Pizza and Panic--SuperDads to the Rescue!

There are some things we never grow out of (fortunately, I think my shoes are finally some of them, but unfortunately, I doubt my favorite jeans are another). I think I will always love chocolate, Jane Austen movies, and holding my kids on my lap while reading story books, although eventually they have to sit next to me rather than on me.

There are certain habits I don't think I'll ever outgrow, though. I still hold my breath when I cross over a bridge, I must have Peeps on Easter and candy canes on Christmas (even though I won't eat them), and I pretend to cough during church so I can sneak the snacks I bring every week into my mouth.

But there is one thing I realized I still do, and it makes me feel quite young--only because I did it all the time when I was a kid. I came to this realization of my habit when a couple of weeks ago one of the 12-year-old Beehive girls I teach at church volunteered to bring the refreshments for our next activity. "My dad can just pick up some pizzas at Costco and bring them to the park!"

I laughed to myself as I e-mailed her parents (telling them they really could just bring brownies or something) and told them about an experience I had as a second-grader:

I'm sure it was the night before our school Christmas program (those were days), when I informed my father I had volunteered him to do all the scenery. Well, instead of handing out a panicky lecture (that probably came later), he just went out to the garage and pulled out some handy refrigerator boxes and 2x4's and built a life-sized camel and donkey, and a wooden manger we still use every year for our family Christmas nativity.

It would have been just a sweet, funny little story, except that the next day at church the girl's dad was telling us how some of our plans for the up-coming youth trip had just changed. We were taking about 75 people to Utah for our general world-wide church conference, and everyone would be staying with a few family members who had opened their homes to us all. One of the planned homes had fallen through, and they were looking for another place for a dozen of the 12-13-year-old boys and their leaders. So, of course, what did I do?

"Let me call my dad," I said. And five days later my parents had 15 boys and men sprawled on beds, couches, and covering the floor of their entire basement. And what, of course, did my dad say?

"We were happy to help."

I'm sure he and my mom really were. It probably helped that one of those boys was their grandson. But I had done it again, only this time, I wonder if my dad was wishing it were a fully functioning automatronic donkey capable of carrying Mary and Joseph to Egypt rather than a house full of boys and all the food, noise, smells, and chaos that entails. Surprisingly, or not, they used very little hot water (we are talking about teen-age boys on a trip without their mothers to tell them to shower), and left everything intact!

Thank goodness for people like that who pitch in in a pinch and come through in a crisis. They're the ones who really keep the world going round, and they even bring the pizza.