"Drop Your Drawers!"

It was time to get pushed from the coupe today. I work up this morning about 6 o’clock and had to be at the bus stop at 6:45. I hopped on the bus, and thankfully got to sit with some friends from my training class because being out on your own can be a little bit depressing. After getting to Animal Kingdom, I had lots of time to kill so I just sat and chilled. When my clock in time rolled around, I did that and checked in with the duty captain, however, because I was simply a spare today (spare means they book an additional character to cover themselves in case someone calls in sick) they put me to work in the costume department. It was actually pretty fun. I had to de-fat-ring body padding. Doesn’t sound glamorous but it was cool. I got to work with this older lady named Millie I believe. She was one of those sweet older women that call everybody “baby” or “sugie.” So, needless to say, she was awesome. We de-fat-ringed together. When a guy came in all ticked off about something she told him that she had lost a child and it made her realize how precious life is. She said to let it just roll of your back, tomorrow is a brand new day. She was a pretty awesome lady! After my costuming shift finished up, I headed back to the duty office and got assigned a character, a hoss of a character! This costume was MASSIVE! Like seriously walking was difficult! Because I had never been this particular character before, I held the bus up about five minutes and when I got in the driver reamed us all out for being late (kinda dropped the ball on that one.) I got to my work location, apologized to the driver, got ignored by the driver, watched the driver smoke a cigarette, and lugged my costume inside.
My first set began at 10:20 so I basically put my bag down and started getting dressed. My character location was right at the front of the park. However, given the size of my costume, I needed a shoulder brace, so as I’m sure you can imagine, getting dressed was a little more challenging than usual. I finally got that done, and headed out to my set (which went fairly well, though I really couldn’t see where I was going).
Right after lunch, I figured out that if I hiked my costume to my mid thigh, I could walk much easier, so that’s what I did, I hiked it up. Well, unbeknown to me, I was actually entering the theme park so this is what the guest saw—hairy boots, pearly white scrawny Blackburn legs, hairy costume. Thank goodness my manager was behind me. He promptly let out a “Drop your drawers!” command and explained later. Other than that, it all went pretty well. I got put on water decal today for the parade. What that means is I serve the parade drivers water before the parade, open up the gate, close the gate, move the water stuff, open up the gate again, close the gate, and clean up all the empty cups and sweaty towels. Mmmm good stuff. Watching the parade go out and in was fun though! I headed back to do a little more costuming work. This time, I got to change all the nasty sweaty padding suits. I was praying the Lord would turn my nose hairs into an Airwick candle. He chose not to answer that one.
When I had some down time today, I checked out the next Aaron Stern podcast in the Jimmy series. This one was about chapter 3: Guarding your Tongue. Stern began with by explaining that Americans are so deeply engrained in this consumer mindset that we approach the Bible the same way. He said there is a real problem with that. He said that when we do that, we just look at how the Bible can benefit us. What can I get out of this? And when we don’t feel like we got something, we say “It’s dry.” or “I’m just not getting anything out of it!” And then use that as an excuse to not read it.
He then went on to address the issue of the tongue. James 3:5 says, “Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” Stern said that three factors that contribute to the tongues deadly power are gossip, our tone, and sarcasm. Gossip is listed with very intensive sins elsewhere in the Bible. This conveys the level of disgust the Lord has for it. It falls in line with murder. Most would agree that’s a big deal, yet we don’t treat it like it is one.
Secondly, he said our tone can communicate. He said it doesn’t matter how great the words are, people interpret our words based on our tone. Think about it, we know this to be true. Telling someone you love, “I love you.” is way different sounding than when you get spanked and your parents make you tell your siblings that you love them. When put side by side, most could see they are very different things being communicated here.
Finally, he addressed sarcasm. This is a really difficult one for me. He said that there is truth to sarcasm and too often it’s a way for us to get in those little jabs then cover it up with a “I’m just sarcastic” bandage. Not only that, but we get on to people when they don’t respond well to sarcasm by telling them to “Lighten up! It was only a joke!” The podcast was great and much needed inside of Christianity. Mastering the tongue is a hard one, however, it’s mandatory for a Christian that wants to be maturing.