This is a freebie for you youth leaders preparing this week’s youth group talk.
Tonight, I walked into my roommate’s room to find him taking a freshly purchased military cot out of a shipping box. He frequently has friend’s spend the night and the hardwood floors are less than inviting.
So, we unfolded the cot and stretched the canvas bed surface over to one end and snapped it on. Then, on the other end, the mat wrapped around a bar which was supposed to be snapped onto to the two end legs, causing the mat to pull taut. Unfortunately, it seemed that the mat was just too small for the cot and no matter what he did he couldn’t get the end bar to snap into place.
Well, being the son of a hyper-inquisitive engineer, I couldn’t keep myself away from the action.
We tried to double team the mechanism. No luck. We tried leverage. No luck. We tried one person pushing the base of the cot, while the other pulled the end bar. No luck. Finally, we got the bar into position on the end of the cot, but not snapped in. There was so much tension in the mat that almost any movement at all would cause the end bar to snap against the base like a mouse trap. In fact, it did. Twice. Both times only barely sparing my room mate’s fingers.
Well, after several dangerous attempts to force this stubborn mechanism into place we gave up and settled for sort of a makeshift solution.
“What! What is this!?” It was just then that my roommate picked up the carrying case for the cot. On it was picture of the cot. Several pictures actually. Namely one giving detailed note to the velcro mat adjuster we’d failed to notice. We adjusted the velcro and the mat slipped on no problem.
So, I said this was going to be a freebie for you youth leaders and I wasn’t being totally honest. It’s either a really crappy youth group talk, or else your going to have to figure out the spiritual application on your own. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go nurse my injured pride.
