On Monday morning I got up at 4am to head to the airport to catch my 6:30am fight to Oregon to speak to a youth camp in Eugene. I’ve taken tons of flights before so I was not expecting this one to be any different. Get my ticket, check my luggage, go thru the security checkpoint, sit at the gate, wait for my plane, get on the plane, then arrive at my destination. Pretty much in all silence. I generally don’t talk to anyone and I notice that most of the other people don’t talk to each other either. We just sit or stand there quietly waiting for the next thing we need to do.
That is what I was expecting …everyone is polite, but everyone is pretty much silent. I went from Tulsa to Denver, then Denver to San Fransisco and everything was going as it normally did, a few polite nods, and excuse me’s but total silence. However that all changed when I boarded my flight from San Fransisco to Eugene.
I was sitting in the aisle seat writing down some notes about a few ideas I had about an upcoming even at Oneighty when all of the sudden I heard this loud laugh. I wasn’t sure where it came from so I started looking around. Beside me was this dude totally sleeping, so I knew it wasn’t him, and beside him was this really well dressed sharp business man so I knew he would not be the type to just start cackling really loudly around a bunch of strangers on an airplane.
Not sure where the fluke laughter came from I went back to my notes. Then all the sudden Ha Ha Ha Ha a loud shreaking (out of control) laugh filled the entire cabin. I looked over and sure enough it was the business man. He was watching a video and dying laughing. In fact he never stopped about every 3 minutes or so this dude just opened up a belly laugh like you would not believe. It was amazing. In fact after a while the entire cabin was looking at him, wondering what the heck his problem was. However, after a while we all started chuckling, we couldn’t help it, at least I know I couldn’t. It was so crazy. This dude was just laughing so hard, it was hiliarious and to make it even better, he had absolutely no idea that we heard him. He was so into whatever video he was watching he did not know nor did he care that we heard him.
I have never experienced anything like it. In fact, there are a few lessons I learned from this laughing that I think we can use in youth ministry.
1) Take time to have some fun.
It is obvious this guy was on his way to an important business meeting of some sort, but he still took some time to turn on a video, and have some fun. By the sounds of it he was having a lot of fun.
2) Get into what your doing.
This guy was totally into what he was doing at the moment. To him there was no one else on the plane but him, and nothing else was going on except for the movie he was watching, because of this he got 100% enjoyment out of the moment.
3) Who cares what other people think.
We spend to much time worrying what other people think about us, what we wear, what we do, and what we say that we never actually do what we want. This guy could have given a flying flip what anyone on the plane thought. He liked the movie and it was funny. So he laughed….very loudly.
4) When you get into something, others will join you.
After a while myself and everyone around this guy were laughing as well. At first at him, I’ve got to be honest he looked crazy in his nice suit - watching a tiny video device laughing his guts out. But after a while we were laughing with him, the airplane ride was actually a lot more fun because of him.
I’m enjoying my time up here in Oregon, but cant wait to get back home to my family and the team at Oneighty. Maybe on the way home, I’ll run into this guy again. In fact I hope I do.