Archive for the ‘Community’ category
June 9, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. June 8, 2019
Dear Body,
You were asked to do more today than you are accustomed to. After all, climbing scaffolding and ladders, doing demolition work on a deck, and painting that required you to twist more times than Chubby Checker are things that you have not been asked to participate in.
But since you’re hanging around with five other men several years younger than you…and you’re on a mission work trip with them to British Columbia…and you’re the one who organized it then you felt the obligation…dare I say the pressure…to go beyond!
You’ll be feeling the effects tomorrow, but at least tomorrow is Sunday so you can be an example to the others and REST!
Don’t worry! Aleve is in the suitcase. There’s more than one that have your name on them.
Remember that you’re 65! Not 25, not even a number that begins with 5. The reason you feel the way you do is because you’re an old body that still lives under the illusion that you’re young. You know, jumping out of the gym, running like lightning, showing agility.
Guess what? Those days have passed and they aren’t coming back.
Back. There’s another sore point, or should I say sore area. Lower back and upper back. They’re doing a tug-of-war to determine who hurts more.
Don’t worry! In less than an hour you can tell the guys that you’re going to go to your room and…read! You don’t have to tell them how much you’re going to read, just that you’re going to read. One paragraph in and you can feel free to drift off and dream about Biofreeze and full body massages.
Here’s the thing. You’re doing what you have wanted to do: Be used by God. That’s what you did today. You were used by God to help out dear people who run a camp for children who need some rays of hope in their lives.
So it’s okay to hurt, to groan, and to feel your age. God thinks you’re pretty special…and old.
Categories: children, Christianity, coaching, Community, Freedom, Humor, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: aches and pains, Aleve, Chubby Checker, feeling old, health, Old age, physical, physical healthy, volunteering
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June 5, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. June 4, 2019
I received a termination notice from a school I’ve been a substitute teacher at. The notice was the result of not having subbed there a single day this past school year. Timberview Middle School, where I teach so often that some of the students think I’m one of the regular instructors, schedules me a steady 3 days a week. It’s also where I coach three sports and practices begin right after school. As Carol keeps saying to me, “You’re suppose to be retired!”
“Reconfigured, dear!”
The other school that was looking to terminate me has its dismissal bell 15 minutes later than Timberview, and the traffic jam getting out of the school grounds resembles the chaos of Paris streets.
I went to talk to the person who schedules substitutes and we worked things out for next year.
“You know, Johanna, at my age when I hear the word “terminate” I think of other things.”
“Sorry, Mr. Wolfe. We really don’t like to terminate people.”
“That’s a relief! You know, I’m starting to look for where the defibrillator is when I come into the school building.”
“You’re not serious?”
“No, but I might be if the word “terminate” gets used too many more times.”
When you reach Medicare age you start to think about things like that. You start to think about how long your hips and knees are going to hold up, how many more “rodeos’ you have in you, and what you can’t eat more than what you can eat.
But you also start thinking about old friends, people who have been a part of your journey in the past or the present. There is a longing inside you to reconnect, to sit and converse, to have a few more of those moments together, like in the past, that cause you to smile.
One of those old friends, Chuck Moore, pastor of First Baptist Church of Champaign/Savoy, Illinois, had a serious health situation about a month ago. Another old friend (In fact, the oldest of the three of us…like, just a few days younger than dirt!), Tom Bayes, has talked to me about converging in Champaign to see Chuck. Tom lives in the Charlotte, North Carolina area now. The three of us pastored churches in the Lansing, Michigan area for years and became close friends. Our “BMW Group” (Bayes, Moore, Wolfe) met for lunch every other week for seven years.
Tom and I have “a need” to see Chuck. It’s that longing that won’t go away, the relational equivalent of a Big Mac Attack. (Oh, there’s another word that causes us to shudder in our old age…attack!)
Two days ago I received an email from a long lost friend named Randy Bockman. We lost touch with one another about two decades ago. What a delight to read an email from “The Bock”! We met while studying at Miami (Ohio) University and became good friends. He was one of my groomsmen. But then we lost touch with one another. I moved to Colorado Springs and he moved from Cincinnati to somewhere in Indiana.
When I read his message, once again, that longing to reconnect rose to the surface. He was one of the greatest guys I ever met and my life has been a bit impoverished without his presence.
Old friends are like rain showers for parched souls. They are God’s blessings for the last parts of our journeys.
