I'm Not Crazy, I'm Just Soaked

Well, in case you weren't alive today, it RAINED. And it rained a whole freaking lot. I was on my way over to McInnis to change the time for an appointment and guess who I saw again? Yes, I saw my Goose friend. I should probably name him at this point since I have a feeling many of my posts in the future will refer to him (again, I am only assuming it's a him). I shall name him Ivan, after Ivan Pavlov. (ALERT: TANGENT TIME!!! BEWARE OF MY NATURAL TEACHER WAYS.) Ivan Pavlov is a psychologist known for a famous experiment simply called Pavlov's dog. In it, he rang a bell every time before he fed his dog. Every time food came to the dog, it would hear this chime. After some time of performing this activity, Pavlov only rang the bell just to see what happened. Guess what happened? Well think, what happens every time YOU think of food? Yep, the dog salivated! Pavlov is a pioneer in psychology with this experiment. It shows that people can be taught to do certain things and not everything is simply "nature." Ok, back to Ivan...

I was walking to McInnis and saw Ivan in the pouring rain. As per usual, he was not with the rest of the flock but this time it was different. All of the geese were swimming in the pond just being happy geese. Ivan however was standing on a rock out of the water. This made me think about something: Do people try to stand out of the water on "dry land" even if they are already soaked? Does this question make sense? I was basically trying to understand why a goose who is already wet just isn't going to accept that he is wet and be in the water. Especially since geese have waterproof feathers. Instead he wanted to pretend that there was nothing wrong and be on dry ground. This is, for all intent and purposes, probably not what Ivan was thinking, it is something I simply was contemplating. Do people, even though they know that something is wrong, try to convince themselves that nothing really is? Do we stand in the middle of a flooding pond in the pouring rain and pretend to stand on dry ground just because we won't accept it's raining? I know I just asked the same question about fifty times, but each time it sounds different to me.

In reaction to seeing Ivan and thinking all of this, I decided to apply my theory to my life. I had just walked through thousands if not millions of rain drops pelting my body from the sky going to and from McInnis. I went back to the room to "dry off" even though I had class in 30 minutes. So accepting the fact that I was already wet, (unlike Ivan) I decided to go for a walk (yes, in the rain) around campus. Let me tell you, it was one of the best walks since coming to school. I felt so peaceful after this. I saw campus in a completely different light. Everything is so much more beautiful, so much more quiet, so much more...awesome in the rain. So what did all of this teach me? Yes, I am my father's son, YES I just asked this question and YES I did just ask my self a life lesson. My Dad will be proud.

Today I learned a crucial thing: If you're already wet you should jump head first in to the water, you never know what you'll learn. When there is a problem that happens, you need to accept it and keep going. You will grow and learn from this experience and become a better person as a result, just like my walk today. Isn't that funny how God gave me something so simple as a goose, I mean Ivan, and taught me a complete life lesson?

I also learned today that I am a father at heart...to a great extent. I went running with Martha and Whitney (the 2 best girls on the XC team) Warren and 2nd Jon. (we have 2 Jonathans on the team who go by Jon. Considering we're a Christian school, we decided to call them 1st Jon and 2nd Jon.) 2nd Jon is very...adventurous. I very much so respect him for this trait for I am NOT that way. Well, as all of us are running on the road, Jon found a trail that he had never seen before. Like I said, Jon is adventurous, so he went down the trail. It was VERY wet, VERY rocky, and VERY dangerous. The 4 of us kept running and told Jon he was on his own, expecting that he'd turn around. Like I said, Jon is VERY adventurous: he didn't turn around. I stopped the group. Warren and I ran back and went down the trail to look for Jon. All I had going through my mind were the images from "Boy's Life" (it's a magazine for Boy Scouts) where it showed Heroes. I read instances where people were hurt and they miraculously lived only because someone was there to help. I had no intention to be a hero believe me. I had EVERY intention however, to keep Jon from becoming one of those articles that kept flashing through my head like an action movie you can't take your eyes off of. I used every Boy Scout ability I had in me to track him. I followed the white hash marks on the trees, I observed the wet ground to find his tracks, I did everything. Unlike myself and a real father however, I gave up. To go further on meant to do VERY dangerous things such as cross a raging brook maybe 6 feet wide, fed by the storms. I was not going to put myself in that danger to save another person, that's one thing we all need to accept sometimes. My Dad said "always look out for #1" and that person is yourself. Now, if I were in the woods looking for my own son, you better believe that I'm GOING to find a way across that water, but Jon is not my son, and he's 19 years. Warren had already slipped and fell on his knee and I was worried about it. So, we turned around and ran back. I established it with Warren that if Jon was not back 1 hour after we were, that we had to call security. Well, upon our return guess who was there? 2ND JON!!! He got back 10 minutes before us. I wanted to hug him AND beat him up. Isn't that funny? I cared so much for his safety yet now that he WAS safe, I wanted to hurt him. haha. I actually NEVER would hurt him but wouldn't you be mad too?

Well, it's 2am. I am waking up at 7:30 to go to breakfast. I should probably go to sleep now. Thanks for reading my rants tonight. I hope you learned something too.

Michael Leather