From August 2006 to December 2007, Molly and I had a long-distance courtship. During that year and a half, we had a lot of phone calls and lots of visits back and forth. It was mostly me going visit her, though, since she shared a car with two of her five siblings, Kelly and Jacob.
I couldn’t have made it through that time without one of the best friends of all time – Lance Dunn.
I met Lance during my internship year at UL. He was one of the Chi Alpha student leaders and was also my Life Group co-leader. Other than my fellow interns, I spent more time that year with Lance than any other individual. Thankfully, we clicked.
When I was working in Vacherie as a youth pastor, we had a youth event every Friday night where we would open up the church at about 7pm and keep it open until about 10pm. I would preach a little, and we had lots of games and sold concessions. In small town Vacherie, it was a pretty big hit drawing lots of kids from the surrounding neighborhood.
With Molly living in Lafayette, this made things a little difficult seeing her, though. There were many nights I would leave Vacherie at 10 after the event was over, drive to Lafayette, crash in Lance’s dorm room, and then go visit Molly the next day before leaving Saturday afternoon to head back home. Lance was always gracious to let me do this, even when I didn’t tell him I was coming!
One weekend I woke up in Lance’s dorm room, met Molly for breakfast, and then returned to hang out with Lance. Molly was working or doing something else that day – I’m not exactly sure what it was. But that was fine because I loved hanging out with Lance, too. When I got back, though, my life changed forever. Lance was watching Season 4, Episode 1 of 24.
I had never seen, or even heard of, this show before. However, I watched this episode with Lance. Then the next one. Then a couple more. A little bit later my phone rang and I silenced it, continuing to watch. A while later, my phone rang again, but the episode was really good (nukes were going off and everything). After about 12 episodes, I realized it was probably time to head back home. But, maybe we could fit a couple more in?
Eventually, I really needed to begin heading home. I looked at my phone to see what time it was. I noticed 5 missed phone calls from Molly.
I called her while on the way home and apologized. She eventually understood…maybe.
Ten years later, we named our kid after Jack Bauer, so I guess everything turned out all right.
Cont.…
Ramblings from That Guy 