbelief of what Mikey had just done. That awe and disbelief lasted for about 1.5 seconds when it quickly turned into obnoxiously loud laughter. At this time in his life Michael was known on the court for his quickness and speed.(This was before his ACL injury playing intramural football his freshmen year in college that strangley involved MIKEY LARSON!!!!!!) He quickly pulled up his red mesh shorts and the red from his shorts made a B-line for his face. The laughter slowly died off but the embarrasment did not. You see when you are a loud cocky person you get embarrased when the situation becomes funny out of your control. That is exactly what happend that day. A day that will live in infamy. Actually it's a pretty funny story and I love telling it. And I guess we all need to get taken down a notch every once in a while. I'm just glad that didn't happen to me.