I have stupid hair. It’s not curly. And it’s not straight. If I grow it out, au naturale, it just waves in all of the wrong places. It’s fine hair, which is a nice way to say it lays flat to my stupid head. So if I wear it long, it’s just long, flat wavy hair. And it looks really dumb. If I cut it in a bob, instead of curling under in the back on both sides, it curls under beautifully on one side, and flips out on the other side. Because I have a double cowelick. (Some weird twist and / or turn at the roots; ONLY on one side, mind you)… To add insult to injury, I have zero talent in styling / blow drying / and shaping the amazing haircut that the stylist just gave me. The hair needs to style itself because it’s not getting much help from me. As soon as he / she begins to take the magic styling brush in one hand, and the blow dryer in the other (I am NOT ambidextrous) and dry and shape at the same time (what)?!? And says, “now just blow the hair forwards gently(I can’t SEE what you’re DOING)! While brushing the hair sideways and add just a twist …..” Walah! A cut and style that looks like it belongs on a supermodel (minus my chubby body) until I get home, shower and wash my hair afresh, aaaaand try to duplicate what the hairdresser did so effortlessly. It’s not even CLOSE to what they created. Not in the same stratosphere. So, I proceed to walk around like a doofus with my beautiful new haircut that looked great for all of 20 minutes in the salon. Stupid hair.
Flashback. The Child Rearing Years…
I had my daughter and two of my granddaughters (ages 7 and 9) over the other night to my place for a visit. Within a five minute period, several things happened that brought me back to when my own kids were little. Grape soda was spilled onto my beige carpet (the result of a spirited pillow fight going on in the living room of all places); Emmy (the 7 year old) stepped in cat puke) and Reagan (the 9 year old) had tossed a tiny figurine into the air and it landed behind a pipe that runs along the ceiling of my walk in closet in the bedroom. It went like this: “Grandma! Emmy knocked the pop over”! The kids disappeared as my daughter and I frantically tried to mop up the pop. While wringing out a wet towel in the bathroom, Emmy comes hopping into the bathroom on one foot. “Grandma, we need to wash my foot. I stepped in cat vomit”. Cat vomit? The cat vomited?! After cleaning the disgusting stuff off of Em’s foot and locating the pile of cat yuck on the carpet and scrubbing THAT mess up, Reagan comes a running. “Grandma, can you rescue Elsa”? She had tossed the tiny ‘Frozen’ figurine in the air to see if she could fly as well as turn everything she touches into ice sculptures (She can’t. Fly, that is) and Elsa was somehow lodged behind a pipe that runs along the ceiling. I became the heroine as I got on a stepladder and used a clothes hanger to dislodge her and fling her to the floor where Reagan happily scooped her up and told me I was awesome. Good times. Love to all. Lollybutt
The Spoiled Brat (or…The American Consumer)…
So, I’m in Little Cesar’s with one of my granddaughters, picking up a pizza (I rarely cook), right? Right. There are about twenty other people waiting for their orders. The kids behind the counter are trying their best to crank out the pizzas as quickly as humanly possible. Everyone is doing OK, when suddenly, off to my left, this big fat chick (and yes, I can call her that because I’M a big fat chick) starts making a spectacle of herself. She’s angry. She starts complaining. And it goes like this: “I’ve been waiting a half hour for an 8 minute pizza! I mean, really. This is ridiculous”. The nice young girl behind the counter tries to tell her that her order will be up in a few minutes. She’s having none of it. She now interrupts the nice employee. “My God, can’t you people get your act together”?! An awkward silence ensues. At this point, I turn in her direction and give her an incredulous look that says ‘You’re kidding, right? Maybe you didn’t notice that there are A BUNCH of people that came in at THE SAME TIME. And we all want our food. AT THE SAME TIME. It’s called a RUSH. It means you have to WAIT’. Furious and having now worked herself up into a righteous anger at being so mistreated, she demands her money back and stomps out. I then inform the pizza employee that I think they are doing a terrific job under the circumstances. She smiles. Other customers are just shaking their heads and grinning. Now, I don’t want this to come off as a judgement on the average American consumer. Because the ratio is 20 normal consumers to 1 poopy head. That’s pretty good, right? Right. We are paying hard earned money for a product or service and we should get what we pay for. Sometimes the product or the service is lousy and we have every right to speak up for ourselves. But when people are trying their very best to serve us and circumstances are just not ideal, I think we need to spank our inner brat (and we all have one), and try to act like civilized people. Show some mercy, for God’s sake. Not to mention that this lady (and I use the term loosely) is giving fat people everywhere a bad name. I mean, c’mon! You’re a FAT person. Getting PIZZA. Your body already advertises to the world that you overindulge in fattening food! Why, oh why, would ANYONE want to add to the already negative image by acting like a whiny, spoiled 2 year old that wants their nummies RIGHT NOW. Amazing. Okee dokee. I’m done. Love to all. Even the other fat chick. Lollybutt
Growin’ Up Catholic Part IIIt
There was another very important sacrament called Confession. This one was vital because no one should partake of communion without a clean slate. This was a rather complicated process, as I recall.
