Believe It Or Not

This past summer we took our kids to the Smoky Mountains, and one of the things we did was go through the Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” museum in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was totally cool, including my favorite: a three dimensional holographic projection of Mr. Ripley himself, talking to you from inside a small room. Very amazing.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a certain kinship with the oddities of the Ripley Museum. Maybe you’re completely normal and everything, with no idea what I mean by this, but I have my own list of Ripley’s type things in my own personal life. Do you? Unusual things that are true, believe it or not? Here are some of mine:

1. BOY RUN OVER BY BUS, LIVES TO TELL THE TALE...

I have been run over by a bus. Seriously. I wrote about this under the post: “The Boy & the Bus.” (Go read it if you dare. It’s archived under March 2010.) Thing is, about 10 years later, I was just barely kept from being run over by a bus a second time by a friend who pulled me out of the way at the last second. I was not paying attention. You’d think I would have been a little more careful after my previous experiences.

2. BOY ACTUALLY ALLERGIC TO SUN...

When I was a kid I had a fairly rare problem with “photosensitivity.” I would have an allergic reaction (severe, painful itching) after getting sunburned. The first time I had a reaction was after a day at the beach. I had a very mild sunburn that any normal person wouldn’t have paid any attention to. But a few days later, I was sitting in church and I thought someone was poking me in the back with needles while I wasn’t looking. Thing was, no one was sitting behind me. It freaked me out, and it didn’t stop. It began to spread, and the intensity of the pain kept increasing until I ended up running into the church basement where I was found a little later writhing incoherently on the floor with pain and madness. (I would have rather died than interrupt the church service, ya know.) I think my parents thought I had lost my mind, or maybe I was possessed, which would have been very embarrassing, considering we were at church. But, being raised Baptist instead of Pentecostal, they didn’t try to exorcise me. Instead, they rushed me to the hospital where I was diagnosed and covered with cloths that were coated with the miracles of modern medicine. They informed me that I am allergic to the sun, which put me off a life of being a beach bum. (And just kidding about the Pentecostal thing. Sort of.)

3. THE EERIE SYNCHRONICITY OF TWO DAVES...

One of my best friends is named Dave. My name is Dave. When we first met, long after High school, we discovered that Dave and I both graduated from the same High School about 5 or 6 years apart. We also discovered that we both have wives named “Sue,” and both of our wives were occupational therapists. On top of these startling coincidences, we both had dogs named “Buddy,” who are since then both dead, and we were both involved over the years in church work. (I know, it’s like that whole Lincoln/Kennedy thing.) And it’s also true that my buddy Dave is thin, healthy, energetic and smart. Which is, unfortunately, where the similarities end.

All of these things are 100% true, I’m pretty sure. Almost and completely entirely.

Believe it or not.


Ecclesiastes 1:9
Peace to you.


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