First off, the traffic this site has been receiving the past few days is incredible. In the last two days alone, I Serve Idiots has received over 4,100 unique visits and 11,000 page views. In two days. Wow.

Second, I’m going to go homeless. Again.

I know I’ve mentioned briefly in a few posts how I’m pursuing a career in campus ministry. This will be the only time this year I ever go this far in depth about it, but I thought that since I’ll be gone for the next four days, now might be a good time to just put it up there. I say that as a warning to anyone who doesn’t want to read about to click on a random story at the top of this website.

Here goes.

I was recently hired by a campus ministry non-profit called InterVarsity. I’m going to the inner city of a major city in Florida and leading a group of college students in sleeping on the streets and ministering to the needs of the homeless from the perspective of a true neighbor. Not someone who comes out for an hour or two and then goes back to their air-conditioned worship center.

They’re also going to be ministering to us. While we’re feeding them and talking with them and showing them we think no less of them than we think of ourselves, they’re going to be alleviating our ignorance and teaching us about poverty and brokenness.

And this is the kind of stuff I’ll be doing in campus ministry. I’ll be working for the next few years on campuses, organizing weekends like that so as to bring out of students their passions and help them discover an identity that combines said passions with a life that builds up the community around them.

I think even non-Christians can agree that this is a pretty solid thing.

In addition to transforming students and raising them up to be world-changers, I have to raise my annual budget. The money I raise allows me to do the kind of stuff you read about in the homeless article full-time. It allows me to expose brokenness and ignorance at its source and it allows me to encourage students to do the same. It allows me to counsel students and guide them through probably the four craziest, most turbulent years of their life.

In short, it allows me send more men and women into the world who will give “Christianity” a positive connotation.

I’m raising this budget all on my own and I’m going to anyone and everyone I know because I feel my role in campus ministry to be important. I feel as though college students need guidance and focus and I feel the world needs a better definition of “Christianity”.

And what I’m asking you is to please consider going to www.intervarsity.org/donate. All you have to do is click that, type in my name (Ryan Day) and the site will guide you through the rest.

And if you’d like to email me, my contact info is on the top. I’ll be glad to talk with you as well so if you’d like to leave your name or number in my inbox, I can give you a call and talk with you a little more about what I’ll be doing with InterVarsity.

Finally, if anyone works for a business that donates money, please let me know. Or sits on a foundation’s Board of Directors, or WHATEVER, please LET ME KNOW.

Your donations are tax-deductible and I would really and truly appreciate any little bit you all could give.

Thanks for reading this. Like I said, you won’t hear a peep about this again but I think it would be an amazing story if my work in campus ministry was in part funded by this ridiculous, ragtag, waiter and waitress community I’ve been a part of for the last two years.

More stories about idiots on Monday!

See, they look like an adult, they dress like an adult, they drive a car like an adult…hell, they even wear dress shoes. But I’ll be damned if they act anything older than five years old.

You know the kinds of people I’m talking about. If it’s not the family that pitches a fit because they don’t get their own table at a COMMUNITY-SEATING RESTAURANT, then it’s the woman who’s angry I didn’t play her favorite game of “Ask each idiot three times if they want dessert”.

But a new breed of man-kid came in last night. A dude in a suit and tie who asked if we had soup.

Me: “Sure. It’s a chicken broth with pieces of deep-fried onions, scallions and mushrooms.”
Him: “I’ll have…THAT!”
Me: “Oh…KAY!”

Weirdo.

Anyway, I come back out with the soup. He pokes it with his spoon and then said something that ran a chill up my spine.

Him: “It’s yucky.”
Me: “It’s…um…it’s what?”
Him: “You didn’t tell me it’d look like that. It’s yucky.”
Me: “I’m sorry, sir. Is there anything I can…”
Him: “It’s yucky!”

Yucky? YUCKY? Frickin’ YUCKY?!

Sir, in big-boy land, we use words like “disgusting” or “gross” or “that’s not what I thought it was going to look like”. You wanting to call something “yucky” makes the little part of me die that dies when I hear Paris Hilton try and pronounce a two-syllable word.

So, of course, he calls the manager over.

Manager: “Is there something wrong, sir?”
Him: “No, he just served me a yucky-looking soup and I don’t want to pay for it.”
Manager: “Yucky. Looking. Soup. I see.”
Him: “…”
Manager: “…”
Me: “…”

Suffice it to say, he got his money back, rode his tricycle home and probably got a pat on the ass from his mom as she reminded him what a good job he did.

