Wednesday, December 16, 2009

One of Those Funny Things




A couple of days ago Caleb's youth group leader called and asked him if he wanted to be on a "brigada".

Basically that's a work crew that can get hired here in Czech for around minimum wage, without being "employed".

Lots of young people do it because it's basically one of the only ways they have to ma
ke money (few have jobs like American teenagers do. By the way...minimum wage is about $3 an hour, which is more than I made when I started working at McDonalds back in 1977 for $2.10 an hour!).

When I asked him what he'd be doing, he said, "Boža says we'll be running lights at the 'Disney on Ice' program at CEZ arena".

"WHAT??" I exclaimed! "I can't imagine that you'll be running lights! He must mean you'll be helping some guy run his lights".

You know...I'm figuring that they have a whole tech crew and just need some grunt workers to do any leftover work.

So...off he goes to CEZ arena last night. And what does he do???

RUN one of the huge spotlights from up in the rafters...trained on Peter Pan, Mickey and Minnie, the Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch, etc, skating around entertaining those who've paid good money to attend the show!!!

They had five untrained guys working lights for Disney on Ice!!!! Funny! After about 15 minutes of instruction on how to run the spotlight, they were "on", getting instructions by headset throughout the show from an American with a Mexican accent!

About halfway through the show that man said, "Hey Number Five (Caleb had spotlight number 5), where are you from?" Caleb replied, "Oh I've grown up in Czech and gone to school here but I'm an American". To which the man exclaimed, "Well man! You sure have good English!" LOL!

Caleb said it wasn't much of a compliment...it is, after all, his mother language!

He's back there tonight running light number five for two performances...one of which is being attended by our good friend Petr and his little girl, Lia!! They waved at Caleb from just below where he was with his big spotlight, ready to be part of making 'Disney on Ice' sparkle for Lia and thousands of other little kids who are there!

Wow...the things we get to do here are just funny sometimes!

5 comments:

  1. So cool that he got to do that! And I love the fact that Lia and Petr were there!! :D

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  2. THis just cracks me up! Sometimes things are exactly what they say they are - even if it sounds wild to us. Of course these guys are going to RUN the lights at Disney on Ice. Sometimes you get great chances in Czech - put that on his resume - tech guy for Disney on Ice - multiple performances - bilingual to boot! He should get the guy's name so he can document it on a job application some day! Glad he had such a fun brigada and not chipping away at frozen ground for some hand digging!

    Andrea

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  3. Brilliant!!! Maybe next year he could be the one in the spotlight...most likely Goofy!!! Ha,ha.

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  4. Yes, God seems to have a creative way of letting the Patty family have unique experiences! I think it must be that He knows they'll all turn into great sermon illustrations one day! LOL!!!! :o)

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