First off, we needed to grasp the idea of ‘Mortal’ and ‘Venial’ sins. Venial. What does that even mean? I had to look it up in the dictionary. The definition: a less serious sin, one that does not doom you to eternal punishment. So…..mortal sins? If you died with a mortal sin on your soul, you were consigned to hell.
Mortal sins were the big ones and left a big, black mark on your soul. Venial sins were minor, and left a smudge here or there.
The biggies were taking the Lord’s name in vain ( which, strangely, a lot of the Catholics I knew did rather liberally). Not going to Mass on Sunday and not partaking of the Sacraments.
Venial sins were lying, cheating, stealing, fighting, etc.
The mortal sins generally had to do with violating church doctrine, whereas venial sins were relegated to being a jerk. Interesting. And here’s where it gets tricky.
If you died with a MORTAL sin on your soul, you guessed it. You went straight to HELL. End of story, sucks to be you. IF, however, you died with a VENIAL sin on your soul, you got a ticket to: that’s right, people! Purgatory, where there was the ever present hope of being shot out of there like a bullet from a gun and landing in a heap somewhere past the pearly gates and into eternal bliss after suffering for a millennia or two.
Personally? I wasn’t too sure that God would be overly fond of those of us who entered heaven in that manner. Perhaps relegated to a small shack in a remote part of the landscape, well away from the genuine saints. Pretty twisted thinking, I know. But my six year old mind was trying to make sense out of some pretty complex doctrine that was being presented to me at a very young age. Plus I had an over active imagination and a tendency to overthink everything. You also have to take into consideration that I was just a weird little kid.
Ah, but there was hope. Not much, mind you, but hope nonetheless. There was always confession, right? You betcha. The concept that I could act like an absolute creep all week long and confess it all to the priest on Saturday and cleanse my soul of all those nasty blemishes was amazing.
Now I was ready to rock n’ roll on Sunday because confession was like scrubbing bubbles. See, ma? No more stains! That is, if I could stay holy between Saturday afternoon and Sunday which got harder to do the older I got.
I hear tell that there is now Friday night Confession with Mass following. This is GREAT! Now you can go to confession, get your soul bleached and go to Mass and the rest of the weekend is yours! You have the whole weekend to break almost all of the Ten Commandments and the rest of the week you can sin all the live long day as long as you hit confession, Mass and communion on Friday! Easy-peasy, right? Wrong.
Let me explain the finer points of Confession. We were taught, I KID YOU NOT, that we had to confess EVERY sin since our last Confession. Not ONLY every sin, but the number of times that sin was committed. If we omitted ANY wrongdoing, it was a ‘bad’ confession, and could not be entered on our heavenly account book, which was, I think, somewhere in God’s back pocket. (Did God even HAVE a back pocket)? As you can see, we were defeated before we even got out of the starting gate.
Go into the mind of a seven year old and sort THIS one out! Exactly.
So here I sit, in a darkened church on a Saturday afternoon, having passed my catechism lessons with flying colors, had my first confession and first communion, and trying to figure out how naughty I’d been since my last confession.
