Thursday, February 14, 2008

Joey's Nasty Desk

This is not my story but it is so good that I have to post it.  It's Joey's story.  And, while I wasn't there, I got a pretty good re-telling of it in the car on the way home and I'm infinitely gifted at using my writer's license to fill in any minor gaps, so you should get a fairly accurate picture of what went down.

Joey was sitting in his Greek (NT 104 for those of you who really are interested) class and was particularly pleased with himself for finishing his 3 page single-spaced word study that he really hadn't wanted to do in the first place.  The entire word study was made more complicated by the fact that he'd forgotten to photocopy some of the really important keys from the beginning of the lexicon he was using in the library (because we don't have money to buy every single Greek book out there...Joey is very good about utilizing the library), so he had to finish it over lunch at school instead of at home the night before.

So there he sat in the back row with Eric. They are a bad sort of pair, they make little comments about this and that while the professor is explaining things and, on the not uncommon occasion that one of them has a linguistic breakthrough, they whisper heatedly about the difference in their phrase diagrams, and do you think this word could actually be a subjunctive aorist?  If so, what ramifications does that have for....

They are truly Greek nerds.

Anyway, for once Joey was sitting quietly in one of those collegiate-style desks, his right arm resting on the table part when suddenly he felt the table give way beneath his elbow.  Because everything happened so fast, he began to fall forward - right into the wide part of his desk table that was rising quickly.

SMACK!

Joey got hit in the face with one of the desks in his Greek classroom at DTS that, quite frankly, Chuck Swindoll might have once sat in.

His lip began to bleed.  He sat there, shook his head, and tried to figure out what happened.  He saw his desk lying on the floor, three sheared-off screws scattered around beside it.  Still unsure of what had happened, he noticed the bleeding lip and otherwise sore face.  He tried discreetly to stem the tide without actually having to get up and go to the bathroom to deal with it.

"You OK, Joey?"  Asked Greek Prof.

"Um....yes.  I think."

Then poor Joey leaned his head back against what he thought was the wall but shortly discovered that it was not, in fact, the wall, it was a door.  One of his classmates came in and rammed the back of his head with the door causing the pain in Joey's head to now be equally disbursed.

He proudly displayed his cut lip to me when we got in the car to go home.

"It hurts," he admitted.  "But I took that desk top with me.  It is mine after all I went through, and it's in my office downstairs."

I told him he can mount it on the wall in his youth pastor office someday and it'll make the kids think he's extra cool.

2 comments:

tie.crawler said...

My lip still hurts.

Sarah said...

This story sounds like...well, a story...but, here's what makes it so believable. The Part with Joey. Yeah, somehow, I wasn't suprised about the Freak Accident Desk Attack - and I even wondered why he didn't take the chair along with the desktop...and the door...
But, at least you have some reminder of the occasion. You should post a picture of the Culprit Desk...and give it a name, too. Thanks for sharing your stories with those of us who lead duller, less accident prone lives. Even if it is at your expense...we're not laughing at you, we're lauging WITH you! :)