The Paper Crane in My Bible

A long time ago, in a bible pew far far away, I sat with my Gameboy and a CD player zapping Carlos Santana into my headphones.

It was an awkward phase for my town’s 20-member Assembly of God Church, when mostly all of the male members left because they couldn’t deal with my defiance.

Boy was I a hateful little bastard.

Despite my best efforts I couldn’t scare away one of the elders. He was a single man named Joe who owned a small horse farm outside of town. He had all the looks of George Clooney, the tenacity of Russell Crowe’s characters, and a voice like Morgan Freeman…but with all his blessings came a few back problems that had popped up. He could no longer sustain his one passion without help.

“Jared,” he asked one day after pulling off my headphones during service, “I want you to help me with my horses.”

I was about to tell him to piss off but something soft in his gray eyes made me more than willing.

For a full month in the summer I stopped by his place throughout the day to tend to the horses while he looked for professional, full-time help. I tossed hay, hacked weeds, shoveled piles of poop, cleaned coats and endured the freakishly wet summer in the name of his eyes.

I never once complained, and there I was in the peak of my wilder years.

The Sunday after my last day of work he rewarded me with a faded-green paper crane, no bigger than a sticky note, and a pat on the back.

I left my electronics at home from that day on.