West Cocoa Chat

Have you ever been (Greg excluded) lost? Recently? Being lost is a most disconcerting feeling. On the last night of the Workcamp, Chad (our youth minister) and I decided to make sure we got enough sleep to drive the bus safely the next day. Thursday night is usually a very sleepless night. Everyone’s house is painted, it’s the last night for everyone to see their new and old friends, and most if not all the teens are not driving the next day so they engaged in the usual teen shenanigans of slamming doors, running up and down the dorm halls, screaming and yelling, and the new game this year, shooting folks with some kind of aerosol guns. Our “sleepless” fears were confounded by a youth minister who was staying close to our room whose youth group had rented a charter bus hence none of the adult chaperones had to worry about driving.

The plan was for Chad and I to spend the night in a hotel room off campus following our last devo with the kids. We ended up at the hotel around 11:30 with a wake up call around 4:15am. Chad had gone into town earlier that day and procured our room. After he led me to our room I emptied my pockets as we prepared for bed. Chad then said he was thirsty and I quickly volunteered to bee-bop downstairs to score a couple of Sprites. I grabbed some changed and headed down to the first floor vending machines. Upon retrieving our Sprites I realized I had a problem.

In my haste to get our drinks I had neglected a very important fact – noticing my room number. All I knew was I was staying on the second floor and that was it. I couldn’t remember which side of the hall my room was on attributing it to the “fog of war” or in this case the “fog of painting homes in 90 plus heat” for four days.

My first step was to go to the second floor, guess which side of the hall my room was on, and then to proceed to go to each door yelling, “Chad, its me, your long lost elder.” After several rooms I quickly realized this was getting me nowhere. I headed downstairs to throw myself on the mercy of the Front Desk.

I explained to the Clerk that I had been working at the Mid-Ohio Valley Workcamp and that I had left my I.D. and cell phone in my room. I guess my red eyes were a dead give away because they gave me my room number. When I arrived back at our room Chad asked, “What happened, did you get lost?” The simple answer was, “Yes and lets get some shut-eye.”

So there you have it sports fans, if you ever need to leave your hotel room always check for the room number.