Entries this day: Little_Rock_Rally Little_Rock_Rally_by_Cathy_Saur

Little Rock Rally

1997 Little Rock rally review by Rob

5 - 007 December 1997

The Little Rock Rally was, of course, absolutely incredible.

I didn't look forward to the 9.5 hour drive, but as I expected, the conversation was plenty invigorating to keep us chatting the entire way up there. In the rental car was Cathy S, KT H and I. I brought up a question that's been bouncing through my head for a while.

What are emotions? Best I can tell is they *must* be experienced, and maybe emotions are the reason we are alive. The conversation turned toward to What are instincts? Are they related to emotions?

Notice how on an evolutionary scale, instincts (of a mosquito or "lesser" animal) seem to be replaced by the emotions of dogs and humans and other "greater" animals.. Hmmm..

(If you are intrigued, write me back and I'll send you my essay on the subject)

We got there and it was **cold**!! Well, chilly and late.. about 1:30 in the AM, I believe. The rally craziness indicator was at a low simmer. Marc L and Tera L (different Ls) were already there and I was glad to talk with them for a while. Marc taught us some new songs and games. "Little Sally Walker" was one song we learned that night.

Opening circle was cool. Everyone tossed in their shoes and then we all chose someone else's shoes and thereby randomly selected our new neighbors in the circle, and the order in which we introduced ourselves. After that, we just stayed up late yakin' and talkin' and having a lovely time. I crashed at about 5 AM or so..

The next day I joined a group playing _Assassin_ and got promptly tagged by Tera the first game. I did better in the second game, chasing Max around the parking lot for a bit. That was a good stretch, especially since I was running barefoot, and I haven't otherwise been going barefoot much lately.

We also played _Animal Tag_ and that was pretty fun.. Oh yeah! We played a small game of _Wink_ and then a game of _Slaughter_, which one of the other advisors taught me.

The YAC meeting was longer that most of our previous in-rally meetings, but we had a lot to cover. We YACked about the age limits and brainstormed some ideas on how to convince the board to allow them to be 14-20.

Dinner was a delightful ordeal for me. I got to sit by Marc L and we sat patiently waiting for our food while writing and drawing on the huge spread of butcher paper on the table before us.

When our salad came, I immediately used my fork and grabbed a bite off Marc's plate. So he had a bite off my plate. We continued this, and actually ate our entire dinners from the other's plate. The various people (adults and young adults) serving us would shake their heads gently as if to say, "whatever makes you happy" as Marc and I would refer to each other in 3rd person to ask the servers for food for the other.. Does that make sense? Nope.. You should have been there!!

We had delicious fun.

After dinner, (I believe it was after dinner) Tera L, Marc L, Kat J and I were chillin' in the sanctuary. Marc's eyes suddenly brightened, "we should make a fort out of chairs!" Crazy! Brilliant.

We unstacked and aligned a few chairs when Marc and Tera announced they were going to build their own fort and we could have a war!

Kat and I randomly grabbed sleeping bags and carefully placed the chairs to hold the bags as our roof. With permission, we used Mark A's massage table, which turned out to be a great part of our fortress.

After not too long, Tera ran over to our side to spy on us or something equally benign, and I captured her as our first prisoner! I led her into our fort, and underneath the massage table to her jail cell. She escaped without too much trouble, so we reinforced it with more chairs and stuff.

The playfulness was delightful. Kat was captured at least twice, and at one point we had both Marc and Tera in our jail.

But the very funniest thing was when I was following one of our prisoners into the fort and instead of going straight to the jail, they stood up through a hole in the top (designed for throwing socks) and climbed right out!

Yes, you had to be there.

I was dragging tired and had to miss the worship service, which I believe was led by Marc. I would have enjoyed attending, but I had to *sleep*!

I was gently woken by some youth (I think Anna M and KT H) who really really really wanted me to see the Talent Show. I felt greatly loved and went right up there.

Marc and Meghan R had just finished a whipped cream skit. I was going to be Marc's partner in it, but I was sleepin'. Whew.. It woulda been fun, but I was glad to remain whipped-cream-less.

I don't remember much of what I saw at the talent show; my contacts were out and my brain was sleeping.

The next morning after closing circle where we handed out Houston Rally Registration forms (send me email if you want one) and sang and had a great time, several youth stayed for Marc L's sermon.

The topic was "Sacred Silliness," describing the value of silliness in spiritual and emotional growth, especially as it applies to YRUU. Afterwards I asked if we could put it on the webpage. With an emphatic "yes!" Marc said he would mail it to me (but I haven't gotten it yet!!! (MARC, ARE YOU READING??))

As we collected in the parking lot for the trip home, youth from OKC and Cathy S and KT H were all goofing around. It was decided we would take Scott to Houston and they would take Cathy to OKC. Nancy M was all, "wha??? OKC is not exactly on the way to Houston," not recognizing that we were jokin'.

We did, however, join them for lunch at Subway, extending the rally love one more hour. Scott gave me a big swig of the Groovy Juice and KT got to drive the car (don't tell!) from our parking spot to the pay phone and back. (a whole 500 feet!)

The weather rained on the way home, but we had big fun. The best game we played was "Read All The Traffic Signs On The Side Of The Road." Read all the words and say what the symbol signs mean ("merge left", "slippery when wet") and say "dot" for each small circular reflector. Design your own such game! It was enough to keep us entertained for 50 minutes, the entire way from before Conroe till we got into Houston area.

Amazing fun and see you all at Houston Rally!!

