Pastor Punk'd

I have been writing a blog for almost three years. Recently, I have been paying attention to how many people read my blog since I discovered that Blogger (my free blogging service) actually keeps statistics on my readership.

I do not have the readership of Roddy Freeman, a fellow Blogspotter, who writes a blog called Atlanta Airwave Action. He’s connected to the local Atlanta radio industry and his blog has over 6,500 pages views a month. My page views are, ahem, somewhat south of that figure. To put a really bad 70’s analogy on it, Atlanta Airwave Action is Kareem Abdul Jabbar while Humor Me is Herve Villechaize.

Paying attention to the statistics can be a bit depressing. Some of the posts I thought were brilliant, worthy of a Nobel Prize, had low readership. However, the most second viewed post in the history of Humor Me is a post titled, “Not Your Father’s Church Camp” (July 5, 2010). It was about when I was part of the “adult help” at church camp. It was a fun camp and I think the kids got a lot out of it, but, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story.

Before the first evening’s worship service, I was sitting with my pal, Bobby. I have a lot in common with Bobby-my son and his daughter were born on the same day at the same hospital and his dad was the principal of my high school. Out of the blue Bobby said, “Hey, let’s text the Pastor and pretend we’re David Platt and that he wants to meet him”. It sounded like a good idea at the time. (Yes, I was over 50 years old when this happened, why do you ask?)

David Platt was the Preacher for this camp and he is just about as hot as you can get, preacher-wise. He’s written a New York Times best selling book (Radical). In fact, he’s had a positive column written about him in the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, which has to be the first for a Southern Baptist. He has an earned doctorate and was born in 1979. Doesn’t that make you sick?

I told Bobby okay and we decided that I would be the one to text our Pastor because Bobby is always texting the Pastor with great sermon ideas (“Do a series on sex. For a friend”) and he would recognize Bobby's number. I wrote, “Heard you were here, would like to meet you. David Platt” and sent it to the Pastor who was a couple of rows down from us.

It was not a minute before I got a response: “Sure! Where?” This caused the mother of all muffled laughs because we didn’t want to blow our cover. As we were congratulating ourselves on a great practical joke, we began discussing how we were going to let the Pastor know that this wasn’t David Platt. I voted against walking up and saying, "I sent you a text and pretended I was David Platt”. Me and the Pastor work out at the same gym and I didn’t want him to throw a kettle bell at me.

I responded to the Pastor’s text: “Up near the stage, just be sure to bring Bobby with you”. Next text from the Pastor: “Who is this?” By this time, Bobby and I were laughing so hard that I think the Pastor figured it out. Bobby walked up and confessed that it was all “Alan’s idea” and that he tried to talk Alan out of it but you know what a low-down- dirty-dog-sinner Alan can be and that while Alan doesn't care if the Pastor is upset, he does. The Pastor said he wasn’t and seemed to take it all in stride.

Bobby kept worrying that the Pastor was miffed and at the end of the first evening worship service, walked up to the Pastor and said, ‘We were just having fun with you Preacher...”. The Pastor stopped him in mid-sentence, “Don’t worry Bobby, I’m not going to get you back. I’m going to get your lil' friend”. (For those of you that don’t know, I am a vertically challenged American. It could be worse. I could be from Texas.)

When I got home from camp, I called my college roommate, Bill and let him know of the prank. Bill has been immortalized in story and song for his practical jokes over the years. He was impressed with my joke. I must admit I was very proud of myself.

Fast forward to about two weeks later: my wife and I are at the gym. One of the worker’s walks up to me and says I’m two months behind on my gym fees. This makes me almost instantly mad because I know we have been paying our fees. As I’m sitting there wondering how to explode and not look like an idiot, which is impossible for me because when I get mad I look like a Chihuahua chasing a squirrel. Then the worker said, “That man over there told me to tell you this” and pointed to a man doing some curls with hand weights.

It was the Pastor-smiling like a Cheshire cat. I walked up to him and begged for a truce. He said, “Always remember, the Pastor has the last word”.

Amen.