Cry Wolf!

My son, Derek, is currently serving as a missionary in Lima, Peru. He left the comforts of home, family and friends to serve for two years among the people of Peru. Elder Olson has a little more than a year left on his mission and has grown a lot spiritually, but...

The phone rang at our house around 11:15 pm and my heart jumped. Typically, a phone call this late at night is not a welcomed event because it usually involves something that is either bad news, inconvenient news, or the guard house saying that my garage door is open (our community has an unnerving fetish about open garage doors, which is ironically interesting since, if I am living in a gated community with a security patrol, should not my garage be safe?)

I answer the phone with a timid, "Hello?"

"Is this Brother Olson?" came the voice of a young man on the other end of the line.

The "brother" part of his question is the obvious giveaway that it is a church member calling, but I am curious, because most Mormons are asleep by 10 pm on a weeknight. (BYU students would be the exception here)


"Yes..." I responded. The line is clear of any static so I am thinking it is one of our local missionaries calling me about something. I am thinking, he is up way too late...


"This is Elder Brandenburg from the Peru Lima North Mission..." he says. My heart starts to pound and it feels like I can't breathe.


"Brother Olson, are you sitting down?"


Now I am in the throes of a full on panic attack as I tell the Elder on the phone to "hold on" while I turn off the din of ESPN spewing out, what is now, totally insignificant scores. I yell to my wife, Margo, to come downstairs.


I take a deep breath and pick up the receiver again, still standing, but leaning on the counter in the full anticipation of the horrible news that awaits my ears.


"Okay, I am here, what..."

Elder Brandenburg interrupts me in mid sentence, "I have bad news..."

Time begins to slow as I interpolate the rest of his sentence and my heart begins to explode in the anticipated and overwhelming grief that comes to any parent who has ever lost a child...


"Elder Olson has..."


Tears are welling in my eyes and I am now mentally resigned to the "what happened" and wondering the "how's"...

"broken..."


Huh?


"his..."


He is alive...this is good...


"camera...and the bad news is that it will cost about $300 for the new one that he really wants!"

There is giggling in the background. I hear a faint, "I love you papa!"


Elder Brandenburg, along with Elder Derek Jay Olson, work in the mission office and were waiting for a group of missionaries to arrive very late (or very early in the morning) from the U.S. and, with the 2 hour time difference, made it around 1:30 am in Peru when they decided to pass some time with a prank call.


Giddy from an apparent lack of sleep, and (I am being extremely lenient here) their judgement impaired by fatigue, and (the old fall back) Elders will be Elders...they decided that it is not against the rules for an elder to call (and play a joke upon) another elder's father...just twisted, and worthy of Extreme Repentance...(yes, I am talking to you too, Brandenburg!)


Sitting on our shelf, at the top of the steps of our home, is a portrait of Elder Derek Jay Olson and beside it is a "Missionary Countdown Clock", indicating that he has 410 days left on his mission.

410 days.

Then, I am gonna kill him myself...

Out at the plate!

Time, someone once said, is God's way of preventing everything from happening at once.

It was a nice base hit to left field, just between the outstretched glove of the shortstop.

Me, being the runner on second base, make a mad dash to third with the full intention of scoring on this play. As I have taught all my high school players to do, I hit the inside part of the base with my right foot and head for home with legs wheeling and arms pumping in the up-down and straight back motion that our speed coaches preach. As home plate draws nearer, my heart is pounding from the 180 foot sprint and from the anticipation of adding an insurance run to our somewhat tenuous 3 run lead.

As I look up one last time to see if a slide is necessary or if I should just "go in standing" I notice the opposing team's catcher firmly camped (I use the word "camped" for obvious reasons that will become apparent shortly) at home plate. With the ball securely in his catcher's glove via a relay throw from that very shortstop who, only moments ago, agonized over his almost miraculous defensive play, he applies the tag as I deftly attempt a hook slide to the right side of home plate.

YOU'RE OUT! Comes the call from the home plate umpire...whose parting comment to me is, "Hey, 32, nice effort..." I walk slowly back to the dugout nursing my newly-skinned knees.

(EDITORS NOTE: Let me inject a "sports information tidbit" here so that the punchline is more relevant: Pro players can usually run to first in 4 seconds or less.)

The play described above took roughly 30 seconds....

The mad dash home was perhaps the slowest in recorded (or even unrecorded) baseball history. The only reason it was even close was that the shortstop was so surprised to see me rounding third that he finished tying his shoe, put his glove back on, and then threw home.

My speed can now be "timed" with a calendar.

We all get old, but for me this is the first time.

When I was young, I never heeded the warnings of my future "allies in age", my elders. The stories of their feats of athleticism during their youth were apocryphal at best and most likely an outright lie. I would look at their aging physical forms and to visualize anything remotely athletic was an impossible task. Their only rejoinder was a simple, "Yeah, one day you'll be my age too!"...

The thought then creeps across your mind like the crawling headlines on the bottom of the screen on CNN...

"Yeah right, you old fart..."

Now, I am relegated by the Master of Time, to only remembering being fast, thin, and athletic. Running a 4.7 second 40 yard dash during my football tryouts at Contra Costa College is the truth-turned-to-lie that I must endure till my tenure here on earth is complete. Diving for balls hit deep in the hole or making a game saving catch in center field are only in the memory banks and no film exists to support the claim. The only evidence that it ever happened at all are the faint scars on my arms and knees.

Yeah, getting old sucks. But to you young guns out there who doubt my stories of glory I have one thing to say...

"Someday you will be my age too!"

And that, my friends in this time continuum, is every old person's revenge (that and Depends)!