Jesus & the AHOY Contest

Randall Nathan gave rides to people yesterday so they could vote. He didn’t want to, but in a moment of weakness earlier in the week, when Angela Messenger had called and asked him to, he said he would, so he did.

It’s a continuing problem. Or maybe it’s a problem only if you see it that way. Maybe it’s only an “issue” instead of a problem. But he sees it as a problem.

He knows he should never agree to do anything, because when it comes time to do something he has agreed to do, he doesn’t want to do it. He almost always enjoys it and is glad afterward that he did it, but at the time he doesn’t want to do it.

Part of the problem is that it costs him points in the Awesome Hermudgeon* of the Year [AHOY] competition. Any contact with a real person costs points. He’s one of the few people who likes robotic political telephone calls, because you get AHOY points for hanging up on telephone calls, and he can hang up on those with a clear conscience. And ENJOYING contacts with people costs mega points. He figures if he never agrees to do anything, then he can’t enjoy anything, and he’ll get more points, and… well, it’s a never-ending struggle.

It was like that yesterday.

One of his riders was Mathtilde Gailey, 98 years old and on a walker, who told him, “It just comes on you so quick, old age. Be yourself while you’ve still got the chance.” He thought about that all day.

Another was William Pomeroy, who insisted on meeting Randall “at the DoubleCola sign on the highway, ‘cause you’ll get stuck if you come down my driveway.” At the polling place, he gave his address as “the 1964 Volvo under the Persimmon Valley Bridge.”

Another was Lucille Sigmoiden, on two canes, and he had to drag her in and out of his 1956 Ford pickup, but it turned out she had been on the same PBS* program at Hope’s Promise University that he had been on, although in different years. It brought back memories of eating with his friends at the Horatio Alger Dining Hall and Pig Worming Center.

Then there was Leeroy Johnson, who proclaimed himself as “the only white Leeroy you’ll ever meet,” and told how he was trying to figure out what beauty really is, since he had lain a rice paddy in Vietnam at night with death all around but thought that the colors of the tracers in the night sky had a beauty beyond anything he ever saw before or since. It was all in his memory, for Leeroy is blind.

Then Randall realized he was giving rides to the poor and the lame and the blind and the oppressed, the very ones Jesus said he had come for, and he was glad, as usual, that he did what he had answered the call to do, even though he didn’t want to.

“I’ll bet Jesus never won the AHOY contest, though,” he muttrerd.



*Hermudgeon is a combination of hermit and curmudgeon.
*PBS=Poor But Smart