I’m wracking my brain because, hey, I wanted to make a ‘good’ confession. Pretty mind blowing, I know. I thought so too. Soooo….. I did what any reasonable Catholic second grader would do.
I needed to present myself to the priest (and God) as a fairly decent human being, right? Right. So I began concocting in my mind what was a reasonable list of sins. After all, image was everything. In my seven year old thinking processes, I didn’t rationalize that God knew everything anyway, and could look into my black little heart and see that I was making this entire confession up, but I broke under the pressure, alright?!
The safe sins, and the most reasonable to my child like thinking, went like this: “I disobeyed my parents….. nine times”. Now my brain would go into overdrive. ‘Hmmm… it’s been a week since my last confession. Would the priest (and God) think that I
was a very bad kid? That’s an average of once a day! Nah, better pare that one down. Five times. Yep. I disobeyed my parents five times. Two days out of seven I’d been a perfect angel. Ah-huh, if I say three times, he’ll KNOW I’m lying. NO kid is THAT good! Let’s see, I fought with my siblings seven times. This was an easy one. All brothers and sisters fight, so one spat a day seemed pretty reasonable. Oh, yeah. I was on a roll. OK, lying. Everybody lies, but once again I wrestled with how many TIMES I told a lie. If the number was too great, the priest might come through the confessional, pull me out of the booth by the scruff of my neck and call my parents and tell them that they were raising a pathological liar who needed professional help. I might even get excommunicated from the church before I turned eight! Never mind that my entire confession was made up.
So, you see, confession was delicate business and had to be handled with seven year old finesse.
After the three most common sins (to children) I was stumped. It seemed to me that without some variety, my confessions were getting predictable and boring. I needed to spice it up a bit, so I would throw in a theft (which was never committed) once in awhile. Of course, I would agonize over what item I was supposed to have stolen. It had to be very minor, like a piece of chalk. If I confessed to having stolen store bought items, once again the priest would yank me out of the confessional booth and the police would be summoned to the church to cart me away and I would never see my parents again and…. yeah. Seven year old reasoning. Go figure.
Now then, having confessed my sins, the priest (who I was convinced had some sort of magic power in his fingers) would mumble something in Latin and wave his fingers (magic fingers, remember), make the sign of the cross (that sealed the deal) and presto! I was absolved of my sins.
Hold it. Not quite yet. There was the not-so-little matter of doing ‘penance’ for my sins. Ah. You don’t get off the hook THAT easy. And why should you, you disobedient, lying, brawling, occasional (not actual) thief? Now I had to receive punishment for my heinous crimes. And what was the punishment? That’s right, people! It was PRAYER. Prayer was my punishment for all those naughty things I did. Our Fathers and Hail Marys were the payback for sins. Lots and lots and lots of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. I don’t know about anyone else, but personally? After forty or fifty of those, the words begin to lose their impact.
Another add-on thrown in for good measure was the stations of the cross. These were pictures of Jesus journey from the garden of Gethsemane to the crucifixion;
the pictures were placed strategically around the walls of the church. The penitent sinner would genuflect (kneel down on one knee) at each picture, make the sign of the cross and Hail Mary away with an Our Father thrown in for good measure. Once the entire ordeal was over, however, I would skip out of church without giving God (or sin) another thought until the following Saturday. I could be as naughty as I wanted, because, hey! There was always confession next weekend.
Once I came to a personal faith in Christ, imagine my delight to discover that prayer is merely talking to God. Y’know. Just like a real person. Now other Catholics may have come upon this revelation too, but I never said I was the brightest crayon in the box. (Sharpest pencil). Whatever.
I am thankful to the Catholic Church for giving me the scriptures and telling me about Jesus and what He did for me and the whole world. It was all the stuff that was added in that threw me for a loop.
But, for better or worse, here I was; a card carrying member of the Catholic Church. There was confirmation when I got older (something about taking the name of a dead saint and adding it to your own). I never quite got that, and the name isn’t legal, but I will forever be Denise Claire Theresa Glenn. That’s it for now. Next post: a look at Catechism. Love to all.
