STRIKE ONE!

I just had to tell this amusing little story from last night.

Last night was youth group. We had a couple extra students than normal, which brought our total up to 6 students. I know... pretty crazy! In one night, we grew by 50%. Those are some good percentages, don't you think?

Well, we started the night out by playing Live Action Mafia. Our students love this game and request it every single week. My husband and I weren't really in the mood to do much of anything, and the teens were really rowdy  so we opted for an impromptu Game Night. This brought much excitement to our teenagers.

After a few games of Mafia, we played Sardines. If you don't know what Sardines is, it's where one person goes and hides and everyone else tries to find them. Once you find the person, you hide WITH the person. Some places are especially squishy, which is where the name "Sardines" comes into play. So I hid first, and they found me pretty quickly. Next up was a student of ours, and then after that was my husband. My husband requested a few extra minutes so he could go to the bathroom before hiding. This is where things went totally chaotic. There were pillows being thrown in every which direction, teenagers running around a room and screaming. If I didn't know better, I would say that I was standing in the middle of a war zone between two countries-- Pillowland and crazy Screaming Teenagers. It was so chaotic that parenting movies are based off moments like that.

My first action was to tell them to put the pillows away. I had two kids who decided they would throw in their last pillow at each other, so I yelled "STRIKE ONE! PUT THE PILLOWS AWAY!" Suddenly the room got so quiet, that you could hear a pin drop. Actually quieter, you could hear a feather hit the ground. It amused me so greatly because of the looks they were giving me.

I never yell in youth group. I never call out strikes. They know that if they break the rules, we do call our strikes. They have three strikes before they're "Out" (like in baseball, only they're out for a while). Normally, I never think to call out a strike. I found myself, in this situation, shocked by how quickly I called out those strikes. Honestly, I was a bit proud of myself.

The teenagers were quiet for a brief moment. Some started moping around like they were in a LOT of trouble. Last night was just chaotic. The whole night was. I probably should have called out more strikes for poor sportsmanship. I just liked that in that moment when I called a couple students out, they took me seriously. I guess I had that tone of, "Don't mess with me!"

It was a good moment. I'm proud of that moment!