Are You For Real?

I first uttered that phrase as a sort of knee-jerk reflex a few years ago at work. We had just spent a sizeable amount of charitable cash to get a feel-good rendition of “America the Beautiful” into movie theatres across the US in a post-911 response to the fact that America was still about brotherhood. In haste, we threw together a popular music version that was donated to us on the fly as well as some beautiful stock images that spoke of America the Beautiful. It was, in my opinion, a brilliant way to “react” to what had happened to our great country.

So many people helped us on that project…it happened virtually overnight and was on screens across the land of the free before we could even order our buttered popcorn. Our first phone call was from one of the theatre owners in California. Of course, we smiled, kicked our feet up on the desk, and expected to hear stories of how her patrons loved our spot and how it was the perfect answer to such a troubled time in our nation.

To our horror, she mentioned the scores of people who were boycotting her theatres because of our spot. She talked of hate mail, threats, you name it…her patrons were up in arms because of our so-called message of hope. My boss, Gary, had the look of “I’m sorry, your house burned down and you lost everything…oh, and you didn’t have insurance? Yeah, that’s too bad, sir.” He was pale and began pacing back and forth in his office. I knew we were toast. But what happened? For crying out loud, it was AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL, people!! All she said was “Everyone is just angry because how on earth could you leave God out at a time like this?” What? Left God out? Really?

Gary and I ran to the closest VCR (remember those?) to replay the spot that we had watched at least 10,000 times before we shipped it out. Guilty as charged. In trying to edit the spot down to 30 seconds, one of our editors cut the line “God shed His grace on Thee” and went straight to “…and crown Thy good with brotherhood” which was also a very timely message. We missed it. Indeed.

It was never our intent to “leave God out” at such a difficult time, so we re-cut the spot, spent way too much money to re-do the whole thing, and had to show up with our tail between our legs to our chairman to apologize.

We waited. No calls meant that we had done a good thing and we could, at last, celebrate our attempt to make America great.

When the phone rang and the “President of the Atheists Organization of America” was on the other end of the line, I was sort of in disbelief. He told me how great it was to go to the theatre and finally connect with an organization that left God out of things. It was the best thing he had seen in years and he was thrilled to support anything we did. Then he went back to the movies a couple days later…and there it was. God was back. He was calling to tell me we should have left it alone the first time. I wanted to start laughing because I was SURE this was my dad disguising his voice or someone playing a twisted prank on me after hearing the turmoil we had just endured. I didn’t know what to say. In my desperate search for the right thing, all that popped out of my mouth, unfiltered, was “Are You For Real?” I’ll never live that down. It echoed through the office at the perfect time when no one was speaking, but everyone was listening. Yes, I said it out loud…and now it’s secretly being made into bumper stickers in China. I’m sure of it.

So the long introduction to this latest post is that I had a similar moment a short while ago. Sweet little Lucy, always a dimpled smile, created such a powerful explosion that when I tried to undress her, it was the only phrase that echoed out of my mouth as I stood there in disbelief. Are You For Real?



Oh, and yes. She was.