When I write about campus activism and the Genocide Awareness Project, I usually end up writing about powerful encounters we’ve had—babies saved from abortion, hearts and minds changed, moving encounter, and new insights. It’s for these reasons, after all, that we go on the road for weeks at a time to debate university students. There is, however, another side of on-the-road pro-life trips that all activists will recognize, from showing up at host homes as dark and silent as an abortionist’s conscience to suddenly realizing that you’re in a van with seven people, an empty gas tank, and the last sign you saw read “275 Miles to Civilization.” These are just a few of those memories, the ones where frustration gives way to hilarity and the imperfections make the road trip better.
1.The wonderful host homes.
As I’ve written before, host homes are hands down one of the best things about being a pro-life activist on the road—people taking complete strangers into their home, feeding them, putting them up in beds and on floors and couches, letting them invade their private space with our rowdiness—that is something that we are always very grateful for. But every exhausted activist can relate to the sinking feeling you get when you’ve just finished debating thirty-seven semi-literate moral relativists, and arrive late at night to a beaming old lady standing on the front step with an armload of photo albums in one hand and enough deep-fried cholesterol in the other to make your arteries blow up like a hand grenade. Have you eaten yet? I’ve been waiting for you all night! I want to hear every single detail of your trip! Yes, you say, with concrete eyelids fluttering like drunk butterflies, it was great. World-changing.
(You would have caught up with some sleep in the van, of course, had your colleagues not decided to ruin your almost-slumber by deciding to raucously belt out the soundtrack of Disney’s new animated hit Frozen, which they know at least half of the words to because they’ve already seen the movie one whole time. Nothing quite like being folded up like an accordion behind the driver’s seat while hearing scattered song-lines with the occasional crescendoing chorus as relieved activists fully commit to the lines that they recognize.)
2.The random schedule changes.
The one downside of bringing people from Canada to Florida to do activism for two weeks, of course, is that they all have to make it there. Inevitably, three quarters of the planes scheduled to bring our pro-lifers to us in Florida remain frozen to the rock-hard tundra, casting the schedule into disarray and creating lovely pickup times like The Middle Of The Night, when I’m feeling like a bit of a moral relativist myself. We, of course, had to dig our vehicles out of two feet of Nature’s Dandruff just to hit the road. Then universities cancel display bookings, ensuring that we have to drive back and forth across Florida fourteen times or so to reach the students we planned to reach. It’s cool though, you can sleep on whoever’s shoulder is next to you as long as you don’t shed. WAIT! WHO WANTS TO SING FROZEN SONGS?
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3.The random weather changes.
It’s Florida, right? You won’t need any warm clothes. Shorts, flip-flops and T-shirts are definitely the way to dress in the morning when you get up. Yup, except, of course, for ONE DAY in THE MIDDLE OF THE TRIP. Canada came to check up on us briefly, sending the wind howling around our display and activists with now hilariously useless sunscreen smears scurrying off to buy toques and gloves while some staff members piled into attractive and fashionable combinations such as Alex’s hoody, Devorah’s Uggs, and a winter coat big enough to fit most of our team if we tried (which we didn’t.) On the upside, of course, no one peeled from the day before because our skin was frozen to our face. It was easier to nap later, though, because everyone was too busy thawing to sing Frozen songs.
In all seriousness, though, going on the road with my colleagues for weeks at a time, meeting hundreds of new people, adding people to the pro-life ranks, and fighting abortion together is one of the highlights of this job and I could not be more thankful for it. After all, at the end of the day no one remembers the irritating philosophy major who insists that pre-born babies are aliens. We remember that exhaustion makes everything that much more hilarious.
Reprinted with permission from Unmasking Choice