Road Rage….Christian Style
Ok, guys. There are very few incidents in traffic that get me angry. When I’m running late, (thanks a lot, husband; you went home to heaven and you were the organized half of the team) which is MY fault (sorry , sweetheart, got hit with a moment of pass-the-buck there [what. Yes, I converse with my husband who passed away, it’s a widow thing]), when someone turns into main traffic 50 yards in front of me and I’m going 55 on the INTERSTATE, when someone’s going 25 in a 40 mile an hour zone, I keep my cool. I’m gracious. I’m forgiving. Why? Because over the course of my driving career, I’ve probably done all of the above at one time or another, so, yeah. I take the high road. Pun intended.
HowEVER, the one incident where I usually have to repent for at least unkind thoughts; the thing that really boils my potatoes, is when two of us are opposite the main road. I am going straight, and they are turning to their left, crossing in front of me. We both have stop signs. Traffic clears, and I start across the road, only to ALMOST collide with the other car, who is turning across traffic. Nebraska driving Manuel clearly states that straight on traffic has the right of way. They goofed. That’s OK. We all goof. The point at which I SNAP, (emotionally, at least) is when they give me an angry glare and shake their head at me as though I AM THE IDIOT. At this point I have unholy thoughts of leaping out of my car (which would be entertaining for standers by) with the Nebraska Manuel in my hand, and the traffic rule highlighted in yellow, and shoving it in their face, screaming, “READ THE MANUEL”!!!
I don’t do that, of course. But I ENVISION it. In technicolor. With credits rolling. For sound, editing, etc. Instead, I drive away (after giving them the right-of-way which I DON’T want to do) and lecturing them. Out loud. In my car. It goes something like this: “READ THE MANUEL, MORON. STRAIGHT ON TRAFFIC HAS THE RIGHT-OF WAY”. And that’s as close to road rage as I get. Followed by repenting to God for my temporary lapse into anger, and name calling and all around pride, because they got mad at me and I was in the RIGHT, bless God!
REAL road rage, I believe, involves people screaming at one another, trying to run one another off the road, pulling and brandishing various weapons and possible gunfire. Sheesh.
So in comparison, I suppose I’m pretty mild. Still, an ugly attitude is just that. Ugly. So at least as far as I’m concerned, the general public is safe from temper tantrums coming from my general direction. That’s it. Love to all. Lollybutt
Shopping At Walgreens
There is a Walgreens on almost every corner of every business district in the city. At least in my part of the country.
Yes, we buy our prescriptions there, but the bulk of their profit comes from the vast array of overpriced everyday household items that we all stop in to buy when we’re in a hurry. When we are running LATE; for work, a meeting, a family get together, etc. we were just too stinkin’ tired (or lazy) to stop at the local discount store the night before and get that ONE item that we have to have for HALF the price.
Example: deodorant, which, if I DON’T purchase, the event that I’m already running late for, is going to be extremely unpleasant for everyone. That’s right folks. I’m slathering my underarms with one hand, and driving with the other. My hair is still slightly damp from my quicky shower and when I reached for the deodorant, an empty container was staring back at me. Mocking me, actually. I’ve used it to the point where I can see that there is some deodorant bar in there, but it’s kind of concave. And I really, really can’t squeeze one more application out of it without leaving permanent furrows in my underarms from the plastic edges of the container. I don’t have time to park a mile from the super duper mart and walk another mile INSIDE the super duper mart to reach my target. The solution? A quick stop at the local Walgreens, where I park a mere three feet from the door, race in, grab my deodorant, and check out at the beauty counter to avoid the ten people in line who are just as stupid as me. (Not to mention the little old lady in line with thirty-five items in her teeny tiny Walgreens shopping cart and the weekly Walgreens sales add clutched firmly in her hand and, oh yeah, the twenty coupons in her other hand. Who is also going to get into a fifteen minute argument with the sales clerk over an item that was CLEARLY marked down for discount. The manager will be called in to referee, while the other nine people in line shift from one foot to the other, roll their eyes, and sigh loudly. None of which will help. Ah, but not ME. I’m running over to the beauty counter to the clerk who averages one customer every two hours, and will eagerly check me out, just to relieve her boredom.