Brandon Bayes, Tom’s son who sometimes says something that qualifies as wisdom (I know he’s reading that comment so I had to make it a bit sarcastic!), said to his dad, “Are you all going to wait until there’s a funeral to get together?” It was not really a question, but more like a coach’s halftime admonition to his team as they huddle together in the locker room.
When old friends reappear, or old friends have a setback of some kind, you can’t get rid of the urgency to see them again. It’s what signals to you that your life has depth, has roots of relational significance.
Categories: Christianity, Community, Death, Jesus, love, Pastor, Story, Uncategorized
Tags: friendship, reconnecting with old friends
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June 2, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. June 2, 2019
I ran three miles yesterday. Today my hips are feeling the effects! Someday I’ll probably have to have hip replacement surgery, but let’s don’t talk about that right now, okay?
This morning I sorta’ limped down the steps. You know, an “Ouch” noise whispered through my lips each step down.
Running is not good for certain parts of the body, but great for the cardio! For that matter, life is not good for parts of us, but great in other ways. A few days ago I had a fried seafood platter. It was great for my taste buds, but my arteries are waving the white flag.
All of us have “life limps” of some sort. Recently I found a copy of my freshman transcripts from college. My ego limped through the next couple of hours as I was reminded of the “0.533” grade point average I accumulated in my first quarter of higher education.
Ouch!
Then there are limps that tell ongoing stories. My friend, Jim Newsome, who passed away a few months ago had a slight limp for most of his life. The limp was the result of having polio when he was in the Navy back in the early 1950’s. He spent a month in an iron lung, unsure of whether he would live or die. Five other sailors who had the disease died. Jim lived. He believed that God spared him for a reason, a life reason, and he served his Heavenly Father for the next 65+ years…with a limp!
A God limp!
There are those who limp along with God and those who have a God Limp. That is, there are those who limp through life affected by its damage, slowed by bad decisions, and scarred by the bitterness…and God is with them, but not in an intimate way. He’s like an acquaintance, not a friend.
And then there are those who walk closely with God, depend on His leading, are encouraged by his companionship, and are touched by His hand. Like Jacob, their wrestling with Him over the problems and conflicts of life have produced a limp that has been the result of the close relationship.
With Jim Newsome, his limp became a lead in to conversation about coming near to death, living a life of purpose, and trusting in the Lord.
People with “God Limps” are special, grounded, and, unfortunately, rare! I’ve been fortunate to have a number of them in my life. They are faith followers who lean on the Lord.
This morning I’ll lead worship with the saints of Simla, Colorado. John and Sherry will talk about leaning on the Lord in regards to the Cowboy Camp their family has run for 64 years- a week in June where people gather for worship, fellowship, and evangeIistic services. Each year there are needs that they pray through, like for a cook this year to fix the three meals each day for the 100 or so people who camp there. When God stops providing they believe that Cowboy Camp will end. BUT each year He provides, so they keep going. It’s their God Limp, pronounced and blessed.
This afternoon I’ll run another three miles and walk gingerly through the rest of the day, and I’ll ponder the closeness of God that I brace myself beside instead of limping along with Him!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Death, Faith, Grace, Jesus, love, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: closeness, God dependence, Jacob, Jacob wrestling with God, lame, limping, spiritual intimacy, spiritual journey, the presence of God, walking with a limp, walking with God, wrestling
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May 27, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 27, 2019
There is trivia and then there is truth. Trivia consists of those little morsels of interesting facts that may be known by a small percentage of the populace. Like yesterday’s “Trivia Hive” question: By what name is Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner better known?
Give up?
Answer: Sting.
Interesting, right? But it does nothing to effect the rest of my day. It’s a trivia fact. Add an ‘L’ to trivia and you have trivial!
But then there is truth. Truth changes the way we live, the way we think, what grounds us. Truth is timeless. It is rooted in the past, lived in the present, and remembered for the future. Truth that is forgotten causes a drifting of our beliefs and life principles.
And yet, in our culture, truth seems to have been minimized. I think about this for three reasons: One, that it’s Memorial Day, a day rooted deep into our history, begun in 1866 following the Civil War and originally known as Decoration Day; two, because I see the disconnection between today’s younger generations and knowledge of the past; and three, because there is a tendency for truth to be distorted by those who either don’t know it or have agendas that seek to challenge it.
