Pranks and Mishaps: A Lighthearted Look at Christmas Past (With Friend & Certified Life Coach Danny Mullins)

Nate Vainio: 0:04

Welcome to Something to Nawn short podcast for the Christian with a short attention span, and ordinarily this is a parable style devotional. This week we are going to break from tradition and I've got my friend Danny Mullins back with me. You can check out. The last episode we did together was Two Dudes who Can Fish but Can't Count. Did you bring a calculator? No, I went back over that deal and we were trying to add up like the years between things and I was like dude we yeah, we are not gifted in that area, so anyhow, but now that was a great episode.

Nate Vainio: 0:42

What I wanted to do for Christmas here is last week we had a little bit more of a serious episode. I love the stories, both sides of that story. If you haven't caught that, go back and check that out. But at the same time, christmas Christmas can be kind of a tough time of the year and for me, the way I handle tough times sometimes is I love to laugh. So I had asked a few people to maybe send some stories in and I've got a story or two that I can break in with and I thought that, danny, you could help me review a few stories.

Danny Mullins: 1:18

Well, as a side note, I think that there might be some parables involved here, there may be some life lessons to learn. I'm just saying.

Nate Vainio: 1:27

There might be. You know, it would be fun to do a story or do a series of, and I think it would blow people away if you'd go through and do Bible studies and just simply look at the sheer comedy of things in Scripture. And sometimes it's not necessarily the knee slap or kind of a deal, but there are those moments where it's like jaw dropping. Did Jesus really say that to these people?

Nate Vainio: 1:55

Dry humor, the dry humor, the shock and awe of some of that stuff. So I had a friend that I don't know if you've listened to any of the episodes from the guys down in Alabama, birmingham, alabama, life, faith and everything else Tommy, the guys down there, justin, the combination the guys are Justin's a pastor and Tommy is, I think he's a sound guy at the church, but the two of them there's no mistake in the fact they're from the south, okay, so when you're listening to them there's that feature that is just absolutely entertaining. But Tommy's been a Christian, I think, for probably four, five, six years, so you know, relatively young in his faith. Justin is a bit more of the sage and as such you have the youthful zeal and the sage wisdom and they come together incredibly well.

Danny Mullins: 2:56

The kid in the curmudgeon. Is that what you're saying?

Nate Vainio: 2:59

Oh, I didn't, justin. I didn't say that I don't know that I can edit that out, though. Anyhow, yeah, that's pretty much it or not, anyhow, but you're not a curmudgeon, you're not, you're not.

Nate Vainio: 3:13

He doesn't know you, but he knows you're not Anyhow. But what cracked me up was one episode. Tommy did his own episode and it was a little bit he kind of. He approached it. You know God had spoken to this guy, you know, and just this was just straight from his heart and his time with the Lord. And yet, at the same time, the humor of it was that as he's studying this, he realizes that boxers and briefs are not something that guys in New Testament times you know that wasn't a conversation they had and they didn't go to Kmart or the Target, you know, and get that. So he has this revelation of this thing going on, and so he's reading the story of Zacchaeus climbing up in the tree, you know, and the title of his podcast was Commando and Jericho. So the humor of it, you know, which, okay, you know, let's roll with it, but by the same token, solid, solid study too.

Danny Mullins: 4:22

So I'm editing my desire to sing a song right now.

Nate Vainio: 4:26

Yes, I'm just not going to. Well, I have the ability to edit it out If you, if you let something slip, I may very well have the capacity to divinely edit that, so anyhow. So the bottom line is for today's episode I, you know there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of things. Tensions get high and what have you and man, you just got to laugh. You got to look at stuff. Sometimes you got to step back and you just got to roll with the punches and laugh. And so do you have any holiday in the moment here? Are there any holiday moments that you come to your mind for you?

Danny Mullins: 5:08

The first thing that comes to my mind is that your upbringing and my upbringing were vastly different. You grew up in a place where there was snow and I grew up in a desert. So the thing the activities of your youth were different than the activities of my youth in the wintertime.

Nate Vainio: 5:27

So you're telling me you didn't sled down the roof of your church?

Danny Mullins: 5:30

No, no, no. We would usually go out and play football out in the yard because it was 80 degrees outside.