I believe when I describe someone as a “yuppy middle-class white guy” we all know what I mean, right? These are the men that will overpay thousands of dollars on their house/car/television/prostitute yet they will argue with a cashier if they are overcharged 60 cents on a 200 dollar grocery bill all WHILE TALKING VERY LOUDLY ON THEIR FUCKING BLACKBERRY WHILE COLLEGE KIDS ARE BEHIND THEM ROLLING THEIR EYES BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO GET HOME IN EIGHT MINUTES FOR THE DALLAS MAVERICKS/MIAMI HEAT BASKETBALL GAME.

Their counterparts are the women that drive hummers with crappy bumper stickers and take three spots to park because their designer sunglasses and 300 dollar shoes got in the way. I’d say the women are worse, but what do I know?

Anyway, so the guy asks for a large bowl of shrimp sauce (which is frickin’ gross, remember?) and as I come to bring him some more of his order, he drops the bowl as he’s pouring it all over his fried rice.

This in itself is not a crime. Dumb, but not a crime. It’s some sauce on a dining table. Big deal. I’ll probably get a better tip out of it by showing that:
1) don’t care, and
2) I clean tables real good like.

So I grab some of the cocktail napkins that I had gotten them minutes ago (read: SOME, not ALL) and proceed to clean.

Him: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Uh…uh…cleaning?”
Him: “Clean up the mess, but get your own napkins to clean up the mess.”

What. the. fuck.

Let me repeat that:

What. The. FUCK.

Sir, I saw you drop that frickin’ bowl of sauce all over the table. My hands were nowhere near the bowl that YOU dropped, you slippery son-of-a-bee-sting.

Secondly, I know that cocktail napkins are quite the commodity, but please, sir, may I borrow some of your wonderful, satin cocktail napkins so I can clean up your little oopsy-doopsy?

Thirdy, I can’t wait to see you outside of work so I can spit in your face.

Me: “Yea, I’ve got to get rid of this piano at my new house. It cost me and my new roommate about a grand…you think I could get anything for it?”
Lucy: “Probably. I’d sell it on Craig’s List if I were y…”
Customer: “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear. I really need a piano. Would you mind telling me a little about it?”

I give the dude the specifications of the piano and he seemed pretty excited to come and pick it up. He even offered me a few hundred over what I was going to ask for.

So I make Mistake #1. I give him my address.

He comes this afternoon with a group of three other dudes all ready to pick up the piano. I don’t know about the rest of you, but for some reason, whenever I have someone at my house, I feel the need to be really, really nice to them. So nice that it fringes on awkward.

Me: “Hey, you need a glass of water or anything?”
Plumber: “No, I’m good.”
Me: “Do I need to turn my music down? Is it bothering you?”
Plumber: “You’re good.”
Me: “I’m taking the trash out? You need anything?”
Plumber: “Excuse me?”
Me: “…”
Plumber: “…”
Me: “Sorry.”
Plumber: “…”

So the guys come in and per my usual awkwardness, I offer them all lemonade. Yea, lemonade. I’m a regular fruit cake.

They get the piano in the back of their truck, the guy hands me a check and they go on their merry way.

Not five minutes later, I get on my laptop to check my email and I’ve got this in my inbox:

It’s so small, I’ll transcribe it here:

It’s the guys that just got your piano! The three guys thought you were hott so we’re driving home now and they told me to email you from my phone. we’re gonna have a pool party later tonight if u want to come!

I guess it was the lemonade that convinced them that I was the kind of guy who’d be into a huge, gay orgy.

It’s at this point you’ve realized that the difference between a hot 40-year-old and a “was-hot-when-she-was-40-but-now-is-a-50-year-old” getting with a boy of 22 is the difference between “frickin’ awesome” and “I have to get up early in the morning.”

Maybe that’s the reason for all the fake breasts I see in St. Augustine, but I digress.

A woman, not a day younger than 50, was sitting in my section. She had been sipping wine at the bar with her girlfriends and was, to say the least, a bit tipsy.

When I was clearing her and her friends dishes, she leaned in and asked me:

“How old are you?”

Me: “Twenty-two, ma’am.”
Her: “Don’t call me ‘ma’am’.”
Me: (Gulp.)
Her: “Let me ask you something, Ryan. If I were to give you a hundred dollars for your birthday, would you be happy.”

Me, always being one on the lookout for crazy women who hand out hundreds like candy, eagerly said, “Yes” with a smile.

Big mistake.

Her: “Twenty-two, huh? The things I would do to you if you were just a little older.
Me: (Gulp. Again.)

And with that, her friends came back and they left the restaurant. But not before winking at me and waving bye.

She left her number. If anyone wants to bang a desperate, post-menopausal, 50-year-old woman who probably has a leather wallet for a vagina, shoot me an email. I’ll be glad to send it your way.