Just Imagine Them All Naked . . .

=As an aside=

Friends of ours have given us their master bedroom this week while the father, mother and three boys have been rotating between three twin beds, a cot and a couch.

The other night, when the father worked a full day and then went directly to our house to work all evening, one of the boys exclaimed, "How come dad gets to work on the Linden's house and I don't?"

Well, what can you say to that?

=End aside=

On the Super-Home-Make-Over show, the family is sent away for a week to a resort, they come back in a limo and a bus blocks their view of the home. Crowds of hundreds - even thousands line the street chanting "Move that bus!"

Once the bus is moved, the reaction is predictable - hooting, hollering, screaming, tears and hugs all around. Cameras and boom mics and lighting guys whir around the scene catching every moment for ratings posterity.

It won't be like that this afternoon.

It is one thing to be going through a tough time - submit a video tape to a producer - and get chosen by a multi-billion dollar corporation to be this week's recipient of largess all delivered by tv personalities.

This is something altogether different.

Friends who work all day at their jobs and then go straight to the house with a change of clothes to work until they drop.

Friends giving up vacation time (and pay) to come lend a hand.

This generosity does not come through multi-million-dollar models in tools belts on touring buses - it comes from a regular joe who shows up with a hammer (or not), all the cash they can spare and says, "How can I help?".

Not to disparage the tv show - it does it's good as well. But this is different.

The wife and I are to meet up with a friend at 5pm down the road from the house who will then blindfold us and drive us home.

I fully expect to find a driveway full of filthy and exhausted friends (except for the ones who refuse to stop working because they just know they can finish this one more thing if everyone just stalls us in the driveway a little longer . . . .). No cheering crowds - just a bunch of loved ones waiting expectantly for the moment they have been working all week for . . .

When the bus pulls away on tv, the family has been given a gift. When they pull the blindfolds off today we will be face to face with unimaginable sacrifice. What do you say to that?

The wife has been in tears most of the morning just thinking about it.

"What are we going to do? What are we going to say? How are we going to do it?" seem to be the questions recycling in her mind.

I respond with what has become my standard answer since this past March, "I don't know".

I have never been shy about taking to the stage - speaking to crowds - entertaining even (in my own way). But this.

I just don't know what to say or how to get through it.

If I can just make it to the back deck, grab a beer and light the grill before I fall apart, I think I will be okay.

"Thank you" seems hollow but it is all I have so far . . .