Nate Vainio: 5:38

We would do that, we would play football as well, but it was in the snow.

Danny Mullins: 5:43

Yeah, well, we didn't have that, yeah, it was.

Nate Vainio: 5:45

Oh, wow, yeah. So the first thing, I had a couple of people send me some stories of what have you that I just kind of wanted to read through. There's a story that I figure I'd share at the end, which is my classic Christmas fail, where and each of these has a little bit of a theme to it.

Danny Mullins: 6:04

Well, hold on to it till the end. Well, we will.

Nate Vainio: 6:07

But I will tell you that the classic theme for me is I shouldn't have said that. So there's at Christmas time. There are things that you shouldn't say I've thought about. If I write another book, it'll be titled Things I Should Not have Said, or I shouldn't have said that. It seems like it worked. I've got a whole list of them. Oh man, yeah. And what percentage are between you and your spouse?

Danny Mullins: 6:31

Oh gosh 80.

Nate Vainio: 6:33

80? Yeah.

Danny Mullins: 6:36

But I had a whole life 45 years before I got married. So I got all kinds of damage left behind, but in the last 10 years yeah. It's all been my wife in the last 10, but yeah, I've had 45 years before, Prior to that.

Nate Vainio: 6:50

oh, man, I've had some dandies at work as of late and it's like, oh man, I can't believe I said that Anyhow. So that's coming up towards the end, but we're going to open it up with a story that my dad sent. Of course, my dad has written several stories up to this point that I've aired, where I've just read the story and let dad's commentary roll. I think this time we'll read through and maybe pick it apart a little bit. But so, yeah, you mentioned the difference between Midland. Oh, this is Midland.

Nate Vainio: 7:23

Oh, that's a, yeah, that's a. I'm sorry.

Danny Mullins: 7:25

I'll get those two.

Nate Vainio: 7:26

And Missoula Montana. I was thinking about this because the setting in dad's story here deals with the church that I grew up in and the auditorium. Just to give you a little bit of a picture of it, the auditorium you could put two basketball courts side by side in and the ceiling would you say about 40, 50 feet.

Danny Mullins: 7:48

Oh yeah, easy.

Nate Vainio: 7:49

Easy, and so for Christmas, I mean doing the Christmas play or the Easter drama. It was always a big, big deal. Anyhow, it was Thursday, friday, Saturday, sunday, two weeks in a row, usually Back in, and yeah, it was crazy, they anyhow. So that's a lot of time away from family, there's a lot of time interacting with other individuals there and what happens.

Danny Mullins: 8:15

Stressful time too, yeah.

Nate Vainio: 8:16

And then on top of that, you have some people who well, let me just read this this is my dad writing. The church I attended always did large productions for both Christmas and Easter. One year I was part of a quartet singing on stage near the orchestra pit. No one in the audience could see what we endured to sing our song, Jeff. One of the trumpet players thought it would be fun to squirt us with a water pistol. Try acting like nothing's wrong, with water dripping off your forehead and all the while you can see, Jeff, but you can't do anything about it. I mean, can you imagine being up on the stage? Okay, On the stage, quartet singing serious Christmas songs? Yeah, you got this guy down as a quartet. You do anything like that with impact brass or anything.

Danny Mullins: 9:12

Oh yeah, we've done some. We have some little pranks things and yeah.

Nate Vainio: 9:18

Does that come out of a? Is that like a normal thing that people in orchestra you're talking to a guy who's not a part of?

Danny Mullins: 9:26

If you do productions over and over again, you play tricks on each other, because you're bored, gotcha. You're playing the same thing, saying the same thing, singing the same thing. So eventually you got to throw a curve ball you know, break the monotony. Yeah.

Nate Vainio: 9:39

Alrighty. Well, let's get to breaking the monotony. Let's get to breaking the monotony here, because, yeah, continuing on back to the text, here, I determined to get even like a Christian, of course. While the orchestra played, as people were leaving the auditorium, I found a bottle of water that appeared to have a spray nozzle. I quickly grabbed it and walked to the orchestra pit. I walked carefully up to Jeff, raised the bottle, squeezed the trigger, but all that came out of it was a poof of moisture. It was a mister and not a spray bottle. Jeff never got wet. Oh, man.

