Potentially my most embarrassing moment.
When I was in high school, I was in a youth group. It wasn't your average youth group; on the average night we had around 400 people sometimes they have number would climb to nearly 1000. We had a ball at youth group. This was back in the days, one we could play dodgeball, capture the flag, sumo wrestling and fat suits, and kickball. Dodgeball stopped being played at my kid’s schools when they were about 8 because it was too violent. So sad. Is it any wonder our world is in the shape it’s in? Every kid, whether 6 or 60 deserves the joy of cracking another kid in the face with a dodgeball, even if you get clocked from time to time.
One of the fun things we did was go on retreats. We went once or twice a year. Sometimes it was in the fall, other times it was in the winter, but either way it was always fun. We usually went to Christian camps in Wisconsin. Christian camps are generally rustic places with cabins, a mess hall, which sometimes doubles as a group breakout space or a gym if they don't have one when I say rustic, I mean there were basic bunk beds and cold grooms and sleeping and sleeping bags. The winter retreats were the best with competitions like on Thursday nights but sometime out in the snow. We would leave usually on Friday afternoon, which meant that we would get there in time for a snack a session and then we would be free for the rest of the night, or what was left of it this would usually lead to late night sessions of dodgeball. We would usually settle into the cabin for an hour or two of talking before we fell asleep. It was one such trip that I had one of the most potentially embarrassing moments of my life. It was a fall retreat and we were headed to a camp Timberlee, one of the Wisconsin Christian camps and finest resort. OK it's not a resort, it's a rustic hole but we enjoyed every visit. We left the church in six school buses (did I mention it was a huge youth group?” We left about 5:00 o'clock with all of the buses were filled with kids. It usually takes around two hours to get there but this time it took a lot longer. In celebration of the trip and to show team spirit I went out and bought an over orange works too. I was orange from foot to neck. While I was at Kmart, I picked up some snacks and something to drink on the way up there. It was more than something. It was a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke for me and a 2-liter bottle of orange crush for Larry Miller. Larry, was our weird Harold. 6 foot 5 and weighed about 90 pounds and a joyful oddity. We settled in the very last back seat of the bus enjoyed our beverages and enjoyed them and enjoyed them one of the buses was having engine trouble so as the lead bus, we had to pull over and wait for them multiple times. On the last stop we ended up on a wide curving Rd in between two cornfields in the middle of Wisconsin with no lights whatsoever except from the buses. Larry and I both finished our two leaders and had started to need to go to the bathroom after the second stop it was an hour later when the Bush showed no signs of moving and after getting to the point of either wetting my pants or going outside. I walked up to the driver. (By the way, in that jumpsuit there was no way to unzip the suit in a bus seat and pee in a bottle.) I asked the driver if I could go out in the field and pee and he said, No one can get off the bus! Sit down!” I walked about halfway back to my seat and turned around and I went back to the driver. I explained to him as kindly as I could that he could either let me go out and pee in the field or he could clean the pee off his dashboard. He decided to let me go out and pee in the field. So I walked out of the bus into the moonlight cornfield, freed the dragon and started watering into the field. Did I mention this was after the harvest though there was no corn, just squashed stocks? Yep. But I was about 150 feet from the bus on a pitch-black night so it wasn't like anybody was going to see anything, or so I thought. Just as I was at that point of no return when a man pees, even if it means having to try and save a baby dropped out of a window of a building, he can't do it. Don't get me wrong a man would try and catch the boy but he'd be peeing all over the place. So just as I was in full flow the rest of the ball buses pulled up. Because of the curve in the row three or four of them had their headlights pointed right at me like a spotlight on a stage. A performance that involved wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and peeing. Then I heard a bunch of windows click open and slide down and people were yelling, “It's Hauser!!! Now, I had done some drama at church and was pretty comfortable in front of people. So I did what a performer would do, I turned my head and smiled and waved at my adoring fans who were cheering me on. When I was done peeing, I zipped up turned around and took a bow to hoots and hollers and cheers and clapping and jogged back up to my bus and we were off. Even the driver laughed.