When we forget what has been we creep towards the edge of the dangerous cliff that leads to a slippage into old mistakes. When we forget where we have been we risk being careless about where we are going.
My wife and I were recently at the Luxembourg American Cemetery. 5,073 American soldiers, who lost their lives during World War II, mostly during the Ardennes Offensive, better known as the Battle of the Bulge, are buried there. As we gazed upon the rows of white crosses across 17 acres it was impossible to not think about what had happened and why they were here. The freedoms we so often take for granted today were solidified by their sacrifices.
It is in that realization that I have my greatest appreciation, but it also in that realization that I cringe, for there is a forgetfulness in our midst that blurs the price of the past. The truth we forget gets bundled with the trivia that we tend to disregard. When we forget the principles of our democracy we become vulnerable to the corruption of the powers that be and the self-centeredness of personal privilege.
Never forget where we’ve been, because it is vital to the direction of where we need to be going.
Categories: children, Community, Death, Freedom, Nation, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: American History, Ardennes Offensive, Battle of the Bulge, Decoration day, history, Luxembourg American Cemetery, Memorial day, never forgetting, remembering, remembering the sacrifice, remembrance, trivia, truth
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May 21, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 21, 2019
It’s May 21 In Colorado Springs and we woke up to a foot of snow on the ground. It started in the early evening, but surely it would spew for a while and then cease!
It hasn’t! School closures on May 21 for snow storms aren’t the norm around here, but my back is mumbling something to me this morning that may be a mixture of pain and profanity.
Carol and I were out in the backyard at 6 AM shaking slumping tree branches that look weighed down by the misery of it all.
The longer I live the more I realize how much of life I’m not in control of. Late May snow storms are beyond me, as are sudden sicknesses, achy knees, and 7th Grade algebra. I suppose I could take algebra off that list if I studied it long enough…maybe not! But all the hand sanitizer, Vitamin C, and hand washing does not make me immune to a virus that comes on like gangbusters.
My friend, Ron McKinney, was looking forward to his daughter returning home yesterday from her first year at a Boston area college, but at the last moment Frontier Airlines changed her flight from Monday to Wednesday. Isn’t it interesting how we can plan something like a trip, vacation, or major purchase and a business, an institution, or the unpredictability of nature scratches out all of our ideas and itineraries?
Being in control is an allusion that we live by. That’s not to say that it’s futile for people to plan and prepare, but rather to not be surprised by the wrinkle in the schedule.
Athletes train and prepare to compete with excellence, but a blown-out knee can happen to the best of the best.
I’ve had friends who have lived a healthy lifestyle and suddenly been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that seems to answer to no one.
I’ve had people in the congregations where I served as pastor- faithful people, people of prayer and spiritual disciplines, who have an intimate relationship with Jesus- suddenly encounter life tragedies that shake them to their cores.
I’ve seen investments in stocks that seemed sound suddenly go off the deep end because the main products of a company became obsolete. Think Eastman Kodak! Or the arrival of Amazon speeding the departure of Sears!
A foot of snow on May 21st! And the forecast of temperatures in the 70’s for the coming weekend!
What I can trust in is the God I serve always being faithful, always loving, and always merciful. As I plowed through the snow this morning with hesitation and white knuckles, I was reminded of my Father God who navigates the way of life for me if I trust in him…if I allow him to be the one who is in control.
Psalm 23 is probably the most familiar scripture selection in the Old Testament. It’s also a psalm of surrender and recognition. It tells of the Father who is like a shepherd, the one who leads, protects, and provides. The reoccurring theme, however, is that he is our Father God who is in control.
What can a person do on May 21st when a foot of snow greets him as his garage door opens? Grab a shovel, get the Biofreeze ointment ready, and live with what is!
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Community, Death, Faith, Grace, Jesus, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: control, flight cancellations, interruptions, life situations, out-of-control, planning, preparation, Psalm 23, sicknesses, snow day, snow storms, the unpredictable
Comments: 3 Comments
May 20, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 19, 2019
Carol and I are returning from a European river cruise that was awesome and memorable. Being in the youngest 20% on the boat made us feel like 65 year old teenagers! Suddenly, as we travel home, we’re feeling a bit weathered!
Our friends, Dave and Robyn Hughes, joined us on the cruise. They now live in Bradenton, Florida, but a long, long…very long time ago Dave and I went to high school together, he performed the function of being my Best Man, and I performed his wedding ceremony.