Nate Vainio: 10:21

Totally defeated there.

Danny Mullins: 10:22

Oh man.

Nate Vainio: 10:24

Okay, carrying on Not to be defeated. I waited until the next performance. I got there early. I found Jeff's chair and I soaked the pad with water and waited from a discreet position to watch Jeff soak his pants. Need to be disappointed again. The electric bass player decided to sit there instead Failed again. I never did confess to the bass player. Oh man, well, that's got so many potentials.

Danny Mullins: 10:59

It reminds you of the importance of proper planning. Really, yeah, if you're going, to do it.

Nate Vainio: 11:04

You need to plan it better. Yeah, oh man. You know, when dad was telling me about this, I kept thinking man, is the guy going to get electrocuted sitting there with an electric? I mean yeah. It's grounded it's fine, it'd be my luck. Yeah, unless there's a short. I guess we have a short. Best hope that that stuff is wired proper.

Danny Mullins: 11:26

Yeah, really yeah.

Nate Vainio: 11:28

Oh man, this play at this church. I remember helping set the lights and this is so wrong on so many levels. But we had a scissor lift that went all the way up and at the top of the scissor lift it got as far as it could go. We had a step ladder on top of it to get to the light, not the peak of the ceiling to get to the light bar. Yeah, you know, and so you know. I don't know how officially, how tall that is, but that's, I mean, aside from stupid, you know it's just a you know quite a quite a ways up there.

Nate Vainio: 12:05

I hope my mom isn't going to listen to me oh, she's probably going to listen to this, and it's already passed.

Danny Mullins: 12:11

Yeah, it's already passed.

Nate Vainio: 12:12

We're under grace right.

Danny Mullins: 12:15

But uh, yeah.

Nate Vainio: 12:17

So with this, with this same, we had so much fun there. When I was in high school, I had I worked at the church as a janitor. It was my first job. My boss was he's actually from Arkansas. He moved up there, but his name was Beezer, I mean that's a classic high school name, right?

Danny Mullins: 12:41

Well, he was he was.

Nate Vainio: 12:43

he was quite the adult and I tell you what there's lots of stories to be told about Beezer. But, uh, one day, okay, so we had all those drama, uh, the plays and the dramas, and what have you going on throughout the day. On the end, on the end of the building, were these windows that would go the full length, uh, you know, all the way up to the peak and the edge of the rough. So it kind of had that triangular pattern. Well, you can't have complete darkness during the daytime hours. Uh, so we covered those with black viscouly.

Nate Vainio: 13:18

So after the drama, those had to come off and that was the job of, you know, the, uh, what was the term he used? Something engineer, housekeeping? No, it uh. Uh, I'll come up with it, but anyhow, it was our, our teams, uh, responsibility to take those down. So we climb up on the roof and we go up there and we pull these and they're probably, they're probably 15 to 18 inches wide pieces of this queen. We popped these off of there and the particular day we do this that I'm thinking of, it had snowed and the snow had blown sideways, and so one side of the roof had like eight inches of snow and the other side of the roof had like an inch at best. And we got up there and I don't know who, whose idea it was, but you got Beezer, and then his two kids and me and a guy named Travis, so you got these four kids. We're up there going.

Nate Vainio: 14:21

How old were you? I was probably, uh, sophomore, junior year, high school, so what? Uh, 16, 17. And uh, we're looking at that and we're going man, let's climb up. So we climb up the backside of the roof and we skip, we sit on those pieces of viscouly and slide down the roof. And when you slide down the roof then you hit the, the covering for the, the, the porch area and it banks a different way. And we had shoveled the sidewalks and I swear with you know six to eight inches of snow on the roof. We had that on the sidewalks in the opening area. We had, I want to say it was like five, six feet of snow piled up and we had that set up to where we came down off of that and we launched off of that patio or that porch area and into that, you know, five, six feet of, you know, freshly shoveled powder, you know.

Danny Mullins: 15:16

and uh, Was it still powder or did it get a little?

