In his book Glorious Mess, Mike Howerton tells the following story about a childhood experience playing "mud football." After a huge downpour, he and his neighbourhood buddies found a gully filled with two inches of standing water. Howerton describes what happened next:
We had a blast. Every tackle would send you sliding for yards and
yards. The ball was like a greased pig, which meant tons of fumbles and gang
tackles and laughter.
I remember tackling one of [my friends] and watching him skim across
the surface of the water for something like four miles and thinking, "I
might be in heaven." When he got up, I noticed something stuck on his
shoulder. I peered closer, wondering, "What is that?" Now, there was
a huge, concrete sewage runoff drain right next to the gully. And apparently
during heavy rains, all sorts of things got backed up, and I don't know if the
apartment complex immediately next to the school burst a pipe or what, but I do
know we didn't really pay attention to the flotsam in the gully until I noticed
that something on Craig's shoulder. I peered closer and suddenly realised it
was a soaking piece of toilet paper. In that same instant I realised the smell
surrounding me was a bit more pungent than a typical mud football game ought to
smell. I yelled out, "We're playing in POOP WATER!" and we bolted for
home as fast as we could.
Talk about an instant of mental transformation …. Sometimes in life we
need our thinking transformed. Sometimes we think we're having fun until we
realise we're rolling around in sewage.
Mike
Howerton, Glorious Mess (Baker, 2012), pp. 101-102
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