My Friend Mike

I went to see my Mom in the hospital on Saturday and afterwards I met up with my friend Mike for lunch. I haven't seen Mike in years and it was like we hadn't skipped a beat. Mike and I met about 15 years ago when we started running a high school youth group for Everett High School through Youth for Christ/Campus Life. Over lunch we hung out and caught up on old youth group kids and laughed about old stories.

Mike and I have gone through a lot together, even things involving the police. One of Mike's favorite stories was back about 13 year ago when I was hanging out with my brother-in-law Ed at Cathie and I's apartment in East Lansing. We heard a knock at the door and sream of of toilet paper leading outside. I followed it and found my motorcycle cocooned in toilet paper and saw Mike and a couple other guys leaving the scene of the crime. Ed and I loaded up the toilet paper into the trunk and headed over to Mike's house in Lansing. We proceeded to strew the toilet paper throughout his house and ran out before they got back. As we were pulling out, they jumped out and sat on the hood of my car. Calling their bluff, I kept driving, and turned onto Michigan Ave, going about 35mph (I never said I was a smart man or had any common sense). When we saw police lights, we pulled over onto a side street and the cop got out of his car. This was bad news for me based on the fact that my insurance was expired and I didn't have drivers license with me, on top of the fact that the whole "driving fast with people on the hood" was probably breaking a couple of laws. Luckily, Mike knew the cop and as we were talking, Mike reached in, grabbed my car keys and took off running.

Since then, we've gone through a lot of stuff together, our families have vacationed together, celebrated birthdays together and hung out together. Mike reads my blog, I'd read his if he had one. For the past bunch of years, Mike has run a para-church organization called Visions, a kind of Christian night club in Lansing. Mike has a huge heart and passion for God and people and is the most competitive person in the entire world. As a kid, Mike never received any kind of student of the month awards and because of this, he has decided to home-school all of his children and he now makes his kids students-of-the-month on a daily basis. Being the most competitive person in the known world, Mike has modeled his coaching style after Robert Duvall in the movie Kicking and Screaming.