Nate Vainio: 15:18

No, it was. We had, we had, we had shoveled it earlier that day, the day that we did that, and, uh, I don't know if anybody else ever did that, but what was funny about it, too, was you would walk back through, so, so you'd slide down and instead of walking around the building, we'd walk straight back through the building, but you'd be walking under and somebody else would be sliding down, and as they'd slide down, they would skip across the roofing shingles and it you know. So you'd hear this noise of just somebody skipping that, even though they're still on the, even though they're still on the, uh, snow pack, or what have you there?

Danny Mullins: 15:53

but uh, those become very visceral memories that you just hear it.

Nate Vainio: 15:58

Yeah and uh, anyhow, good times in good old Missoula Montana. Yeah, yeah, those guys used to do some jokes, you know, with each other and the guy who sat in that chair it cracked me up because I think we need to protect to some degree the innocent involved in this. But he was the guy that we went to a Fourth of July party or Fourth of July firework show and somebody was smoking and there were just some off-color people and what have you, and his comment was if this doesn't tell you what kind of guy this guy was, but his comment was kind of a grizzled old fellow, you know in some respects. But his comment was if I had six months to live, I'd marry one of them girls and move to Butte Montana. Be the longest six months of my life. Yes, yes.

Nate Vainio: 17:08

Good memories from Montana. Man, Did you ever get to play in the snow?

Danny Mullins: 17:13

You know, in the rare occasions when it would snow in Odessa we would. It would be a kind of an all or nothing. So to us a big snow would be like six to eight inches, would be like that would debilitate the city, for, you know, a day, 24 hours, because by the end of that 24 hours it had melted, but for that 24 hours the city would have shut down. It would be more likely that we would have a cold rain that would turn into ice, because the desert does get cold, it just doesn't snow or rain. But so if we had, like a winter storm, and where there was ice we'd have it would freeze the whole city up and so, oddly, people had ice skates. I don't know why or how, but we had ice skates and they'd go skate down on the street just across the hill. It was the weirdest thing. My brother would, he would, he would skate across town, you know, and in come back and talk about all the exploits of whatever he did.

Nate Vainio: 18:17

you know you're like what on earth?

Danny Mullins: 18:20

This is the how does this happen? And then, literally 24 hours later, there's we're back to just wet ground soggy, soggy ground. Yeah, yeah, we just. We just never had. I don't remember ever having a white Christmas. Yeah, the only thing close, the closest I came to a white Christmas might have been that. You know that there might have been one year that there was a dusting for a half a second, then by lunch we were playing football. He'd be back up and we're good.

Nate Vainio: 18:48

I have some friends from high school that every Christmas okay, the last, probably the last five years I can't attest to whether or not they still meet up, but one of them, their parents, live on the golf course there and they would get together and play under the lights on the golf course, play football in the snow, and that was the last time I heard him talk about it. I think two guys ended up in the hospital was there and it's like this badge of honor. You know how many guys got hurt, you know, and if you got hurt at that football game, you know that was there.

Danny Mullins: 19:23

I just want to come in like the flag drum and in core with the bandages on your head.

Nate Vainio: 19:31

We get it the badge of honor. Yeah, there's got to be some kind of a award for that. Yeah.

Danny Mullins: 19:38

Yeah, oh man. The closest, I think before that after that was in college during Thanksgiving. During that holiday I went with a friend to Des Moines, iowa, and they had like a big blizzard. So there's like 35 inches of snow fell overnight and I'd seen lots of snow. I skied every summer, or every summer. I skied every winter in Colorado and New Mexico, so I was familiar with snow, but I'd never been present while it all fell at one time and, just you know, kind of locked everything up. I remember going on the guy's front yard and diving it like it was a swimming pool and trying to swim in the snow. I was acting like I'd never seen it before, but that was about that was the closest I got to big snow.

Nate Vainio: 20:21

Yeah, oh man In Montana there was. Now I'm sure there's a million names for things, but the phrase that came up for these guys that when I first moved to Montana was the term for it is hooky bobbin. You ever been hooky bobbin?

Danny Mullins: 20:43

I have not.