With Love
- Rob

permalink

Little Rock Rally by Cathy Saur

1997 Little Rock rally review by Cathy

woke up and went to lamar with my mom to get my college day shit out of the way; wrote a review of scrooge for my brother, and bitched at my boss for scheduling me to work sunday. rode to houston, cruzed rob's 'hood with my parents waiting for him to get home; got to his house and saw ROB IN PANTS! scary. then he immediately changed into shorts (he's rob isn't he?)

then we went to rob's workplace to drop off his computer. i waited in the car. Isn't it scary to think about rob working all day?? then we went to taco cabana and ate and then we went to emerson to pick up KT. then we started on the road and of course rob got us in one of his wonderful/amazing/deep conversations. the subject of this one was emotions. we kept riding and then we stopped at a gas station and i'm all "um rob--i know this is a no smoking rally but what about now??" so i smoked and ate chocolate and then we kept on riding sooooo long. then we stopped at another very strange gas station/convenience store/restaurant/i dunno animal trophy display. there were deer heads everywhere and there was also a live snake, a huge snake. weird. then we rode some more then we *finally* got there.

i walked up and saw carina! what a surprise! then i came in and saw susanne and aaron and tiffany. yay. everyone was really laid back though. then all of a sudden a maia and a jeremy were running at me with open arms (maia later told me that her and jeremy were sitting and jeremy was like "houston needs to get here" and maia said "check the door" and me and rob and kt were there. more proof that maia truly is the bomb). then i was being hugged from behind by an unknown person who turned out to be austin. yay. then me and austin and maia and jeremy did this 4 person hug for a good while. then max and nancy got there double yay. then i saw arlene! yay yay yay.

man what else? opening circle. then everyone awake started playing mau or however you spell it and me and nancy were like that sucks so we started sliding around on the floor in our socks and nancy fell down. it was so very funny. :-)

um what else. hung out with everyone. like everyone was sleeping on the Friday night! what the fuck?? i think me and jeremy were the only ones who stayed up the whole time. nancy stayed awake most of the time. in the morning me and jeremy and nancy went outside to watch the sun rise. then, when everyone was sleeping me and jeremy and nancy were being very evil. we found some big ass bubble wrap in the kitchen and started popping it really loudly in the sanctuary where everyone was sleeping. they weren't exactly happy with us. then i lay down in the hall with jeremy and melissa and nancy. oh my god--me and jeremy wrapped melissa up in her sleeping bag and like folded her body over and she looked like a little baby. so cute/funny! breakfast was good; we got to see all those silly people who slept. we were making fun of austin for eating cookies in his cereal. what a weirdo.

then me and jeremy and rob and nancy and max and bunch of other people played assassin. it was great fun.

hmm... what did we do after that?? lunch i guess. sandwiches with cool bread and stuff.

later we danced in the sanctuary and tried to play seasame street but we just couldn't do it without nathan.

then massage workshop started in there (ew..yucky) so i slept in a big puppy pile on jeremy's stomach who was on susanne who was on aaron who melissa was on and tiffany and fricke were in there somewhere too, probably some other people too, who knows? yac meeting started so it was just me and tiffany and susanne left to sleep in one sleeping bag (um-against the rules)

saturday night we had dinner. it was in little rock tradition with it's courses and being served and all. sheri-ann was there and she served us macaroni. yay.

i spent a lot of saturday night (and the rally on a whole) hanging out with tiffany. that was awesome 'cause we really bonded. we talked about lots of stuff and just got to know each other better; it was great.

me and nancy and chris anderson and tia had fun yelling things into chris's fine ass laptop which he brought along to do a paper and recording them. (that sentence was a mastery of grammar). then austin and tiffany came over and told us weird stories about working for erick and stuff.

stayed up 'til 3:30 with tiffany and then we decided to sleep but chris was using my sleeping bag as a pillow so i didn't want to wake him up so i ganked somebody else's sleeping bag and went to sleep. then i was awakened by the owner of this sleeping bag standing over my head. so i relinquished this sleeping bag and gently picked chris's head up and took my sleeping bag and replacing chris's pillow with someone else's sleeping bag. hey--your stuff, my stuff doesn't matter-it's rally love.

then we had to wake up yucky.

and we ate bagels and had closing circle and rob is all "we're staying for the service" kick ass. so i got to hang out so much longer with tiffany and susanne and melissa and nancy and max and jeremy and aaron and meghan. but sadly jeremy had to go (not without getting a big hicky from aaron first) and then max and nancy had to go. so me and tiffany and susanne and meghan hung out some more. we started discussing tattoos. they made me pull down my pants and show them mine again.
crazy monkeys.

then we stayed for the service which was wonderful and the greatest thing about it was, marc is giving his sermon, dressed all nice and yet there is a little piece of glitter on his face. :-) then the last hymn was about dancing so everyone started dancing and gavin and his incredibly cute self was dancing with a woman from the little rock congregation.

we started to leave but okc kept trying to kidnap me. but then we went 20 miles out of our way to eat at subway with okc. that was great.

then we started on our loooooong drive home and created a "read all the signs on the road" game. rob played with us for a good while until he started swerving for paying too much attention to the road sign and not enough to the actual road. then we added the word "bitch" or "bitch mother fucking bitch" to the ends of signs we saw too much. so this is what it sounded like for an hour: "dot dot dot dot dot dot Willis 45 Exit 101 Mile 101 South Interstate 45 bitch mother fucking bitch dot dot dot dot dot exit 102 move your ass 16 feet 12 inches bitch watch for ice on bridge bitch mother fucking bitch." very funny and actually quite entertaining.

finally we got back to rob's apartment and all sat around being grumpy and tired. and then i still had to ride all the way back to beaumont with my dad. so i didn't get in my bed 'till 1:30 and then school the next day! aaa!! soooooo worth it though!

i love you all!
cathy

permalink