Happy Birthday, Levi! [4]

Today is my friend Levi's birthday. Through church and social activities last year, I got to spend a lot of time with Levi, our friend Sophie, and Levi's girlfriend (now fiancée!) Caley. Levi was an important part of the best summer of my life, and it was a blessing to spend so much time with him before he moved. Here are quotes I have collected from him in the past year.

            Also, a quote from 2013 that I came across: “Ah, the things our generation has to look back on. Skinny jeans, detaching from the world via social networking, and selfies. Great. And this whole ‘swag’ thing. I hate swag.”

“Hear that? That’s Dorothy. ‘Yeah, I haven’t written fiction in one or two weeks…’ Most people write it NEVER!”

“Yes! The girl goes back and forth between two equally impossible but totally opposite guys, and the readers are all supposed to keep reading to find out who she picks in the end!”

“You could really tell it was a female author. I’m not saying that female authors are bad, but reading The Hunger Games, you could tell that it was a female author because all the male characters were totally unrealistic and the female characters were totally overthought.”

“I know it’s a big thing to ask, and I won’t mind if you say no. Asking to read someone’s writing is like asking, ‘Can I open your brain and look inside?’ I know that’s a big deal.”

“It’s a really neat experience, making friends with someone online, and something I think everyone should get to experience at least once in their life. You get to know someone in a different, sometimes even deeper way, because it’s just your words and ideas and theirs.”

“Wow! This place has historical significance. Hey! Grapes!”

About working at Barnes and Noble and having to deal with the romance section: “I shelved so many DISGUSTING novels.”

“You have to start quoting yourself, if you’re going to say things like that!”

“Oh. Well, at Barnes and Noble, we’d have people climb up on display tables. There might even be a sixty-year-old man on one, and you’d have to walk up and deal with it. You say, ‘Sir, this is a table with a display on it. What are you doing? Please get off it. Please come down.’”

“And then sometimes you’d be working the cash register and a woman would come up and say, ‘There are teenagers upstairs Doing Things They Shouldn’t Be Doing.’”

About the remaining cookies: “It’s been so long I feel super confident no one’s gonna miss these. Except me if I don’t eat them.”

“That’s the Christian thing… Don’t pray for them to die. Just pray for them to move or not join your church. You don’t want anything bad to happen to them, you just don’t want them around!”

“Fisticuffs! The best part of the story is that he used that word. That’s great!”

About a Webkinz pig. It’s a long story: “Ha, I’m glad my prayers had a direct and potent effect on the successful life of the admirable Miss Patty Poundcake.”

Looking at a story I wrote and illustrated as a child: “Did the tree grow up into a clubhouse? That’s really something.”

“We’re seeing the evolution of Dorothy!”

“Wow! That school is ninety percent door!”

“Wow, you can tell it was a girl’s story. If a guy found a flying vacuum cleaner, he would have used it to attack other people’s ‘forts,’ never mind how that would work.”

“She put a piece of cloud in her cooler? […] Oh! This was all under the influence of an older sibling, so there were surprising aspects of realism!”

“Ah, yes. I know how hard it is when your Bible is too big… Mine doesn’t fit in my purse either.”

“Wow! Dorothy doesn’t remember either! That makes me feel so much better. I was like, Wow, I don’t know. I’m so embarrassed. But then you said that you didn’t know either, and I was like, It’s valid!”

When I complained about people calling me 'Dory from Finding Nemo' in elementary school:“Well, at least you had the time before Nemo came out… I’ve always been ‘the pants guy!’”

“Denim is like protective armor for your legs!”

“She had clearly been crying and was clearly about to continue.”

“Wow, Dorothy named one of her journals after you. What an honor!”

After I talked about my former youth group: “It would be so very interesting to go around the room and read people’s minds from when you were younger. It would be like, ‘I wonder what’s for dinner’ from one person. And the next would be like, ‘Oh, look at him, he’s cute.’ And then! And then there would be younger Dorothy thinking, ‘Oh, what hypocrites! They’re all so full of themselves, and I detest them all!’”

“I can do it! I don’t have a lot of useless crap on my phone… I've got space!”

“That’s what I like about ants… To get away from them, all you have to do is walk a few steps, and then to them, it’s miles!”

“You could look in the mirror and say, ‘Today I’m the beauty standard for 50 B.C.  My hair is a mess and I have no teeth!’”