Nate Vainio: 20:44

Now, I don't know what the other names for hooky bobbin are, but and I don't know how that name came about Sounds like there might be a bit of a story behind it, but at this point in time I don't know what that is, but the same matter in which your brother would skate across town. The idea was to grab the back of a truck or the back of a bumper and yeah, you were hooky bobbin and you didn't even know it, that's right.

Nate Vainio: 21:10

You have no idea where the name came from, but when I did that, I had a friend named Brandon and he had this car oh, remember the Ford tempo. The Mercury version of it was a topaz, and he had one of those at two door, the sport model yeah, anyhow, the sport model with a luggage rack on the back, and the luggage rack provided quite the handle to go hooky bobbin. So we went out one time and I had these pair of shoes that had these real hard soles on, which was perfect. So we go cruising. Well, little did I realize that we were going to hit dry patches in that. However, I will say when you hit a dry patch, going fast enough, if your weight is properly distributed, you can make it.

Danny Mullins: 22:00

But if not.

Nate Vainio: 22:03

You may be hanging off the back end of that car.

Danny Mullins: 22:05

There might be issues.

Nate Vainio: 22:07

Yes, you might have your own badge of honor for that. Oh man, oh, I love Montana, I love the oh gosh, you know. Another story that came up came to mind the other day as I was thinking about this, you know. So. So at the core of this part of the episode you know just been batting around the drama, the play the show at Christmas, right right, so there's.

Nate Vainio: 22:42

I've seen the video one time and I will stand corrected if I'm wrong on this, but it was my understanding that at one of the one of the Christmas dramas at another church, or it might have been at a Christian school in in Missoula the classic was you know, and you know how you see these Christmas fails on, you know the YouTube episodes and what have you. And I think this is out there, but it's uh, these kids are singing this song and there's a line in there and says open up and give it all you got, or give him all you got, you know, or something like that. And you can, you know, just at that, you can, if you've been in the church, you can kind of read into where that's going. Well, the problem was that there was a little kid who wasn't feeling too well that night, oh no, and in perfect, in absolutely perfect timing, open up and give it all you got, and the kid hurls.

Danny Mullins: 23:50

Oh my God, just I saw that coming Lows chunks and yeah, just oh, man Well we I have a similar story in that we were, years ago, my, so my adopted family is the Beltings right, and so they're they're musicians and they, they do, they're singing evangelists, and so they they, you know prepare and set up a Christmas program every year, and, and years and years ago we had, we had put together this Christmas program with them that we were going to do a a oh, I think it was a Christmas breakfast or not breakfast dessert theater, so they were going to do this sort of a home style setting. So the stage was set like it was a living room and all the family would get together and everybody would sing a song and do a thing. And it just happened that that year that one of the one of the gals was pregnant, great, great with birth, great great, great with child that's what she was.

Danny Mullins: 24:53

She was ready to go, and and so it just happened, on one of the nights she went into labor. But she didn't want to just go to the hospital, she, because she, this wasn't her first child. So she, she, like I can, I can monitor myself and sing at the same time, and so you know it's a gospel concert. So usually in the Melton family singers we call it the, the, the George Melton point, and that is he would raise his hand while he was singing with point to the sky, point to God, you know, and that was a. He'd do that periodically in a song and and all of us in that that clan, when we were singing, would have that point at some point. Well, on this particular night we decided to use the George Melton point as the signal. That's the start of it.

Danny Mullins: 25:41

That's the start of a contraction, and then she would get in. That was it? So back at the sound board they were timing her contractions by her George Melton point and and they were getting closer and closer and by the end of the night it just timed out perfectly. By the end of the night they were getting to be about oh, two, three minutes apart. They were getting pretty tight, maybe five minutes, I don't remember exactly, but it was close enough that we should. We need to be wrapping this thing up and getting out. And so they, they sort of got to that place where she could see in her face there was some distress, she was singing, and and so finally, the end of the show was they did the same way every night, thinking maybe it would happen where she would. She would say, oh my gosh, it's time. And so they would all kind of get up and well, we'll see you all later. Folks, we're going to go and then do an encore and then do it on court, but on this night there was no encore.

Danny Mullins: 26:45

There was. So as yeah, she's really having a baby. We got to go, wow, and she managed to get off the stage for where I think her water broke or whatever, but she, she was there's no losing her at that point.

