April 2009

A Long Night

RELAY FOR LIFE: A LONG NIGHT

Humming upbeat music, I marched along the sidewalk. Slung over my back was a backpack (with a pillow, sweatshirt, toothpaste, and several other items), my camcorder bag, and a coat. After jogging past the chaotic traffic at a local school, I ran into the parking lot and made it to my destination—church.

It was 3:30, and I had arrived to help load things up for the Relay For Life that night, which would be at Midland College. I had brought the pillow in hopes that I would get sleep that night (the relay was from 7:00 PM—7:00AM); I was carrying the camera so I could make a movie; and I had my coat because it was supposed to get down to 40 degrees (Fahrenheit) that night.

Running up to the church, I saw what I thought was Stephen Byrd’s truck. Sure enough, as I hustled over, Stephen rolled down his window and asked what time we were supposed to be there. I was sure Mr. Martin had told me 3:30, so Stephen and RJ (who was also in the truck) hopped out and walked with me into the church.

Walking inside, I looked around the fellowship hall. Someone was heating up some brisket in the kitchen, but Mr. Martin was nowhere to be found. With nothing better to do, Stephen, RJ, and I went into the youth room and started playing table tennis. As we bounced the small, plastic ball back and forth, Stephen and RJ talked about baseball players.

About 4:00, RJ started banging on the drums as we all continued to wait for Mr. Martin to appear. After Stephen and I tried doing beats, we were about to get really pro with the ping-pong balls and bounce it on all the tables in the fellowship hall (we were really bored), when Mr. Martin called and said he was outside.

I hauled my stuff outside as Mr. Martin and his wife, Dawn, got out of their cars. Mr. Martin walked over to the garage and opened the door as Stephen backed his truck up. Walking in, I helped load up water bottles into the back of Stephen’s truck. When we were finished with that, I was given a cardboard box that looked like a Humvee (one of those ARMY trucks). Taking out my knife, I started making holes in it for two people to stand inside (it was later going to be used in a race at the relay).

Before I was finished with that, the cookers with the brisket had been loaded into Mr. Martin’s Suburban, and we were ready to head off to Midland College to set up for the relay. I put my knife back in my pocket, set the colorful box next to the water bottles in the back of Stephen’s truck, and then grabbed my stuff and hopped into Stephen’s truck. Just before we headed off, Dawn gave us some quick instructions about first setting up the tables.

Making it to Midland College, we all began unloading stuff, starting with the tables. After carrying the tables over to our campsite, we started hauling the brisket, water bottles, and other things. This probably would have taken awhile if we didn’t manage to get a golf cart to haul everything.

After some drama trying to set up a tent, the campsite was basically set up, and people started coming in. RJ and Stephen headed off to get ready for a basketball game, and I took to cutting holes in the box again. Before I knew it, that was done, and the relay was about to start.

The Relay For Life started with the survivor lap, where everyone who was either a survivor of cancer, or was or had been a caretaker walked a lap. About seven people from church walked in it, as well as many other cancer survivors. Once that was finished, the relay began, and people from the teams (usually put together by businesses) started walking.

Music was playing all night, and I soon started dancing to the beat as I went for a lap with some of the youth group. After that, Dawn handed me a camera and told me to take pictures. Walking around the campsite, I snapped a few.

Around 8:00, Sutton realized he forgot his jacket. With a long, cold night ahead, he decided to drive home quickly, and he invited me to come and check out what he called his “bachelor pad.” I came along, not knowing what to expect.

After a ten minute drive, we got just out of town, and Sutton drove past his spread. It was a couple of acres of Texas woods and grass. Stopping his truck at a gate, Sutton hopped out and let the two of us in as Stretch, Sutton’s dog, ran up to greet us. As Sutton got back in the truck and then parked it, I looked around.

To the right was a chicken house and a horse pen. In front of me lay several miles of rolling plains, although it wasn’t the prettiest sight I’ve seen since there were tank farms spread across the horizon. To the far right was a woods with—as Sutton pointed out to me—wild turkeys.

