How to Wrangle a Kangaroo

Today was a day for Chinese leftovers and snowflakes that looked like glitter.

Tonight at youth group the kids and us leaders were asked to tell their name, grade, and the story of their worst injury (or if we didn’t have one we could make one up). There was lots of blood, broken bones, scrapes, bruises, even the occasional arrow in the forehead.

Me? Instead of telling about the time I tried to skateboard and gave myself a three-week long bruise on my hip, I told a story of how I fought a green dragon that took a bite out of my right arm just before I had slayed it.

I’m ridiculous.

“I was just walking along one day in Australia…”

There was a guy two seats down from me that told a story of how he had to wrangle a kangaroo in the Outback for his backpack.

“I politely asked if I could have it back and he wouldn’t give it to me, so I had to fight him for it.”

Needless to say, I high-fived him as soon as he finished talking.

“Where are you now?” “I am stepping outside and I think I just broke my hip.”

It’s the smell of gasoline left on my hands and the congestion I feel creeping into my lungs that puts days like these on ice.

I saw a play last week that reminded me exactly of all the things I hate about the human race.

The play was intense, highly symbolic, and circular. All the characters quoted each other, most without knowing. It was haunting. It brought all the questions we as people on this rock like to try to keep down our throats. The ones about the meaning of life or the lack thereof, temptation and whim, hate and love, lust and the desire to attain something off limits, marriage and divorce, cheating and death, spring and winter. It’s the questions that you wrestle with and if you find no answer after a while you walk away with your broken hip and try to pretend that they aren’t important.

As much as I try to snuff out the voices of the questions I also tried to douse the effect of the play. It hung in my mind for at least the next two days. I want to read the book so I can at least have the questions to hold on to. I will be able to hold onto them physically with my own two hands.

Yes, it’s a Tuesday in January. I went to see “Anna Karenina” (adapted from the book written by Leo Tolstoy) on Friday, and this is what has filled my mind since then.

I wish you all a warmer Tuesday than what we have here.