Nate Vainio: 26:59

No, no, no.

Danny Mullins: 27:00

But that was. That was quite an interesting evening of what was. Was that a point Was that I don't know what time it was.

Nate Vainio: 27:09

Are they serious? Are they joking? Yeah Well, you get to joking about stuff like that, oh man, and you get to you get to a place, though, where it's like, okay, wait a minute, is this serious? Is this?

Danny Mullins: 27:21

Yeah, yeah, and I think that was the night McKenna Melton was born. I think, wow, I think that was the night that I could be off.

Nate Vainio: 27:29

There's a lot of kids, I don't know there Melton's, as far as you can see, one out of 12, 15, something like that.

Danny Mullins: 27:37

But that was. That was an interesting Christmas, christmas night yeah.

Nate Vainio: 27:43

So I guess the moral of the story here is if you have a Christmas festivity at your church or gathering at school, or what have you lighten up, enjoy, enjoy it.

Danny Mullins: 27:59

And let it ride, man, let it ride, roll with the pranks, yeah.

Nate Vainio: 28:04

And don't soak the seat of anybody playing with electronics or electric. I can just see that guy getting his hair curled, you know, getting shocked or what have you.

Danny Mullins: 28:17

I feel like when I was in college we did Ozark you should. Christian college used to have the living Christmas tree. I feel like there was always somebody in the underneath the tree because you can't see behind it. I think I feel like there was always somebody messing with everybody, like a squirt bottle spraying back ends and all that.

Nate Vainio: 28:34

We had a church. We went to a church out in Washington for a while. That did that and looking back on it it looks like a giant Christmas or like a giant birthday cake.

Danny Mullins: 28:45

Yeah, yeah, it's like a four-tier cake. It's not decorated right, it will.

Nate Vainio: 28:49

It's like a four-tier cake.

Danny Mullins: 28:51

Well, the one at Ozark was definitely a pointy tree. It wasn't like a cake but it was, but it held like 60 people. Oh wow, huge. It went all the way to the top of the chapel in Ozark, which is like 80 feet or something like that.

Nate Vainio: 29:08

Wow 80 feet, you're going to need a scissor lift and a.

Danny Mullins: 29:13

Yeah, they had to reinforce the stage to hold that thing, wow.

Nate Vainio: 29:17

You're going to need a scissor lift and a step ladder to get to the top of it, right yeah.

Nate Vainio: 29:21

Yeah, alrighty, I'm going to press pause on the Story from Dad and the old Christmas shows and dramas and plays and what have you, and next week we'll be back with another good one for you. But before we part I want to thank you for listening in today as we relive some fun Christmas or winter memories. I hope it's provided you with a moment of levity in this season. As I said when we opened and I'm not telling you something that you don't already know, but this time of the year can be pretty stressful for many my hope and prayer for you this season is that, despite the history of the season, that you find joy and that you find that joy in Jesus and that you find the joy the shepherds found this season. Remember the simplicity of the command the angels gave them. Don't be afraid, I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. You can find that in Luke 2. And it's interesting to note that after our last episode on Nehemiah, you find the same type of phraseology from Nehemiah and the Levites. First, nehemiah 8.10 says Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Then, immediately following that, the Levites echo the same sentiment and the people's response is recorded in verse 12. So the people went away to eat and drink at festive meals and to share in gifts of food and to celebrate with great joy because they had heard God's word and understood it. This truly is a season of joy. Don't let anything steal that joy from you. Enjoy the celebration, forgive and look past the past and do your level best to make the family gatherings an absolute blast for all involved. And don't forget what we're celebrating. To finish, the angels message to the shepherds quote the Savior yes, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David.

Nate Vainio: 31:38

Next week we'll pick up with part two of Christmas Conversations. Be sure to tune in for a lighthearted laugh and a little shot of joy. And before I sign off, I want to take a moment to say thank you to a good friend of mine, daniel Moore. He has a podcast called Connecting the Gap and he's solely responsible for providing the studio for this recording. It's truly a gift and it's much appreciated. If you have a moment to check out his podcast, I'll have a link in the show notes. Until next week, god bless.