Making fun of his girlfriend, who confessed that she was distracted thinking about chips during prayer time: “Lord, I surrender to you these thoughts about chips! Take the chips captive and let me feel your holy presence! I give these thoughts to you!”

“It’s not like I dragged you to Bojangles to force feed you a biscuit!”

“That’s the good thing about making plans with Dorothy… None of it will be forgotten!”

“It’s funny how when extroverts room together, they’re like, ‘It’s gonna be nuts!’ But when introverts room together, it’s just quiet, except for keyboards clicking and pages turning, and everyone’s okay with it!”

Watching me think through my mental database and remember something: “I literally just watched you come out the front door of your mind palace! That was amazing!”

“Hyper-introvert. Those are two words that don’t usually go together.”

“That age is really formative. When people talk about really important spiritual events in their lives, they’ll often say, ‘when I was in college…’ And when people go way off in the deep end, it’s usually ‘when I was in college…’”

About Boone: “We almost bought a house there once, but we decided against it because the kitchen was ‘too small.’ I got in the car and wept. I just sat there in my seat and cried the three hours home. I was, like, thirteen.”

“It’s funny how ‘coincidences’ happen a lot more when you pray.”

“Cats make the most hellish noises. There have been times when I have heard one and literally thought, is that a demon? And then, when I’m actually thinking, I realize, oh, it’s the next best thing: a cat.”

      “There’s something I’m really concerned about. My kids are going to grow up thinking, Dad’s a pansy because Mom eats spicier food than he does.”

When Sophie said that Owen would be their younger sister’s wheels once she was at college: “Oh, then she isn't going anywhere! …Yes, put that mature statement in my yearly update.”

“Oh, Facebook moms who homeschool often post about needing to do their laundry, all using words like mountain, pile, heap or anything else that means ‘a lot of stuff.’”

“Somebody had a pet raccoon that was old and grumpy that they were trying to convince to get in their car.”

“I was like, she’s not here. She’s… gone. I’m going to go inside and cry. And I did. And then I went and bought a pint of ice cream.”

“I was looking for that. I was like, give me the most unnatural, chemically based thing you have. My dog just died.’”

 “You actually just used the word ‘dithering,’ and I’m very impressed!”

“He caught a live adult cicada at night. I have no idea how my dad does these things. And then he went into the RV and put it on my face. And it proceeded to sing. I was TERRIFIED!”

             Showing us around his girlfriend's parents' house, with special attention to framed photos: “Do you want to see the most amazing bowl cut ever?”

 “You like to stick things in my mouth and nose at random.”

“Pie is a tamper-proof seal!”

“The mulch never came… I just sat in a wheelbarrow for six hours!”

“You know who smells like a pineapple? Probably Spongebob, because he lives in one!”

About a girl on the school bus who would give him play-by-plays of Spongebob episodes: “I remember her because she had a UTI once and got to drink raspberry juice, and I was intensely jealous.”

“What I wanted to know was, if you think I’ve already seen all the episodes, why are you telling me about every detail of them?”

Playing Apples to Apples: “I am unbiased because I am staring at the popcorn ceiling.”

“Sorry, I didn’t go to the spork’s identity crisis!”

“Take your gooey, wacky, isolated, lethal self somewhere else, then!”

“The good thing about being forgetful is that I just watched everyone put their cards down and picked them up, and I have no idea whose is whose.”

When Sophie asked him what class he would teach if he could teach anything: “How to be man! …I’m going to assume in this fanciful scenario that monsters are real. I’d teach a monster hunting class.”

“You were just absentmindedly jabbing your finger in my ear!”

Threatening baldness: “I’ll go all Mr. Clean!”

            “My dad looks like a hitman.”

“Drinking hot chocolate in a hammock is the awkwardest thing ever.”

Asked about the difference between five or seven hours of sleep: “Me wrapped around a tree.”

“When you wake up and you’re driving, that is the WORST!”

When someone said they imagined him ‘sitting around the campfire on the streets of gold.’ “A street fire? That’s what you think I’ll be doing in heaven?”

“I am much closer to becoming the hermit I said I'd be than I would have anticipated, though I am sure my mother appreciates my not living in a cave according to the plan.”

            Previous quote posts: 2016, 2015, 2014