A Comical Occurrence at Nationals 2019

Finals had ended, as had the Award Ceremony. Many former contestants and audience members were playing on the playground near the Ark, “glice skating” on the rink, and a few were touring the Ark, as my fellow Local group members were doing.

At the time, I didn’t know this, so I went looking for them, and finally found them on the second floor of the Ark. Unfortunately for me, it was almost closing time for the Ark, and my friends were almost done with their tour. Oh well.

Anyway, we began our descent down the stairs toward the exit after going through the awesome Ark gift shop. Barring the exit was an elastic strap, set up between two poles.

“Hey guys, watch this!” my friend Owen said as he nimbly jumped over the strap.

Hmm… I thought. Probably not the best idea.

“Let me try!” Gabe said, and he, too, jumped over the strap.

I could probably do it if I tried, I thought, but didn’t want to risk it.

My friends must have seen my look of contemplation and began to encourage me to try it. It wasn’t that hard! Come on, just do it!

“Alright, I’ll try it,” I said. I got to a far enough distance from the strap, ran right toward it…and stopped. “Come on, Titus! Do it!” they all cheered.

I sighed and backed up once again. I took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and ran toward the strap again. This time, I leaped into the air, right over the – SNAP.

Oh no.

And now the strap lies in two halves on the ground, the plastic buckle undone – or broken. We’re not sure.

“Oh no, no, no!” I said, panicked. “We have to fix this before security gets here!”

My friends did their best to help me, and when I couldn’t do it, my friend Alec took over and tried to fit it back in. Nothing we tried worked.

We kept unhelpfully offering Alec advice and nervously biting our lips as we hoped against hope that security wouldn’t…

Oh look. Here comes security.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” the man asked.

“Eheh…yeah, this strap seems to have…um, broken.” We’re so subtle.

“Ah,” the man said, stepping forward. In one motion, he snapped it back into place.

Okay, we’re officially dumb.

I’ve since learned from my Local group friends that they learned a lesson that day: just because you do well at Bible Bee doesn’t keep you from making hilarious mistakes, so the rest of them don’t have to feel bad when they do stuff like that. Very true. I learned it the hard way.

Adapted from Grace Johnson by Titus Alexander

Titus Alexander
Titus Alexander
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12 Comments

  1. That’s definitely a great lesson to learn! Thank you so much for sharing! Isn’t it awesome how God can even use the craziest things to teach us?!

  2. Thank you for sharing, Titus!
    I remember that I used to look up to the 1st placers and those who had been finalists many times, as if they were extraordinary people who were super smart and studied extremely hard. 😉 But after 2018, I realized that it is an extraordinary God who uses ordinary people to do great things! I’m not a genius and I also make silly mistakes sometimes (like when I took someone else’s name tag by accident… ;)). Your post was such a great reminder to me that each time I do “well” in Bible Bee, it’s not because of me or how hard I studied. It’s all because of God and His great grace, and all glory goes to Him!

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