Phases

Remember Pogs?? I know you do. Pogs were all the rage back in 1st grade. That kinda rhymes. But it doesn't. If you don't remember Pogs, you probably weren't popular. Pogs were these circle shaped pieces of cardboard with cool pictures on them, sometimes x-men, sometimes power rangers, sometimes even street sharks. And then there were these metal Pogs called Slammers, which you would use to slam the cardboard Pogs, hence the name Slammers. Sometimes, if you were lucky, bubble gum would come with your Pogs. Legit.


Remember when yo-yo's were in? It was like in... 4th grade or something. I remember the exact yo-yo I had--a Yomega Fireball. That thing was tight. I could rock the cradle, walk the dog, bring it around the world. Dang, I was a G. I remember calling up all the toystores in the yellowpages to see if they had a Yomega Fireball. That thing cost me $20. Not legit.


And I KNOW you remember these. The lightup shoes were freakin fresh back in 2nd grade. Man, lightups + velcro = big pimpin. That's the truth. I remember one time we were on vacation and I saw this old guy wearing lightups and I was like "No way!! When I'm a grownup I'm gonna wear lightup shoes." No lie, that's what I thought. They were just THAT cool. Until the lights ran out of batteries. Then the shoes were just stupid. LA Lights R.I.P.


Remember stuffing your shoes? I still don't understand why people did that. If you never stuffed your shoes before, basically what you would do is get a long sock (or two socks) and pull it down so there's a lot of excess slack at the toes. Then you would take that excess and fold it over on top of the foot. Then you simply insert into shoe and viola! you got yourself a fatty shoe. That's what the gangstas did. Oh, and rubber band the bottoms of the pant legs too. Legit.

There were a lot of random fads and phases that I went through--action figures, cargo pants, Razr scooters, neopets, Ecko, izone poloroid cameras, eating hot cheetos with creme cheese... yknow, the normal stuff. Thinking back on that stuff now, a lot of it seems really stupid. Like Pokemon cards... man I swear I spent so much money on that crap. Other fads made sense, like when I had my hair parted down the middle in a perfectly straight line. Sexy.Sometimes I wonder, is faith just a phase? One day will I come to my senses and just say, "Christianity was just this thing I dealt with in high school and college..."? I think about the things I'm involved in now, the people I hang out with, and what I think about the world... what if it all just kinda passes away someday? Will I keep this up for the rest of my life? ... I think about how my parents left the church. It could happen to anyone right?

Ok, so I think it's naive to say that faith is a "fad," but it bears some thought--what do you do when Christianity becomes uncool? What happens when you're the only one with baggy jeans when everyone's crossed over to skinny? What happens when you're rockin the Old Navy $12.99 zip up hoodie when everyone else has the American Apparel with the cool white zipper? Do you leave your faith when people are gonna hate on you and persecute you? And I mean LEGIT persecution (not the "Christianity is gay" stuff I heard in high school). I'm just saying, faith is easy now--I got hecka Christian friends, a nice little church, no one hates on my beliefs. But it's not always gonna be like that. America is a tolerant nation, but that could be a disadvantage. Real faith comes when everyone else turns on it except you. Pogs 4 lyfe. I'm gonna bring em back.