After getting out of the truck, Sutton and I walked up to his house. I petted Stretch as Sutton unlocked the door. Walking inside, I saw what was definitely an A+ bachelor pad.

With just a quick look, you could see this was not only an A+ bachelor pad, but it was also an A+ cowboy bachelor pad. A large animal rug lay stretched out on the floor in the living room. A stuffed deer head was mounted on the wall. Giant crosses with thorns wrapped around them hung on the wall. All the walls had the look of a Texas ranch house. For that matter, the whole place looked like a ranch house (I think; I’ve never actually seen a ranch house [except in cowboy movies]).

Walking down a hallway, Sutton showed me his weight room and guest room. The weight room had a lot of weights in it, and the guest room had strewn across the bed a saddle Sutton said he was fixing. The whole place was definitely a bachelor’s house.

After Sutton showed me around the rest of his house, he grabbed his jacket, and we went outside. Before we left, Sutton locked up his hen house, which—like everything else at Sutton’s place—Sutton had built himself. As we drove off, Sutton explained in greater detail how he fixed up the whole place.

When we got back, Isaac handed me the camera, which I had entrusted with him. After taking a few more pictures, I bought a brisket sandwich from the church’s booth. I made it about halfway through the sandwich before Sutton waved me over to walk with him.

Grabbing my plate, I jogged over and joined Sutton, Jessica, and Hannah in a few laps around the path. After that, the night paced on rapidly as I kept switching between walking in the relay and relaxing at the camp. It was fun.

During one of the times I was standing around the camp, one of the American Cancer Society organizers walked up to the camp and asked if anyone wanted to play a game (there would be games happening all night to keep everyone occupied). I agreed to play, and after receiving a trash bag (I didn’t know why at the time), I walked with some of the youth group to the main tent.

Arriving at the main tent, we were told that no one else had come, and as such, I had won. However, this was soon changed when Jake decided to play, giving me some competition. Johnathan also joined in, and the three of us were told to organize our teams.

The game involved a chair for each of us to sit on, plastic water bottles to hold over our heads, and a tub of water some distance away from us. The object of the game was to have our partner take a paper cup and run back and forth between the tub of water and the person sitting down, filling up the water bottle over the person’s head. Whichever team filled up the water bottle to a certain point first won.

Because this was a very fast-paced game, the garbage bag was used as a poncho to keep any water that spilled from the paper cups off of our clothes. This was especially a good idea, since if we had gotten soaked, we would have been freezing all night. Also, I don’t like getting my clothes wet, anyway.

Kourtney ended up being my partner, and before the game started I quickly drilled her.

“Don’t go fast and spill the water,” I told her. “Make sure it all goes in the water bottle. You won’t have to make as many trips.”

After everyone was ready, the people with the paper cups stood over the plastic tub, while the people sitting down held their water bottles tightly over their heads. As soon as someone shouted “Go!” The paper cup people dove in a mad panic to fill their cups with water, and then ran over to the people sitting on the chairs.

“Slowly!” I yelled to Kourtney. “Don’t spill any!” Kourtney took my advice and spilled only a tiny bit of water as she carefully poured the water into the bottle above my head. As soon as her paper cup was empty, she ran back to the tub again and refilled. After only another time of this, the judge behind me yelled that we had won. After Kourtney and I had given each other a high-five, we were handed Relay For Life notepads and pens as prizes.

When I got back to the camp, Stephen livened things up by promising a slice of pizza to anyone who could successfully make a diving catch for a football. Although I wasn’t really hungry, I felt adventurous, so I accepted the challenge. I missed the ball by inches the first and second time, but I managed to catch the ball while falling backwards the third time.

RJ also managed to catch the ball, so Stephen gave us some money and we walked over to Midland College’s tent (where Rebekah was) and bought some cheese pizza that they were selling. I didn’t really want the pizza, but RJ didn’t want to go alone. Thinking back, I’m glad I got it, because it was a very long night with very little food.

Coming back, I huddled around with the rest of the youth group, hoping that maybe they might want to make a movie. They were busy talking at the time, but Sutton quickly pointed out a kid tossing around a football to himself. I took Sutton’s suggestion and played catch with the kid. It definitely kept me awake.

