Playing Hooky

I read in the paper this morning that, due to March Madness (for the uninitiated, that's the NCAA College Basketball Tournament designed to crown a champion--something college football higher-ups should take note of), business in the United States will somehow lose $4 billion due to people playing hooky.

Now, as one who thinks Americans tend to work too hard and don't rest enough and don't celebrate enough, I'm okay with somebody knocking off work at lunchtime. There's even a radio station in town that is setting up at a restaurant to encourage folks to skip work today and tomorrow and come to get some reduced-price beer and some hot wings and some attractive young ladies wearing short shorts to bring those to you. The kicker is that there is free wireless internet service so "your boss will think you're working."

I also get the allure of office brackets...I won our fraternity's bracket pool one year which netted me a cool $120.

But what I'm thinking about today is how we like to play hooky and the things that we will play hooky for. Frankly, I'm not too inclined to skip work for the basketball tournament's 1st round. Or any round, really. Sure, during some down time at the office I'll check a few scores, but that's about as involved as I'll get until the 10PM SportsCenter broadcast. I like to see the excitement of last-second underdogs hitting the big shot and stuff, but that's about as far as it goes for me.

So, I was thinking about times I've played hooky (but frankly, so much of my former "Peter Pan" lifestyle looked like hooky, but technically, I was "at work").

I have a standing hooky date with Kid1, but that's about the only time: The home-opener for the Texas Rangers. Ever since my daughter was 8 we've been to the game. She skips school. I skip work. Hope springs eternal. Jets fly over and we get all USA'd. We eat sunflower seeds and spit the shells on the ground. We sing during the 7th inning stretch. We make a day of it.

Once I took a student (so I was encouraging hooky, but technically, I was "at work"), who was my ministry's worship leader, to meet the guys in D.C. Talk. It was a luncheon for youth ministers and the guys in the band, which was big in Christian teen circles at the time, were nice enough to say "thank you" to those of us that loaded up vans and brought kids to their shows. Anyway, the student (who is on my "movie quote" text message list to this day) got to sit across from real, live relatively famous people and ask them a question about how to better lead worship. It was pretty cool.

Another time I took a bunch of kids whose parents let them play hooky to an all-day concert festival in Dallas. There was crowd-surfing (which I later got in trouble for), Wes & Nathan got backstage (another youth ministry perk) and got their pictures made with the girls in SuperChick, and motorcycle jumpers and all sorts of good times and laughs. We ate at China Star, an all-you-can-eat buffet before we headed downtown.

But I've never been much for playing hooky from my appointed rounds. Not even in high school. In college, I skipped classes on a frequent level, but by then I'd learned when you could safely pull that off and when you couldn't.

And today I'm wondering what will get the patrons to play hooky...