apple-licious

i know my last entry was a bit of a downer. if you are a friend that might have been worried about me, sorry 'bout that. things aint that bad. i'd say that they are pretty okay. it's more than i could say for other recent times, so that's something.

went apple picking over the past weekend with the youth group. i've taken a step back from being a volunteer this year. couldn't quit cold turkey, but i'm around mostly just on sundays. it feels right to be less involved, i've needed a bit of a break. i mean, this is the fifth year of being with the youthies. i haven't managed to be employed at one place for that long. ever.

it's been an interesting shift too. it's easy to define yourself by what you do/who you spend time with, and so on. so i find myself in a new space. not sure what kind of shape it is taking. it's disorienting and exciting at the same time. i'm not really sure what else to say about that.

back to my original story - we went apple picking, to get apples to make pies for family and neighbors to learn the practice of hospitality. i ended up with some freshmen boys in my car. as you might guess hilarity then ensued. how can it not with 14 year old boys? i know, other people might not feel this way. don't get me wrong, sometimes i want to punch them in the back of the head, but most of the time they are endearing in a overgrown puppy kind of way. they were balanced out with a junior guy and another advisor.

once we actually got to the orchard, we split up in pairs to fill boxes. me and the junior set off. after about 20 minutes, we had filled about half the box when the 2 freshmen romped into view. they were all, "heck yeah, we're almost done!" and the junior looked into their box they had set on the ground. i did too. while i tried really hard not to laugh, he said, "those aren't apples. those are really unripe persimmons." yep. they had a box full of bright green persimmons. "what? no. they taste like apples!" they insisted. yeeeeah... i have no idea where they found the persimmon trees. and persimmons only remotely resemble apples when you are comparing them to, say, pineapples. and i imagine that the taste is same comparably. i can only sigh and shake my head at this. and laugh, of course. chuckleheads.