Stay tuned for the title explanation.
Once upon a time I gave a speech at my high school graduation. For those of you who know me, you're probably wondering why because you know I am not a stand out student: aka valedictorian or salutatorian (both of which spell check conveniently corrected for me).
It was actually because I was hilariously elected senior class president so I could put it on my college application. Which worked by the way; they let me both in and out with a diploma and everything.
A reoccurring theme in my life is relearning that I am arrogant. My graduation speech, which I mostly and thankfully cannot remember, emphasized this. Using a GK Chesterton quote that I found on google, I spoke confidently about fighting dragons with our skills and talents. Although I had never read anything Chesterton had written, I knew that he was smart, friends with CS Lewis, and knew a thing or two about how to live a moral life. He was also wise, which is a character trait that is like fly paper to me. Me being a fly, of course.
So I spoke about fighting dragons. We were given the toolbox (shout out to Aiken High), and now it was up to us to put them to good use and attack the demons waiting for us in post adolescence.
Maybe I'm not so much arrogant as I am pretentious. Which is exactly how my favorite teacher of all time described my eleventh grade English papers.
College, which was my first taste of "adulthood", was pretty easy. I made friends easily, loved most of my course work, used ministry to spend my free time, and even learned to like exercise. I left with wonderful memories, nice pictures, and the reality that I had no clue what I was supposed to do with my life.
So as far as dragons go, there weren't many. There was the loss of my grandfather, and learning that body image is a struggle I will most likely have my whole life. I had to learn that even the closest friends can hurt you through no fault of their own. There was learning to let go of control and learning to accept adventure as a nice alternative. But honestly these "hardships" were gradual, and none of them confronted me in the form of a dragon. None of these were evil, and none of them were inherently bad.
So where are the dragons? I assumed they were outside of my nice Christian college student bubble, which I decided to leave when I stepped on the plane to Italy.
Did I find them here?
Now to the weird title of this post.
I was watching SNL, because I always watch it. But Emmy, why would you sit through an hour of crude comedy that is rarely funny? Because every so often there are golden nuggets of comedic genius that make it worth my while. With that said, it is rare that I will laugh out loud watching it alone. This skit made me laugh out loud, harder than I've laughed by myself in a long time. Please watch it.
SNL Skit
Short summary:
The characters are in a FBI training shooting simulator. They are supposed to shoot the robots that pose a threat. The first is an robber that says, "See you in hell", and the second is an an old woman who's cat ran away. The third is a ridiculous man in an neon orange suit, sunglasses, and a giant cell phone that screams, "I'm the coolest bitch in town!"
The trainee has no idea how to handle this, and shoots him. When told that he was wrong, he said, "He didn't seem to fit a type!"
Please watch it, its way funnier than that short synopsis.
I think I mostly laughed so hard because it is a great analogy for life. These days, I'm learning that the "dragon" thing is pretty misleading. Nobody mistakes a dragon for a wise wizard. A dragon is a symbol of a forces that is so obviously evil that you draw a sword at first sight.
I had no idea that one of my biggest dragons in my experience here would take the form of a crazy Italian teacher that is very bad at her job. It would have made way more sense to me that it would come in the form of an Italian immigration office that I visited to ask if I could quit my three hour classes with her. Surprisingly, they were kind and understanding. After getting the go ahead, I drafted a resignation email and am now freed of the lessons that were slowly but surely driving me to insanity.
So now that I am tasting real adulthood for the first time, I am guessing that in life you spend more time trying to determine dragons from wizards than it is actually fighting them. It means also figuratively shooting your gun with the hope that your gut was right.
