A Funny Thing Happened at Work the Other Day...

I've been working at Faith since 2001 and on August 17, 2012 one of the oddest things happened.

I was sitting in my office hardly working when a knock came at the door. I opened it and one of our volunteers said she needed a man. I asked her to give me a minute while I found one but she insisted that I would do. She told me there was a woman in the lobby with a bug stuck on her.

As I was rushing to aid this damsel in distress, several thoughts went through my mind as to what kind of bug would be stuck to this woman. I soon discovered that a cicada was firmly attached to her apparel and she was rather nervous by its presence.

I knew what I had to do first. The first thing any one of you would do if you were in trouble and needed help. I called the one person who can solve any problem. In fact, we call him the problem solver. That's right, you like him, you love him, you can't get enough of him, I called the one and only Donnie Payne.

The lady informed us that she was getting out of her car in the parking lot when the cicada attached itself to her. She tried to push it off with her iPhone but it wouldn't budge. Due to the location of the cicada on her, I knew it wouldn't be appropriate for us to just grab it. I also didn't want it flying around inside the building. Knowing my luck it would hide out in the auditorium and start buzzing during the Sunday morning sermon.

So while Donnie helped her back outside I grabbed a broom. The plan was to just brush the bug off her outside. Once we got outside Donnie snapped this picture of the intruder. She also snapped a picture from a different angle where I can only imagine the lens of her iPhone camera looking right into the cicada's menacing eyes.

I asked her if she was ready and she crossed her arms and closed her eyes. I gently swept the cicada with the broom and it immediately started buzzing and flew off and landed on a tree about 20 feet away where I'm sure it stopped to update its Facebook status so all the cicada lovers out there would know it was ok.

The lady was very relieved and thanked us for helping her out. I put the broom back in the janitor’s closet and Donnie and I returned to our hardly working, heroes, confident we had saved a lady from a cicada and a cicada from a lady.