It was a brilliant marketing strategy, really. Planned by someone who knew just how crunched for time most Americans are. And that we want everything. RIGHT NOW. And we can get it inside of five minutes with a quick stop at Walgreens (you KNOW that there are at least five of them between you and your destination, even though your destination is only 10 miles away).
The other group of people who can really appreciate a Walgreens are binge eaters. We are impulsive, to say the least. We have dieted all day at work, and now we’re stressed, tired, and all we want to do is HURRY and get home and watch a little (or a LOT) of T V and put our feet up and break every diet rule on the planet that we have strictly adhered to for the last 8 hours.
As we drive home from work, we bravely pass the first Walgreens, visions of a GIANT bowl of tortilla chips on our lap, with a hefty helping of nacho cheese dip next to it, but, no. NO! We tell ourselves. We then scold ourselves for even THINKING of breaking our diet. Ah, but now we’ve begun to weigh our options. Salad? Chips and dip. Salad? Chips and dip… salad?! CHIPS AND DIP!!!! YEAH!!!! By the time we’re approaching the third Walgreens, it’s all over.
We screech into the parking lot of Walgreens on two wheels, and head straight for the junk food section of the store, which, unlike their eensy weensy grocery section (where you can buy ACTUAL food), is pretty impressive. It’s enough to make a grown health food fanatic run for the hills. Or weep. Whichever comes first.
Never mind the dirty looks from all the beautiful, skinny people between us (arms laden with enough junk food to make people think we’re throwing an impromptu party) and the clerk who will check us out and send us on our merry way. WE are on a mission.
So, yeah. The guy who decided to grace every third city block with a handy dandy Walgreens knew EXACTLY what he was doing. The jerk.
Calling Customer Service
Ring, Ring… (Prompt) “You have reached Blah-De-Blah Business. All of our operators are currently assisting other customers” (i.e. chatting with coworkers, filing their nails, or handing in their two week notice because they’ve realized that they are better than this and that they deserve a better job. ANY job other than customer service). “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line, and someone will be with you shortly”.
Cue annoying musack, interrupted with cheesy commercials for the company you are currently calling.
Waiting….waiting…recorded reminder pipes in EVERY 90 SECONDS with: “Your call IS important to us. Please stay on the line. Someone will be with you shortly”.
After the 10th round of poorly recorded musack ( the recording drags the notes out until the horrible rendition of “Yesterday” by the Beatles is almost unrecognizable) and the really annoying attempts to sell me the latest new and improved company sign-your-life-away plan, I’m starting to doubt the company’s sincerity.
After the 20th assurance that my call is important to them and someone (WHO)?! will be with me shortly, I’m starting to talk back to the recording. I’m telling the nonexistent person on the other end that they are lying. Big time. My call is NOT important to you. Because if it was, I would be talking to a real, living person.
I’m really getting agitated now, because I’m calling from my car (where all important business transactions in America are done) and like most U. S. citizens, I have the attention span of a gnat.
I can’t walk around with the phone crooked in my ear and do stuff. Important stuff. Like, oh let’s just say, eating crunchy food and smacking my lips just to annoy the nonperson on the other end.
Thirty minutes into this phone call, I hit pay dirt! However, there’s a bit of a problem. The person on the other end has no idea how to help me, no knowledge of the product or the company in general, but no worries. They will transfer me to the appropriate department to someone (liar) who can help me. “One moment, please”…. I drum my fingers on the dashboard and wait. Ring, ring…. “All of our operators are currently assisting other customers….” Yeeaah.
Moby Dick: The Sequel
I’m fat. Not pleasingly plump, not chubby, not 20 lbs over my goal weight. Fat. Which shocks me every time I accidentally look in the mirror. (You didn’t think I’d PURPOSELY look in the mirror, did you? I didn’t think so. Me either).
