'Dude. That's Not My Car.'

After an exhilarating day of studying the books of 2 Peter and Jude in Cornerstone School of Ministry, we paused from our rigorous studies to break bread together. Or rather finish the day by having a pizza party to celebrate my 40th birthday. Well, unbeknownst to yours truly, some professional pranksters slipped out of the fiesta early to "decorate" my car. So as the party wound down and I headed up to the parking lot, imagine my surprise to find the birthday boy's car all gussied up. Crepe streamers were all over the car and written on the windows were "Happy Birthday Pop" and "Over the hill" and my personal favorite (loosely quoting from a passage in Song of Solomon) "40 with carved ivory abs and inlaid sapphires."

It was an extraordinary sight. One problem, though. That wasn't my car. It was a Toyota, so they were close. Sort of. The car belonged to another student in the class, Gail Winterscheid. Now to avoid some serious embarrassment to the perpetrators (I mean, I park my car in the same place every day and I can't tell you how many times I've pulled into the school at the same time as the anonymous pranksters.) I'm not going to name them. I'll just give some subtle hints: The head honcho's name rhymes with "banana" and her 5-foot co-conspirator's name rhymes with, um, well ... (Somebody drop me a note if they can think of a word that rhymes with "Ahnalise." Thanks.)

Anyways, I don't think I've laughed so hard in many, many moons. When I was retelling the story to Julie on the drive home I just about had to pull over because I nearly peed my pants. The best part about it is that the night before they took a midnight drive over to the house we have been staying at to decorate my car, only to be foiled when we had surreptitiously slipped out a couple days earlier to stay at some other friends' house to watch their kids. Well, Gail took the blunder in good spirits and thanks to the "Toyota Terrorists" for making my 40th birthday very memorable.