It was good! It was needed! It was heart aching!
You see, Dave and Robyn’s oldest son, Brad, passed away two years ago this month. His death was the result of an unfortunate accident. Brad was in his mid-thirties at the time of his passing. When I received word of his death I called Dave and we talked for a few minutes, but being together on the cruise was a chance for us to talk face-to-face, laugh and cry, journey through the dark lonely walk, and renew our deep friendship.
He talked, I listened, asking a few clarifying questions as he retold the story, but mostly just listened. A friend is someone you can laugh with, but, more importantly, a friend is someone who stays on the path with you. The path is adorned with bright flowers at certain times, but also potholes of misery at other times.
Dave needed to talk. Grief causes some people to clench their jaw muscles tight in firm anger and anguish, while other people need to talk through it. It is the honesty of grief that reveals the loss, deep loss, and its effects on different people in different ways. Americans still live in the land of denial when a significant loss occurs. We so often are in fear of looking weak, but grief is not about who is strong and who is weak. Grief is about healing the wounds of loss.
All of us have, or soon will, experience loss in some way. For Carol and I, all of our parents are now deceased. It’s a tug on our hearts at any moment. A conversation from long ago breaks to the surface and Mom or Dad seems to be right there…but they aren’t.
So Dave and I talked, and sometimes rested in the silence of our conversation. We told each other old stories that we’ve shared umpteen times already and pondered the questions that have no answers.
Friendship is about listening. It’s about taking the hand of the other and leading him into the unrest, and it’s about helping him look ahead in the looming shadow of the past. It’s allowing the other to ask the questions of spiritual doubt and confusion without rushing to the shallowness of snappy conclusions.
I miss my old friend! I’ll miss the opportunity to stand on the deck of the boat and listen to his sadness, and to retell the stories of the pranks we pulled on each other and others. We long for our next gathering, wherever that might be…God willing!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Death, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: being a friend, easy answers, Friends, friendship, grief, grieving, listen, listener, listening, listening skills, loss, loss and transition, shallowness
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May 16, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 14, 2019
When our basketball team from Judson College (Elgin, Illinois) played Olivet Nazarene College the result was usually painful! We had a small college All-American named Tom Randall and… eleven other guys who wore the same uniform! We weren’t very good!
For example, our center was short (six foot two inches), but he complimented his lack of size by not being able to jump or shoot! He did, however, make good use of his five fouls each game, and was usually sipping on a water bottle as he sat on the bench to watch the last eight to ten minutes.
We tried! Tried really hard before we were deep fried! Olivet Nazarene had already beaten us on our home court in January by about thirty…okay, 36! Now it was February, we had lost ten in a row, and had to go to their gym and play them again on a Saturday night.
“The Lion’s Den” as we called it was always jam-packed. A balcony with an iron railing ran around the entire gym and spectators hung on it as they yelled at the players of the visiting team. We cranked up the myth by talking about they would spit on us if we strayed to close to the edge of the court. We weren’t “moisturized”, mind you, but somehow it gave us an excuse for having our butts kicked up and down the court.
My senior year someone came up with an idea to help calm the nervous anxiety that made us play tentative. We would all get our hair done in Afros. Somehow it seemed like a good idea, like a dimwit getting a tattoo on his arm saying “I Love Betty”, but then having Betty dump him like a bad habit.
Afros! Most of us were whiter than angel food cake. Afros were not our identity or calling, but for one game, one night, we’d provide the Nazarene faithful with a sight that would cause mouths to drop open in amazement and horror
That morning several female classmates prepped our hair. The school yearbook has a picture of several of our teammates sitting at a lunch table, eating with hair adorned with bobby pins and curlers.
And so we hopped on the team bus and traveled south to Kankakee. I was a five foot eight inch shooting guard, but my Afro made me a sweet-looking 6’2” that game. I had it flowing as I ran up and down the court.
We played loose and carefree, like champions! It was the days before three point baskets, but we still were shooting long range jumpers. I hit three jumpers for six point that game and could feel the wind of the Tiger fans blowing through my hair as I sprinted from one end of the court to the other.
It was a sight and an adventure!
And another lop-sided loss! The final score caused cringing when it was relayed to our campus and the local newspaper, but, to us, it didn’t matter. We had risen to the occasion, played without fear, and, most of all, enjoyed having young ladies play with our hair for several hours that day.
