It’s impossible to list all the zany things I found myself doing in my thirty years as a church youth counselor. I would get caught up in hanging with the youth, and pretty soon, a couple of sixth grade girls were painting my fingernails.
Or I was trying a zipline or the highest water slide for the first time. Or wearing ice cream on my head while it melted down my face in the summer sun. Or wrestling for inner tubes in a mud pit. Or learning a dance move called “The Coffee Grinder,” which years later helped me win a dance contest for dads (a story for another day).
But hands down, the strangest thing I ever did in youth ministry was kissing a pig.
While we rode buses to our spring retreat at a working guest ranch, the retreat leader led us in a game where you decided whether you were going to ride a cow, pet a chicken, or kiss a pig.
That night, I dreamed that people kept bringing pigs to me to kiss. I mentioned this over breakfast to “Colton,” an eighth-grade boy.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Colton. “During the 10:00 break, you’re going to kiss a pig!”
I waffled before replying, “I’ll do it if you’ll do it.” And we made a pact. A few other boys said they would try it, too.
Of course, word got around. During morning break, a couple of dozen people lined the large pen containing pigs and goats to see what we would do.
I felt like I should get permission from someone before kissing a pig. I saw the old rancher that ran the place drive up in his pickup. I told him, “These crazy city kids want to kiss a pig. What do you say?”
I was hoping he would nix the idea. But the rancher mulled it over, then said pensively, “Well, I wouldn’t kiss the white one, because he’s ornery. But I think that big black and white sow would let you kiss her!”
The request didn’t faze him a bit. Laughing, I went off to lead a pig smooching expedition.
Now, I wasn’t going anywhere near that sow’s mouth or snout or anywhere she could see me coming. I figured I could kiss her on the back. It seemed like the cleanest part of a pig, though clearly, it wasn’t clean, either.
The animals were used to people climbing in the grassy pen, so the pigs weren’t concerned when we approached. I convinced a couple of the kids to distract the sow, then I bent over and kissed her in the backbone area.
Once these kids knew it was possible, it was pig-kissing time! I think Colton and four other boys puckered up to the pig.
At spring retreat the following year, the adventure expanded. Probably fifteen to twenty kids, evenly mixed between boys and girls, joined me in smooching that sow.
But the third year, the rancher put a halt to it, because things had changed. That ornery white pig had previously been a youngster, but now he was reaching puberty and had become very territorial. The rancher wasn’t worried about pig kissing itself; he just didn’t want anyone in the pen with that territorial male. Hence, the pig kissing era was over.
As you can imagine, people react strongly when I tell that story. Some think I should’ve gotten a disease; most just say “yuck.” But I survived it twice. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t the worst kiss I ever had.
