Someone sent me this as a n e-mail. I thought it was kinda cute.

You know you’re from New Orleans and have survived Hurricane Katrina when….
1. pre-K has nothing to do with the year before Kindergarten.
2. The flies are bigger than your Chihuahua.

3. Your bank, dry cleaner, and grocery store are closed but your bar is not. (Thank you, Cooter Brown’s)
4. You judge your elevation by the brown horizontal line in the city.
5. You have to show an ID to get into your neighborhood.
6. Your neighborhood has no children, so you actually start to miss the little boys across the street that used to throw rocks onto your roof.
7. You go to Sam’s Club, but instead of coming home with a case of pop tarts, you buy masks, bleach, rubber gloves, and baking soda in bulk.
8. You know five remedies to get the smell out of your refrigerator.
9. You spend a lot of time talking with your friends about the five remedies to get the smell out of your refrigerator.
10. Ice becomes more precious than gold.
11. Your office goes from 40 employees to 5.
12. Living in a house with twelve other people is not a sign of how poor you are, but how rich you are with friend and family.
13. You know what a double-evacuee is. (Damn you, Rita!)
14. FEMA means “failure to effectively manage anything” and hearing the words “Red Cross” makes your blood boil.

15. You get sick of hearing people from Baton Rouge tell you how bad the traffic is now. You remind them that Baton Rouge traffic was terrible before there were 200,000 more people in town.
16. The strip clubs on Bourbon street have power before your house does…..
17. The Salvation Army, a firefighter from Michigan, and cops from Wauconda show up at your house to make sure that you are OK.
18. There is a pirogue on your roof.
19. You return to your home and all of your belongings fit into two boxes.
20. Contra flow just doesn’t seem so bad.
21. You have to purchase hip boots to walk in your neighborhood.
22. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
23. Lakeview becomes Lake.
24. The crosses on your wall and kitchen counter top remain despite the five feet of water in your house.
25. You know what it truly means to miss New Orleans.

Yesterday I was presenting to some middle schoolers. After it was over, a teacher came up to me and said…”You were good; I didn’t get a single paper graded.”

A few weeks back I was touring Megan’s new school with the principal and she was introducing me to teachers as we saw the different rooms. One of Megan’s teachers smiled and then paused and asked, “Do you speak and do retreats?” I answered that I did, thinking I might have spoken at some mission or youth rally in the last few years which she attended.

She then said, “You did my 6th grade retreat!” I shook my head thinking I could have gone all day without hearing that remark. It’s hard to believe I began teaching and doing retreats in 1984 and that I could have well done this. She recalled icebreaker songs she remembered and how she used them in her classroom to teach various points. She said it was one of the most memorable retreats she had.

I went from groaning on the inside that I am as old as I am to have my daughter’s teachers telling me I did retreats for them to thanking God for working through the silliest things sometimes and for letting me get to hang out while he does some of them.

The photo below came from a workshop I did at the National Conference on Catholic Youth Ministry (Pittsburgh, December , 2004) . The workshop was entitled, “Superman and Wonderwoman Have Bullseyes on their Backs”. It was about the expectations and stresses that come from ministry.

Makes you a Batman fan , doesn’t it?

I am NOT MAKING this one up.

You’ll love this…they announced Cardinal Ratzinger as pope, my daughter said, “Dad?”

“Yes, Meg?”

“This new pope must be cool, huh?”

Wanting to let her make her own decisions, I asked, “Well Meg, I’m not sure, why do you say that?”

Well, the lady in the cafeteria said, “That RAP SINGER will be our next pope!”
(Rat-zinger = RAP SINGER)