Around 11:00, the luminaria lighting ceremony started, and the kid left. Most of the overhead lights were turned off, candles in the luminaria bags (in honor of people who had cancer) were lit, and a cancer survivor read off a list of people who had died of cancer, people who had survived cancer, and people who were currently fighting cancer. To add to this, bagpipe music was played half-way through the reading.

Soon after that, I tried to see if anyone wanted to make a movie. I eventually got some people to agree. Everyone was enthusiastic, so the movie making went great.

At midnight the car race was announced. I was nowhere near done with the movie, so I just kept filming with Mike and Johnathan until we had finished a scene. After several takes, we finished the scene, and we walked over to the car race a minute before it started.

Each organization (church, business, or whatever) had a car (firetruck, Humvee, space ship, etc). Like most of the other games that night, it was a relay, where the cardboard car (with two people running in it) would go from one of the end of the field to the other and drop one person off, and then pick up someone else. The car would go back and forth with people (as if taking them to a hospital) several times. This all went rather quickly, and our car did not win.

Getting back to the camp, I picked up the movie making right after filming Mike running through the cardboard box car at high speed (it looked pretty cool). After a couple of good scenes, I got to the point where someone had to make a speech. Remembering my last movie, I decided to pick Sutton.

The speech was an adaption of something from the Book of Acts. Despite being able to read his lines, Sutton didn’t quite get the picture, and he kept adding his own lines (it was just after midnight, so I don’t blame him). After several bad takes, Kristina offered to do the speech.

I showed Kristina the verse, and she said she needed some time to think up an adaption, so I waited. Some of my actors needed to be walking on the path anyway, and we had all night left(or at least half of it) so there was no hurry. With nothing else to do, I charged the camera battery, and then went over to where all the guys where huddled.

Apparently, they were about to start a game of football. I joined in, and I soon found myself as a team captain. Stefan was chosen as the other captain, and Stephen was all-star quarterback due to an ankle injury. With very little thought put into it, I chose Sutton as my first pick. My team was soon assembled as I added Mike and Johnathan. Stefan’s team consisted of himself, Beau, Jake, and RJ.

Every play started with Stephen yelling “Hike!” and the offense running out to catching position. Since there was no rushing the quarterback (because Stephen couldn’t run), Stephen had several seconds to find an open receiver. The receiver would then take off before being tagged. With only four downs per drive, it was a very fast-paced game.

I ended up having the ball thrown to me a couple times, but most of the time I dropped the ball because I was wearing gloves. However, I did manage to catch the ball several times when I finally took my gloves off. This seemed to help and, according to Mike, my team ended up winning.

With the football game over, I returned to the film-making. Gathering all my actors in, I gave them a quick review of the scene. With that taken care of, Kristina declared, “Watch this! One take, Sutton,” and we started rolling.

The scene went perfect, until half-way through her speech, Kristina burst out laughing. I had to cut, and we tried again. And again. And again. Over and over again something went wrong. Kristina laughed at something; someone said their lines wrong; Johnathan made someone laugh.

Around 2:30, we finally finished the scene, and I got to go on to the next scenes. There was only three left, and they all went well with one take, which was a huge relief. With the movie finished, I finally got to put away the camera, and things settled down (at least for me).

Christian Party Movie from Levi Karth on Vimeo.

Exhausted, I grabbed my backpack, which had my pillow in it, and went into one of the tents. There, I crashed down on the floor of the tent, not bothering to take the pillow out of the backpack. After a couple minutes, I did grab a sleeping bag.

For the next hour and a half, I tried to get to sleep to no avail. Despite how tired I was, there were just too many distractions. Loud music was playing, bright lights were on everywhere, and the tent floor was not very comfortable.

Finally at four, Stephen walked in and told me to get up. I had signed up to walk between 4:00 and 5:00, so I was needed. After looking at my watch, I groaned, picked up my backpack, and walked out of the tent.

