With the Methodists, life is always a party.

Well I just got back from the Methodist church youth night that all us cool salvos go to once a month and had such an interesting bunch of stuff happen I thought I’d blog about it. So anyway, let me see, what interesting happened…Apples, oranges, foosball, fruit, and that poor, poor girl…Okay, all done! What, you want more? Geeze, you are so demanding! Okay, whatever. I’ll give you what you want, because I’m such a kind person who loves you. Anyway, first thing…Apples. Well, actually, the oranges came first. But anyway. We played two great fruit games! First with oranges, we split into three teams, each team getting a nice big orange. We then had to put the orange under our chin and pass it, chin to chin, from one end of our team to the other. Sound awkward? Oh yeah! I was standing between my friends Evelin and Taavi, and this would already be awkward enough, but add on the fact that Evelin is so much shorter than me, and Taavi is a guy…I mean the game made it necessary to press your bodies together to pass the orange, so with most any girl I’d be more than fine with it. Not that you can really take time to enjoy it, you have to concentrate too hard. Of course Evelin didn’t mind because she’s so in love with me she’s been dying to find a way to get that close to me. I’m joking, but I know if Evelin ever reads this I’ll get a black eye. And Taavi was disappointed because that girl he had his eye on was on the other team, so he’d have no chance to take an orange from her. Well tough luck. But more on the two of them later. So that was a very fun and awkward time, we never did manage to get the orange to the end of the line without cheating. So of course we lost. But I still had loads of fun, and we all had loads of laughs. Evelin kept laughing because when I took the orange from her my facial hair tickled her neck. I had never realized how useful facial hair could be! Now I’m going to get two black eyes, even though this is true!

Anyway, the next fun game we played required three pairs to come forward. Taavi grabbed and dragged his protesting and embarrassed love interest forward, hoping this would be another game that caused close physical proximity. And since I had been competing fiercely with Taavi all night I politely asked the only girl in the whole place I’d trust not to trip me up, Evelin (I won’t get black eyes now, right?), to be my partner. So we stepped forward and I was handed an apple. The game was explained. Quite simple really. One of had to peel all the skin off the apple with our teeth. But there’s always a catch. I couldn’t touch the apple. So Evelin held the apple and I tore huge chunks out of it and chewed it enough to swallow it without killing myself. Evelin had a great strategy though. She turned the apple as I bit, and I kept biting until my mouth was full. So before I had filled up my mouth once, a quarter of the skin was gone. The other teams lost horribly. Eating is my specialty. Poor Taavi, after mouthing “Your going down!” at each other I’d expected a better competition. But apparently being fed an apple by a girl you are trying to impress is difficult. It’s hard to act cool, be a gentleman, and stuff your face out of someone else’s hand all at the same time. But I had no one to impress, I already know I’m oozing coolness no matter what I’m doing, and I love eating like a pig! I just wish that type of piggish speed eating attracted girls…

Anyway, what’s next? Foosball! Yay! Every time we go to the Methodists we play foosball. And I always rock. I give my little plastic team pep talks and tell them strategies and act like any good coach. Then I grab the sticks they’re stuck on and get spinning! But tonight I faced a sickening combo. Evelin and I teamed up again (we were on a roll, apples and oranges!) and faced the most fearsome duo I have ever foosed a ball against. Vesse and Priit wiped the floor with us. Their little plastic dudes were like blurs, spinning and jumping back and forth. It was scary. Then Vesse got tired and let his brother, Eero, take over. Now I faced the most hilarious duo ever. Eero has a well earned reputation as a cheater. And every time he does cheat it’s always hilarious. I’ve learned some great Uno moves from him. All cheating, but still great moves. So when he came he brought his cheating ways with him, grabbing our little men, blowing on the ball and putting his hand in front of the goal. But rather than being irritating like it would be if anyone else did it, it turned into the ultimate cheat-fest! “Screw the rules, we’ve got good senses of humor!” was our cry. My ribs hurt from laughing, and tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. It was a great time. The cheaters lost of course. But we were all cheating so…we all won! Does that make sense? No? Good!

What’s next now? Fruit! As you may have noticed we had a kind of fruit theme. That’s because we talked about the fruit of the spirit. And one thing we did was to split into teams of 5 and cut out little fruits and write a fruit of the spirit on each that we thought best went with our team mates, and also write one for ourselves. And the cool thing about this was that I wasn’t sure what to write for any of my teammates, I hate these types of things because what if I say I think somebody has peace, and then they read that and yell in a really un-peaceful way, “You stupid little idiot! I don’t have peace! I’m kind and patient! I’ll smack you so hard…” but with my friend Priit I felt like I should put Ustuvus, Faithfulness. I wasn’t quite sure why, but it seemed right. And for myself I put Rõõm, Joy. Because I truly feel that more than any of the other fruits of the spirit I have joy. “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart! Where?” Anyway, then when it came time to give out our fruity messages I was pleased to see that Priit was the only one who had written Joy for me. And I was also pleased to hear that he had put faithfulness for himself. We each got each other dead on. Is that cool or what? It must mean I have psychic powers and…no, it’s just cool.

Anyway, my final thing is “that poor, poor girl” I’m not talking about Evelin. She’s that lucky, lucky girl. She got to give me an orange! I see black eyes in my future. I’m referring to Taavi’s love interest. As you may have noticed, I’ve left her nameless because I don’t know her well enough, and because what I will say may embarrass her. I actually feel bad for Taavi too. Let me describe this girl. She’s the perfect height, with a perfect body, perfect face, perfect hair, simply oozing feminine fertility and sensuality. Now I must note that this is not because she tries for this. I don’t mean she dressed to show off her great body, and tried to look perfect. She just was. I’ve seen very few girls like this. In fact only two, including her, come to mind. And against a girl like this most guys are powerless. We are struck by an instant infatuation. And will act completely uncharacteristically stupid to try to impress this girl, a goddess of beauty who we long to worship. I’d be caught in this deadly trap too if it wasn’t for the fact that I have intensely trained myself against just such a girl. I’ve had this infatuation with divinity before and it just left me feeling stupid. And also I’ve grown the wisdom to become more than a gorilla, because if I were a guerilla I would quickly assert myself as the dominant male by kicking around the competition. So I pity Taavi. And understand his plight. But I also pity this goddess, because unlike the goddess I encountered, (who was also a goddess of pain who once told she was such a jerk to me to help me, she was toughening me up. Well I guess it helped, I’m tough now, even in the face of such goddesses) she wasn’t trying to be a goddess and play with us guys like puppets. She was just trying to enjoy her time with other Christian young people. So my heart goes out to her. I considered apologizing to her on Taavi’s behalf because he didn’t realize what an idiot he was being. But then I realized no matter how tough I may be, I too had been affected by this incarnation of feminine beauty, and I just wanted an excuse to talk to her and play the gentleman by apologizing. So instead I played some more foosball, tried some ping pong, and then walked with Evelin and Priit to the tram stop.

Oh the tortures of being male. It must be so much more simple being a gorilla. We, as humans, have the burden of intelligence. And because we have intelligence we have a responsibility to use it. Well I’m sure there’s some goddess out there somewhere who has been waiting for a guy who can eat an apple like a pig…