Greg is the only person I know that has seen Elvis (Yes, that one!) without having to pay for a ticket. Greg also bumped into Jimmy Buffett before Jimmy Buffett became incorporated. I know about 400 hundred people that have bumped into Jimmy Buffett somewhere. I can only imagine the conversation Jimmy Buffett had with Greg.
Jimmy: "Are you still in school?"
Greg: "My last final is Friday, so come Monday, it's gonna be all right. Boy, I wish I had a mustache, pencil thin, like Boston Blackie. Have you seen my lost shaker of salt?"
Greg is one of the only people I have heard of (Al Gore is the other, which I'm sure pleases Greg) that knows how to hypnotize a chicken. He (Greg-not Al Gore) is proud of this ability. I'm certain it is on his resume (Greg's-not Al Gore's but I would suggest that the former Vice President add it. It couldn't hurt).
Vice President of A Large Corporation: "I see your resume notes that you know how to hypnotize a chicken. Would you be willing to travel, overnight, and teach this skill to our chicken handling employees?"
I met Greg when we started attending Roswell Street Baptist Church. My son was six years old at the time and my wife and I wanted him to be involved in the programs of the church. It was important to us because our son had announced, on a couple of different occasions, that he wished we were Jewish (long story).
Greg was in charge of a program called "The Royal Ambassadors" which is "a missions discipleship organization for boys in grades 1-6 through hands-on activities that encourage spiritual growth, games and sports, and mentoring relationships". I can honestly say looking at it years later that our son's spiritual growth was encourage by games, sports, and mentoring relationships. It was also encouraged by Greg drinking a Lava Lamp.
For those of you that don't know, a Lava Lamp is a "novelty" lamp that "contains blobs of colored wax inside a glass vessel filled with clear or translucent liquid". The wax blob raises and falls either through the heating of the incandescent light bulb at the bottom of the lamp or by magic, I don't know which. Originally, way back in the groovy 60's, the blobs were colored red and it "looked" like lava. It was really far out. I guess you had to be there.
Greg was always telling the kids that he was going to drink a Lava Lamp. How he came up with that, I have no earthly idea. I'm still trying to figure out why you would want to hypnotize a chicken.
Of course, boys in grades 1-6 are not the sharpest knives in the population drawer. They'd tell him, "No way, you'd die". Greg would tell them he's done it before and somehow lived through the ordeal.
So one day, Greg announces that if the kids met this certain goal, he would drink a Lava Lamp. That's all of the incentive the kids needed. They met their goal and Greg announced he would drink a Lava Lamp at the next Royal Ambassadors meeting.
I cannot accurately describe the reaction of the boys. They went absolutely, and I say this with great love and Baptist censorship, totally Ape Poop Bat Guano Crazy.
The big day finally came for Greg to drink The Lava Lamp. Of course, Greg had to involve me in his presentation. This was his plan. He had two Lava Lamps. One was your average groovy Lava Lamp and the other was empty. He put biscuit dough in the empty Lava Lamp and filled it with blue Powerade. He was going to give a brief little talk before he drank from the Lava Lamp. But when he said a certain word (the cue) he wanted me to turn the lights off so he could switch the Lava Lamp with the Power Aide Lava Lamp and drink from the Powerade Lava Lamp.
The boys came into the chapel for the Greg Will Drink From A Lava Lamp event. It had to be like how it was at The Ed Sullivan Show during The Beatles first show. The kids were in a total frenzy. It was pandemonium, Baptist style.
Greg starts his talk and the kids are hanging on his every word. Then, Greg says the cue. Bam! I hit the lights.
The problem: We hadn't rehearsed this and the chapel was not completely dark. Some of the older kids (5th graders) saw Greg switch the Lava Lamps. Immediately, I heard "He switched 'em! He switched 'em! Chaos reigns again. It was like a soccer game in Ireland. I thought the kids were going to riot.
Greg drinks from the faux Lava Lamp and makes faces that I'm sure he got from years of watching Red Skelton. The dads in the crowd were laughing. Some kids were pouting. Others were still saying "He switched 'em!'. The rest were looking at Greg with their mouths open.
Greg admitted to the kids that he didn't drink from the Lava Lamp. "I knew it! He switched 'em!" Then he said, "I didn't drink from the Lava Lamp because that would be a pretty stupid thing to do".
That was a good thing to tell the young boys. Boys grow into guys who generally do stupid things. Guys who think they can drink an adult beverage and then drive. Guys who think they can still date other women while they are married. You can tell a guy until you are blue in the face that something is bad, harmful, etc, and they will go ahead and do it. Tell them it is stupid and show them how stupid it is, and generally they won't.
I have kept up with most of these boys over the years. None of them have done anything stupid or drank from a Lava Lamp.
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