While earlier we had all been a small group, there were now only a few of us, huddled over a small fire. Fighting back sleep, I dropped my backpack by a tree, took our team’s baton (a cross made out of railroad ties), and started marching on the path. Mr. Large soon joined me (he went to our church, but he was in the firefighter team), and for most of the time between 4:00 and 5:00 he walked with me.

I was too tired to talk, so I just trudged along slowly. Whenever I made a complete circuit of the path I would glance at my wristwatch. Each lap took about eight minutes, and I was relieved each time I saw the time getting closer to 5:00. I wouldn’t have minded walking for an hour, it’s just that I was exhausted.

5′o’clock finally came around, and I wearily walked into the camp. Stephen volunteered to walk, so I handed him the cross and then sat down on a chair in front of the fire (a small burner with a fuel tank attached). Staring around at everyone, I silently listened to their talking.

Sutton quickly noticed my sad state, and commented on it.

“Hey, Levi! You want to play football, don’t you?” he asked me. If he had asked me five hours earlier I would have agreed, but as it was, I didn’t even want to think about standing up. I just groaned and shook my head.

“Oh, Levi, you look tired!” Sutton laughed. “I’ve never seen you this way! Do you want some coffee?”

Never having had coffee before, I did not know how long it would keep me awake, so I turned it down. I wanted to be able to sleep once I made it home. Thinking back, I don’t even know if I could have held my cup up.

About that time, Beau showed up. He had gone home for a couple hours, and in that time he had gotten some sleep. “It felt so good,” he declared. Being the only one looking fully awake, he volunteered to walk around the path.

Just then, Stephen came back. With his ankle injury, he only needed to do one lap before he was hurting. He gratefully gave the cross to Beau, and then sat down.

For the next hour, we were all huddled over the fire. After awhile, Stephen decided to try some coffee. He had never had it before, so when he received the cup, he stared down into it. After he said something about it looking like a deep, dark abyss of nastiness, we all laughed.

Before he actually started drinking his coffee, it was announced on the loudspeaker that there were donuts and coffee at the main tent. Hungry, Mr. Martin and I strolled over there, where we each grabbed a donut. Noticing some coffee creamer, I grabbed a bag for Stephen.

Handing the bag to Stephen, he thanked me, and then tried to figure out how to mix it without a spoon. Sutton quickly handed Stephen another cup and told him to pour the coffee and creamer between the two. Stephen did that, and he soon had his first taste of coffee.

7:00 eventually came, and with it, the final lap where everyone (that was left at the camp) walked on the path. Hesitantly, we all pulled ourselves up from our seats and started walking along the path. Triumphant music played, and we all seemed a bit more awake.

The sky in the east was just brightening as we made it back to the camp. Putting ourselves to the task, we all started taking things down. It was a lot of work for some very tired people, but working together, it was a quick chore, and we were soon hauling stuff out to the vehicles.

This also took some time, and I felt relived when the campsite was finally, completely clean. Making it back to the parking lot, I looked around to see who would give me a ride. I eventually went with Stephen.

Before we could all head home, some of us had to make one last stop at church, where we would unload the water bottles left in the back of Stephen’s truck. As we headed there, Stephen, Johnathan, and I talked about how tired we were and what we would do when we got home. The general consensus was to crash on our beds, and each of us smiled (in our hearts, not on our faces; we were too tired for that) when we thought of the sleep we would get.

Making it to the church, we climbed out of Stephen’s truck, and we soon had all the water bottles put away. Just before the last one was taken off of Stephen’s truck, Johnathan summed up how we all felt. “So close!”

Climbing into the back of Stephen’s truck for the last time, Stephen drove to my house. As we were making our way there, I offered to toss my stuff out the moment we got there and jump out so Stephen and Johnathan could get home sooner.

“A few more seconds of sleep won’t make a difference,” Stephen replied.

“Yeah,” I answered, “but getting there that much sooner will.” With that statement Johnathan and Stephen agreed. However, they still didn’t think I should jump out, so I just stepped out. Clutching all my stuff, I waved at them and then walked into the house exhausted. I soon made it to my bed, where I slept.

Levi Karth