Can You Say Bonehead?

So... I was recently on a trip to an undisclosed location to ask a foundation for money for our ministry. This was a big deal. We were going to ask this foundation for a great deal of money so we had to have our "A" game on. I say we, because I was with my esteemed colleague, Brian Mosley. You can learn all about Brian by watching this video:



So Brian and I have our slick presentation prepared with all of the bells and whistles. We have folders, picture books, video, etc... And we are both wearing our lucky shirts. All is well - we were ready for a great meeting and some serious needed dollars for our ministry. Now before I reveal my boneheadedness, I must give you some additional background information. This undisclosed location was far enough away from Dallas that Brian and I had to take a jet plane to get there. And the meeting was early enough in the day, that we had to fly in the night before and stay over night. I am not much of a fan of checking bags with the airlines, so I will do whatever it takes to make sure I can carry all of my stuff on board with me. This was not going to be too difficult in this circumstance because I only needed one change of clothing. However, as I was packing I realized that my shoes were going to make or brake which carry on bag I brought. If I could somehow get away with not packing any shoes for the meeting, then I could carry a small backpack and have all that I needed. Bringing the shoes would require a rolling bag. So I chose the backpack. Now I had to determine which shoes I could wear with both the slacks that I needed to adorn for this big meeting and the shorts I would wear on the plane and walking around this undisclosed city that night. Because clearly, one should never wear any thing but shorts on an airplane...

This severly limited my options. Upon a detailed review of all of the shoes I own (4 pairs of Crocs), I decided to go with my Black Crocs. These particular Crocs are actually named The Professional, so this is a sound choice by me. Of course, they don't look too good in shorts, but I can live with looking like a dork on the plane and at night in the undisclosed location because after all, the big meeting is why I am going. Oh yeah - and another thing about The Professionals, they are not only super comfy, but due to their dark black coloring, they go virtually un-noticed and can easily be passed off as "dressy."

Okay - that last line I just wrote may not be entirely true. Because when we got into our meeting our host did something quite strange. Since we were going to be meeting about money, he wanted to open the meeting by symbolically washing the feet of myself and Brian. He reasoned that this was a way to keep our meeting focused on ministry and not dollars. Sounded good to us. Just after he said this he got a phone call and had to leave the office for a while leaving Brian and I a few minutes to discuss what we thought symbolically washing our feet would mean? We were stumped.

Our host re-entered the room and promptly knelt by my feet. Then he opened up a shoe shining kit and began to survey my Crocs. "Hmm," he said, "I've never seen anyone wear Crocs to one of these meetings before. I mean I have a pair I use to mow the yard..." He didn't really know what else to say. He decided to use his rag to dust my Crocs off a little and then turned to Brian. I felt like the bonehead that I am of course. What a great way to start the meeting. Fortunately for me, Brian was wearing these brown and brown tennis shoes. So he looked even more boneheaded than myself. Our host took out his brown polish and pretended to scrub and wipe around Brian's shoes before ultimately giving up. The meeting continued after that... as does our search for the necessary dollars needed to fund our ministry...