Olivet Nazarene went on to winning our conference championship and playing in the small college national tournament while we went back to being students who also happened to play basketball.
And we knew…we knew…the Tiger players could only wish that a few college co-ed’s would play with their hair! They were too good to be able to look different! We, however, were bad enough to be allowed to do the unthinkable!
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Afros, Basketball, Judson College, Judson University, memories, Olivet Nazarene University, playing as a team
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May 13, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 10, 2019
I’ve progressed. As a long gone Kentucky uncle would have said to me, “You did done good, son!”
Two days ago my feet touched three different countries in the same day. That’s “COUNTRIES”, mind you! Not counties! Put the “r” in there to turn me from a local yocal to an international traveler!
France, Luxembourg, and Germany with the same two feet! I wasn’t sure what language I should have been speaking, things were changing so fast…so I resorted to middle school dialogue, throwing in a few “Dudes!” and other hip phrases that made people keep their distance from me.
“That was crisp, dude!” I said to a white-haired gentleman, carrying his wife’s two suitcases and a backpack while smoking a cigar. He looked at me like I was trying to con him. Must have been from the East Coast, all suspicious and skeptical about life.
Three countries! I’ve come a long way, baby!
You see, until I was 18 years old and a high school graduate I had never been outside of three states (Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio) and my family had lived in all three. Do the math! That means 3 states visited…over 3 states lived in…that equates to…0% as being the percent of states I visited that I had not been a resident of!
As we used to say, I didn’t get out much!
It’s amazing how our “world”, or understanding of it, changes as our boundaries change. In southern Ohio, where our town laid out nicely beside the Ohio River, my “world” was uncomplicated and “Mayberry-ish”!
If my hair was about to land on the top of my ear Dad took men to see Mr. Morris at Morris’s Barber Shop. Back in those days a young guy’s hair touching his ears was a sign that he had jumped off the deep end from the safety of reason and was about to land in the chasm of radicalism. First…hair touching a kid’s ears and the next thing would probably be doing drugs and embracing the hippie movement, free love and then driving around in a VW wagon with a peace sign on the back window. In other words, a haircut seemed to make you more American and keep you grounded…so they told us!
Morris’s was right across the street from where my mom worked at the J.C. Penney’s. Penney’s was where I got outfitted…socks, tighty-whities, shoes, shirt, jeans. If Penney’s didn’t sell it I didn’t wear it. More accurately stated, if Penny’s didn’t sell it then it wasn’t essential to my existence. A young guy could always depend on Towncraft underwear and socks.
Our church, Ironton First Baptist Church, was a block and a half away. My youth group, Baptist Youth Fellowship (BYF), provided me with some of my closest friendships…and, as time would reveal, a few of my former girlfriends. Today, as we sail down the Moselle River in Germany, Carol and I are traveling with Dave and Robyn Hughes. Dave was a part of that BYF group, filled the role of Best Man for our wedding, and allowed me to conduct the wedding ceremony for his walk down the aisle.
There it was! My world could be described in those three simple places: a haircut for normalcy, Penney’s dress attire for uncomplicated reason, and our church for lifelong relationships.
47 years after I finally traveled, at the age of 18, into my fourth state (Tennessee), I journeyed into three different countries in less than 12 hours. My “world” has changed over the decades. I no longer think of Taco Bell as fine Mexican cuisine, or Maxwell House as a fine cup of coffee. My world is broader and more diversified, but the roots of my upbringing always cause me to long for what was home.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Germany, growing up., Ironton Ohio, J.C. Penney's, Ohio, traveling
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May 6, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. May 6, 2019
The PTO at Timberview Middle School sponsored a pretty cool project this weekend. They had students and parents “chalk up” the front sidewalk entry to the school with words of affirmation and thanks for the teachers and staff. I’m sure when the school staff arrived this morning their faces broke into smiles. It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, a welcome event for weary educators as they crawl towards the finish line of another marathon school year.
Yes, they are underpaid and sometimes under appreciated, taken advantage of by self-centered parents who assume that educators have nothing else to do but watch their children, and discounted by other obnoxious parents who think their children’s poop doesn’t stink!
But let me tell you about some of the things I see teachers do that aren’t stipulations in their contracts.
