Failures

Show open: raccoon stakeout and pelt tanning

The show opens from the Pathway Studios in Johnston proper. A host recounts sitting up all night waiting for a fox threatening his chickens, only to have a raccoon walk up six feet away and refuse to leave, which he reluctantly had to shoot. The hosts then riff on pelts and tanning: fox tails preserved as staffs for the kids, a failed deer-hide tanning attempt that left white hair all over the host's truck, and the idea of making raccoon-leather wallets.

The table question: have you totally failed at something?

• Have you totally failed at something?

The host puts the episode's question on the table: have you ever totally failed at something, not just biffed it but had high expectations and completely fallen apart? Dan jokes he has done no wrong and only thinks of rainbows and sunshine. Nathaniel says he has an answer, and the round of failure stories begins.

The medium-voltage termination failure in Texas

A host tells of failing publicly at work during a long Texas shutdown: after finding two medium-voltage cables shorting inside a piece of equipment, he claimed he could fit new 15,000-volt terminations despite not having done it in fifteen years. Four hours and borrowed sandpaper later, he had nicked the insulation badly enough to nearly ruin the cable, and had to hand the job to the electrician beside him in front of a crew that had been awake for twenty-four hours. A coworker named Mike is mentioned in passing.

Dan's hot-dog chili for the in-laws

Dan tells of a failure from his early twenties: a coworker raved about a chili recipe with hot dogs in it, so he invited his in-laws over, ground up a half-package of hot dogs in a food processor, and served it, despite his wife Cheryl warning that her mother hated hot dogs. One bite in, the whole table was horrified, and Dan was left mortified.

Nathaniel's stand-up comedy bomb

Nathaniel tells of being invited back to do stand-up at his old college's revamped open mic night, cobbling together ten minutes of material on a night shift, and then bombing hard for a full ten minutes in front of a crowd that got none of it. His centerpiece was a joke about Christian rapper KJ-52 that required three minutes of explaining who KJ-52 was, riffing on Eminem's Kamikaze album. He has not been back since.

The botched wedding piano performance

A host recounts being asked to play piano at Pants' brother's wedding despite being more of a flashy bar-blues player than a wedding-march pianist. He practiced hard, but on the day his old music teacher, whom he had disrespected as a teenager, walked in, and he fell apart so completely he could not get through the wedding march under her gaze.

Ben and the disastrous wedding DJ gig

A host tells of a disastrous wedding DJ gig he and Ben played after meeting the couple at a coffee shop and letting twenty minutes of awkward misidentification sour everything. On the night their computer died, nothing worked, and when they played the exact song the couple had requested for the father-daughter dance, the bride and her father stopped dancing and yelled that it was not the song they discussed. They quit the DJ business after that wedding.

Nathaniel's pipe-wrench machine disaster

Nathaniel tells of 'Nathanielizing' a machine at work: after goofing with two misreading sensors and walking away, a machine operator purged the equipment and crashed it, and in repairing it Nathaniel left a pipe wrench on a gearbox, hit go, and slammed it into the frame. He spent the whole night trying to reset a popped clutch and in the morning had to tell his boss he had ruined the machine.

Eighty gallons of the wrong oil on a rooftop generator

A host tells of a 2 a.m. mistake servicing a rooftop generator on a tall downtown building: after hauling eighty gallons of oil up in five-gallon buckets, he realized he had filled it with 30-weight hydraulic oil instead of diesel oil. He had to drain it all back into buckets, sneak back to his workplace at three in the morning for 160 gallons of the right oil, flush the machine, and quietly charged the loss to the job.

The rejected English senior paper

A host tells of his greatest academic failure: as an English major he skipped every required step of his senior paper, wrote a twenty-page critique arguing that literary critics insert their opinions too much, and had to defend it before the entire English department, which flatly rejected the whole premise. Out of spite he refused the follow-up revision and instead dashed off an inappropriate short story in one night that the faculty loved and graded a B-plus, which he is still ashamed of.

Late to the Perry funeral

A host tells of being asked to officiate a respected attorney's funeral in Perry, assuming it was fifteen minutes away instead of forty-five, and arriving late to a grieving family for whom the deceased's punctuality was a point of pride. He made it worse by cracking a joke about it, and says the hardest part of a public failure is having to perform with confidence in front of people who plainly dislike you.

Preaching fails: Ben's sermon, Pax Romana, and the nervous stomach

The hosts trade preaching failures. One host read Ben's sermon when Ben was sick and stumbled through it, mispronouncing the Greek and getting called out for a confused 'Pax Romana.' Another host tells of getting a nervous stomach five minutes into a brand-new early-morning oldies service and disappearing for twenty minutes mid-sermon, and Mike had to bail him out of the wedding DJ gig when nerves kept him in the bathroom. They agree that failing loudly in front of a crowd is the worst kind.

Wrap-up: if you lay an egg, take a step back

A host wraps up the failure stories with the point that everyone fails and no one's whole life should be painted by one bad night, inviting listeners to share short failures on the complaint line at (515) 517-0085 or by email. They pass along a preaching professor's rule: if you lay an egg, take a step back, observe it, enjoy it, and move on, plus the band rule of acting like a flub was intentional rather than dragging the audience into it.

Singing fails: karaoke and a wedding song

A host recounts two singing embarrassments: singing Meat Loaf's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light' in a karaoke duet with his mother-in-law, which gets uncomfortably saucy at the end, and being asked to sing Bryan Adams' 'Everything I Do (I Do It for You)' at a wedding despite it being far too high for him. They agree weddings are the worst place for high-stakes amateur performance.

Dear LFTP: the boyfriend still run by his ex-wife

• Am I wrong for not wanting to move forward in this relationship?

A listener writes that after moving two hours to live with her boyfriend John, who was divorced after a twenty-year marriage, she discovered his ex-wife Jessica still supplies his food, pays his bills, and talks with him daily. The hosts advise her she is not wrong to pump the brakes: food and bill-paying are forms of intimacy, and a household run partly by an ex-wife is not under the couple's control. The Secular answer says John is overly dependent on Jessica and Jessica seems to like it that way.

Dear LFTP: the 31-year-old who plans for children, not a husband

• Where do I turn next after no one has wanted to marry me?

A 31-year-old former model writes that despite many relationships she has never been engaged and is depressed that no one has wanted to marry her, listing her preparations for motherhood: a college fund, a kid-ready car, and a kid-friendly dog. The hosts answer bluntly that the way she tells it, she is looking for a sperm donor, not a husband: everything centers on what she wants, and a man feels like an inconsequential question mark in her plan. Their counsel is a faithful following of Jesus, finding a good church, and letting a relationship play out naturally. The Secular answer picks up on the same vibe.

Dear LFTP: the friend who hijacks every trip

• What can I say or do to make her see I really wanted to go to Nashville?

A listener writes that a friend she invites on trips instantly rewrites them: a concert trip from New York State to Ohio became five days headed the opposite direction, and a planned two days in Nashville became a week without Nashville in ninety minutes. The hosts find it almost comically simple: the invitation is to Nashville, so say 'you're going on a different trip,' go to Nashville with someone else, and let her do whatever she wants. The Secular answer delivers the line directly, and one host jokes that anyone who hijacks plans should call the complaint line, introduce themselves to Ben by full name and address, and accept Driscoll-style accountability.

Outro and benediction

The show closes with an invitation to call or text the complaint line at (515) 517-0085 and the sign-off: be faithful in the means, God will handle the ends.