I know it was true because I was the one doing it but telling it still makes it seem impossible!

Welcome to Wednesday. It's September 22, 2010. I used to be a huge football fan and I do still keep up with it quite a bit. We live in Texan Territory and folks are going bonkers just two games into a long season. I will admit to calling my son from the Church property Sunday night to get the final score. I told someone it's always good to know what kind of mood everyone will be in come Monday morning. A sports team can impact an entire workforce? You betcha! On my way home from Church I picked up some of the radio commentary coming out of the post game show. One of the hosts said he had looked through the schedule and he wanted to be first in line to say the Texans just might go 16 and 0 this year. I nearly swerved off the road. I'm not saying it wasn't a great win but come on now, give me a break. Next week sets up the in-state rivalry between the Texans and the Cowboys to be played here in our area. We have many Cowboy fans living among us. The phone lines to the sports shows will be melting this week. There will be name calling of the worst sort. There will be over the top predictions that will stun even the most astute. The total cost in terms of productivity versus the feel good may be hard to estimate but it should be at the least very interesting. After Sunday's poor showing by the Cowboys, here's a headline from the Dallas Morning News: "Overhyped Cowboys headed for disaster; offense a joke." Ouch! Maybe they should get Jessica Simpson back into the fold. Anything is better than what they have going for them at the moment. I don't know what the odds open at this morning on Wade Phillips' tenure as their head coach, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear about owner Jerry Jones quoting one of Wade's dad's (Bum) famous lines, "It's my way or the Trailways!" And, in this case, perhaps said with a bus ticket in hand.

Everyone who reads my blog knows how I love to tell stories on myself. I have one to share that is even incredible to me. Last Saturday evening I was playing dodge ball out on the freeways trying to get home for Alexander Benjamin's birthday celebration. I called my wife and told her I would take care of ordering the pizza and would run by and get it on my way home. I called the pizza place. I had memorized the number. Right? The last four digits were 2424. I called the number and it was a bad connection but I heard the young lady say pizza. I started the order and she kept interrupting me. I told her that I had been making this same order for at least the last 18 months typically every other week. I told her they had always been $10 for any size and any toppings. She said they didn't have anything like that. I told her she had better check with someone and do it quickly. She laid the phone down and I could hear her telling the manager that I swore that I had been getting these pizzas just like this for $10 each, every time I called. She came back to the phone and said they had to price out the toppings separately. I said absolutely not. She went back and finally returned and with a seemingly exhausted voice reported, "How about $25 for the three of them plus tax?" I told her that would be great and that I would see her shortly. I arrived at my regular pizza place and asked for my order. They had no order under my name. I told them it wasn't surprising given the lady I had talked to. They asked what number I had called. I told them the same one I always call, 2424. They said that certainly wasn't their number or any other of their stores that they knew of. (It was pretty close, 9595, I'm sure you can see how any almost sane person could get 2424 out of that, right?) I had them make my pizzas and called home and had my son do a reverse phone look up on the 2424 number. It was a completely different pizza company that I had never called in my life or ordered from before. Am I the only person in the entire world that these things happen to? I had to wait twenty minutes and when I finally arrived home within a couple of minutes the phone rang. It was the manager of the other pizza place. I fell all over myself apologizing to him and told him to assure the young lady that it was 100% my fault for messing with her mind like I did. He laughed and said no problem. Mama said there would days but never did she tell me they would be like this one!

I know what you are thinking. It will be a while before I live that one down. But it reminds me of something I have told you before. Nothing gets messed up more than when you work hard on something and give it your all even though you are totally wrong to begin with. It's like that proverbial outcome where you get wonderful mileage but end up 500 miles away from your intended target. I could mark it up to the bad connection or to the fact that my mental faculties were squealing from having been stretched so tight. Or, I could just confess that yours truly can and does, seemingly on a more frequent basis these days, get it all wrong from time to time. Replaying that phone call reminds me of some of those hilariously funny dialogues that Bob Newhart used to do. The only problem here is that it most likely had no humor or a punch line for that young lady. She may be having nightmares. But, as I have told you before, you cannot make this stuff up but just between you and I, I would just as soon not be a walking joke factory especially when I get to be the dummy every time. The good news is that God still cares for His own, even if they call a wrong number now and then, order the wrong food, get on the wrong plane, show up at the wrong place, and generally have trouble getting a grip each day. Let me see. That would be a check mark for everyone of those and quite a few more but that, my friend, is the subject for another day. Yes! He still cares and that's good enough for me. Amen? Amen. ......More later.