In Search of Scooby Doo (by Billy Coffey at What I Learned Today)

May 27, 2009
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It is my great honor to be able to relinquish the writing responsibility on my blog today to a man who is a wonderful writer and a great teacher of how to live the Christian life.

Yes, you guessed it, today we have a guest blogger, none other than the great BILLY COFFEY!

If this is your first visit to Rediscovering the Church then, to be honest, it’s not normally this good. To find a post of this quality, you’d need to visit Billy’s blog: What I Learned Today

Of course, I’d love to welcome you back here in the future as well. You’re always welcome here – and I’d love to get to know you. That’s what Rediscovering the Church is all about – rediscovering all the wonderful people that make up this big family that we call the Church.

Anyhoo… with no more ado, I give you:


In Search of Scooby Doo (by Billy Coffey)

scoobydooThe great thing about having a mother who is also a nurse? I don’t have to sit in a waiting room to see the doctor. I don’t have to check in with the cranky receptionist and sit beside the coughers and sneezers inflicted with who knows what.

Instead I get to use the secret knock on the door of the secret entrance, located in the back where the doctors park. I am then whisked into a evaluation room post haste, where Mom proceeds to treat me like a four-year-old with a boo-boo. It’s wonderful. I feel like a movie star.

Of course, Brad Pitt and George Clooney would be seen immediately by the doctor. I still have to wait. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last twenty minutes.

Waiting.

My malady is my own fault, a combination of the refusal to grow up and an acceptance that I can still hit a softball. I just can’t throw one anymore. So while the rest of my body feels great after a game, my right shoulder feels like it should be on an eighty-year-old grandmother. Thankfully, that’s nothing a good shot of cortisone won’t cure.

I pass the time by studying a poster of the human skeleton (creepy), rereading a particularly moving and yellowed essay by Paul Harvey that’s been pinned to the bulletin board for years ( titled “So God made a farmer”), and checking my own heartbeat with a stethoscope (ba-bum, ba-bum, it says).

Still waiting, my eyes settle on the plastic magazine rack by the door. Not having the stomach for Newseek or Time, my eyes settle on something a little more to my tastes.

It’s a seek-and-find book. Lots of confusing pictures with lots of confusing parts, and I have to find something specific. Remember Where’s Waldo? Same thing. Only this one isn’t a Waldo. This one’s Scooby-Doo.

Yes.

I’ve always been a Scooby-Doo guy. It was my favorite Saturday morning cartoon when I was six, and still is thirty years later. It’s a rare Saturday morning when I don’t sit with my kids, watch Scooby-Doo, and let the situation deteriorate into an animal cracker fight. Experts call this sort of thing “father/child bonding.” I call it fun.

I open the book to a random page and find Scooby and the gang on some tropical beach. Palm trees and tiki bars and sunbathers and surfers galore. A quick scan at the left side of the page says that Scooby is somewhere in the picture, and even goes so far as to show his specific posture: he’s sitting. And he’s waving his right paw at me while wearing that toothy Scooby smile.

It takes about ten seconds for me to realize I will never find him. There is chaos on the page, literally hundreds of different people engaged in dozens of different activities. I spot Velma in her thick glasses doing the samba with a cool surfer dude next to one of the tiki bars (and she looks like she’s had a bit too much to drink, if you ask me). A few minutes later I spot Freddy trying to reel in a fish (always the showoff) and Daphne powdering her face under a palm tree (high-maintenance, anyone?). And finally there is Shaggy, gorging himself on a huge sandwich and a bag of Scooby Snacks.

But there is no Scooby. I can’t find him anywhere.

A knock on the door breaks my concentration, and in walks the doctor. He asks me about the Yankees and wonders aloud when I’m going to wise up and quit playing softball. Standard questions that require standard answers. He mixes the syringe and tells me I may feel a pinch, though from experience I know “pinch” is really doctorspeak for “pain.” But it’s the good sort of pain, the kind that guarantees I’ll be able to put my cleats and glove on at least one more time.

I pull my shirt on and thank him, then grab the Scooby book so I can put it back where it belongs. A part of me wants to take it with me. I could borrow it, tell Mom that her grandson would like to read it, but that would be dishonest. The truth? I want to take it for myself. Finding that stupid dog has suddenly become important to me.

Because my life can sometimes resemble the picture I was looking at. Too full and too busy. Too much going on. It’s easy to lose sight of what’s important and what can wait in all the mess of my everyday.

Easy to dwell on everything but the people who are sitting and waving and smiling, waiting patiently for me to give them the one thing they need:

My time.


Thank you for being our guest-blogger today, Billy. I really appreciate you giving of your time to write for us.

If you want to see what else Billy does with his time, check out his blog: What I Learned Today

Faith
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