I see several Timberview teachers eating lunch in their classrooms…along with anywhere from 15 to 30 students. Thirty minutes of quiet between classes is sacrificed so kids can chatter around them.
I see a couple of teachers giving up lunch time to play football or some other game outside with students, who want nothing else but to impress their instructors!
I see teachers staying after school to help students who are having a hard time understanding the subject material. The teachers are “off the clock”, but willing to give whatever time is needed to have things finally click for the student.
I see frustrated teachers sending emails to parents about their children’s academic struggles or unwise decision making…and getting no response. They see it as a partnership with the parents, but some parents seem to be more interested in whatever sports team is playing.
I see teachers giving hours and hours of their time for events like Science Olympiad, Chess Club, Student Council, and food drives.
I see teachers taking heat for the state mandates on testing, like they’re the driving force behind it!
I see teachers giving words of encouragement to crying kids, hope-filled hugs, and listening ears to student stories that seem to have no end or purpose.
I see teachers giving high-fives and inquiring how the past weekend’s hockey game went. I see them showing interest in their student’s lives, not just how well they understand the latest unit of linear algebra.
I see teachers giving their students nicknames that become marks of distinction. In my time as a guest teacher I’ve nicknamed kids “Mary Poppins”, “Braino”, “Beano”, “GOAT”, ‘Steak and Shake”, “Princess”, “Fruit Loopz”, “The Blonde Bomb”, “Dictionary Boy”, and “Kermit the Frog”.
I see teachers trying to give their all for their students and then experiencing guilt about short-changing their own families.
I see teachers trying to expand their own knowledge and understanding of their subject matter, while staying current on what they are expected to teach in the present.
I see teachers coming to the aide of students who don’t have the necessary supplies, teachers who do things like bring a pair of gloves for a kid who doesn’t have any, shoe laces for a student whose tongues are flapping uncontrollably, and handing a granola bar to a hungry kid who has no lunch to eat.
I see teachers as being on the frontlines of our society’s efforts to go forward, to prepare the next generation of difference-makers. No one can make more of a difference in a student’s life than a teacher who is passionate about his/her opportunity to teach!
Hopefully, this week you’ll also see teachers for who they really are and what they do!
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Humor, love, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: educators, making a difference, middle school, middle school teachers, PTO, teacher, Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers, teaching, teaching kids, teaching middle school, teaching school
Comments: 1 Comment
April 30, 2019
WORDS FROM W.W. April 30, 2019
They ask me to do it!
And do it again…and again!
There is something amusing to middle school students about convincing a senior citizen to do “The Woah. It’s a new thing, kinda’ like the fidget spinner was a new thing two years ago, and dabbing was a new thing a little bit before that. In regards to dance moves there’s been the Harlem Shake, the Mannequin, and “the floss”.
“The Woah” is about a quick moving of a dancer’s fists and then freezing the movement. It derived in Texas for some reason! Evidently, safer than cow-tipping!
Everyday I have middle school students asking me to do the Woah. Their favorite has become the “Woah” where I’m thrown an imaginary ball and make an imaginary catch. The “act” causes uncontrollable laughter from the adolescents, reminiscent of adults chuckling over the cute things one year olds do. Yes, sad isn’t it? I’m back to being ridiculously cute like a one year old!
There’s kids doing adult things and then there’s adults doing kids things! I’ve always been a kid at heart, but am now elderly in my ankles, knees, hips, and lower back.
So I do a little woahing! It’s cheap! No accessories or batteries to buy, or brand name to fashion. Just a simple movement of the hands!
Kids like my Moondance, also, although that is getting a little more difficult for my hips and knees to execute.
Yesterday an 8th Grade girl said to me, “Mr. Wolfe, you’re cool!” I thanked her and then retrieved my lunch from the refrigerator for the day, a plastic container of cottage cheese and cucumbers. The illusion of coolness quickly disappeared as she began gagging over my choice of cuisine. Cottage cheese to 8th Grade girls is cool in temperature only, and to be avoided like facial blemishes and bad hair days.
Perhaps the Woah will disappear as quickly as my residency in the land of “being with it!’ I’ll probably never know…and I’m okay with that!
Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Grandchildren, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: being cool, cool, cottage cheese, cucumber, fads, fidget spinners, hand movements, Harlem Shake, middle school, middle school boys, middle school girls, middle school teachers, middle schoolers, substitute teacher, substitute teaching, The woah
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Words from WW Blog 