Because you know somebody would play this in their youth group.

Please tell me they played chubby bunny next?

Take that, weatherman!

This made me snort. Now I want to try it.

Photo by sucklead via Flickr (creative commons)

As someone who watches teen fads and reads teen research blogs all the time… here’s my little tongue-n-cheek guide to creating a sensational teen new story:

• Find something mundane that most kids do, hopefully related to sex. Let’s say “Hickies.“
• Apply a new label to it, so that parents think it is somehow more intense and scarier than the hicky they experienced as a kid. “The super hicky.”
• Apply a catchy version of the word, “the sicky- the so-called “super hicky.”
• Label “the sicky” as an increasing problem among teenagers.
• Start highlighting and looking for any and all news stories involving teenagers and hicky’s to highlight the dangers of sicky’s.
• Find a teenager who died in America with a hicky. Then hypothesize that it could have been tied to a sicky. Even if it isn’t true, it will give the story legs.
• Mention sicky’s in unrelated news items. “Two teens were injured in a car crash after the football game, we talked to the officers and it appears that sickys, the so-called super-hickey, were not involved in the accident.“
• Quote some so-called experts on this problem. “In my office, I’ve seen a sharp increase in patients reporting complications caused by super-hickeys.“
• Create a bogus chart showing rapid increase.
• Find a celebrity with a hicky and make them the culprit. Photoshop it in if needed. (Shout out to TMZ and The Soup)
• Any time there is a news story involving teens in a bad light, insert the term sicky. Attach it to a particular group of teens so they can become ostracized for alleged involvement. “The sicky is particularly popular among teens who have read the Twilight series.”
• Sit back and laugh while municipalities create laws, schools create rules, and youth pastors preach about the ills of the sicky. Wait for the talk shows to talk to kids whose lives have been ruined by the sicky.
• All this for a completely made up, normal activity of teenagers.
• And we fall for it every day.

If going to Alabama is the dirty south, does that make Minnesota the “clean north?”

Regardless, I am missing church this morning as I begin my trip north (and east) to Minneapolis for a few days of meetings with the YouthWorks team.

Here’s something fun about heading to the clean north. I kind of like the cold. Don’t get me wrong– I love winters in San Diego where people wear ski jackets when it hits 50 and pull their kids out of school because of a rain storm. But I’m not one of those people who hates a hard, cold winter. In fact, there is a freshness to the cold air that invigorates the soul. (That could also be the freezing of ones lungs resulting in a shot of endorphins and adrenaline, but those are little details!) I’m looking forward to a little snowstorm tonight and it getting progressively chilly in my time there this week.

I plan on laughing and listening a lot this week. As we continue to mix our organizations together into a new organization we are finding that we share so much in common. And we definitely share the “we don’t take ourselves too seriously” quality that is a hallmark of YS. Al0ng the same lines, so much of why we are passionate about what we do lies in our story. So I am jazzed to listen and get to know people beyond the giggles and hear their hearts.

I’ll leave you with two pictures from my iPhone– the humor is all-the-more funny now that everyone is getting to know one another.

November 6th - I wore this to work to lighten the mood. The previous day we had been told to dress appropriately when YouthWorks came to town and to make a good first impression. This is about as opposite of YS attire as I could get. Is that enough Bibles? I love the Bibles.

November 23rd - The YouthWorks recruiting team hung this sign on the bulletin board next to convention headquarters in Atlanta. We were all glad they were hiring for something!

I’m going to miss Conan. Can’t lie– Leno sucks. My favorites are still on though. Long live Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson.

This was a little too rough for the YS Blog. So, before you press that play button just realize this is rated PG and not G. Gracias.

How old were you when you got a Gameboy? I think I was in 8th grade. Tetris was my life for that Christmas break!

Something tells me this guy is looking for a new job. The news story reported that he was actually only slightly injured. And those boxes… all vodka.

There have been many days when something like would have come in handy. Can someone please put this on my Christmas list?