I was skinny all of my childhood and a lot of my adult years; the young years, anyway. Somewhere in my 40’s, the pounds started creeping up on me. Oh, they were sneaky, alright. They got in a huddle and formed a covert plan of action. Not an all-out assault, mind you. No, I would have seen that coming. They just slid in quietly; a pound here, a pound there, so I didn’t notice. Or panic. I had a well-worn panic button in my 20’s and 30’s. A five pound gain? Hit the panic button and diet down, baby. But somewhere in my 40’s, I misplaced the button. On purpose.
Hey, I was comfortable. A busy wife and mother. My hubby seemed to think I was just as cute with extra luggage in my caboose (maybe HE should have panicked)?!
Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a carefree skinny person in my younger years. I became obsessed with food in my late teens when the realization hit me that I could actually gain weight.
The battle was on; the gauntlet thrown down. Me and food were gonna duke it out. I had been a skinny kid, and bless God, I was gonna be a skinny adult!
By sheer willpower (and youthful stubbornness) I beat my inner piggy down time and again. I had no idea that age, and the general stress of life itself, would give the not-so-little piggy (who I thought was locked up tight in her little pigpen) an opportunity to come squealing to the forefront, looking for an opening. And she found one. Then another, and another, persistent little bugger that she was.
My skinny years were not years of eating healthy food in moderation. Oh, no. They were years of eating fattening, yummy, EVERYTHING for a week or two, followed by five Our Fathers, five Hail Marys (the Catholic equivalent to penance) and a couple of weeks of a starvation diet and a ridiculous push-yourself-to-the-limit exercise routine. I’m kidding. About the Our Fathers and Hail Marys. Not about the exercise routine.
My point, (there’s a point)? my POINT is, that as the years progressed, my all-you-can-eat-buffets got longer, and my diet and exercise routines got shorter. Aaaaaand shorter.
Then came the soul numbing onslaught of my husband’s illness and passing. My soul mate, my best friend and lover, the guy I dreamed big dreams with, laughed with (oh, there was LOTS of laughter) and loved with all my heart, slipped from my arms into eternity. I was devasted, to put it VERY mildly. I was 56 and he was 57.
Skinny girl took a hike and headed for the Fiji Islands (with promises to return, of course) but I haven’t seen the chick in ages. She could at least send me a postcard with a selfy. You know, one where she’s basking on a beach somewhere, sipping diet coke and eating celery sticks. Ugh.
Meanwhile, her fat alter ego is trying, at the age of 60, to find that place inside of her that actually gives a flying fig.
It’s not like if I do slim down, I’m going to look even remotely hot. I’m a 60 year old grandma. I’m not SUPPOSED to look hot. (Seriously, Cher? Almost 70 and still prancing around stage in nude colored outfits with sequins in all of the strategic places?! Actually, that’s kinda wrong from my Christian perspective at ANY age…) aaaanyway…back to topic.
Personally, I would be happy fitting comfortably into my fashionable but affordable clothes, instead of being stuffed into them like a sausage. (A yummy, greasy sausage with pancakes dripping in butter and syrup…)…. You see the problem.
Ooh! And not getting the LOOK. You know what I’m talking about, my fellow chubbas. That look of disgust or revulsion on a slender person’s face (young and old alike) before polite society demands that they cover it up with a ‘I know I’m a superior being in every way’ smile. Yeah. I could live without that.
Growin’ Up Catholic Part II
Two of the main sacraments of the church were communion, and of course, confession. Now communion, or, the Lord’s supper, was a mystery to me. Jesus told us to remember Him when we took the bread and the wine. To remember His body was broken for us and His blood was shed for us. As a born again believer today, I realize the magnitude of this and how precious and personal it is. As a Catholic, however, this was presented as rather global, and not really personal. Jesus had done this amazing thing for the sins of the whole world and I was just one of those billions of people. So I was never really able to connect with Him as an individual. There was another glitch. Jesus told us to eat the bread and drink the wine and remember Him. The ONLY one who partook of the wine was the priest. (I think that has changed over the years). This was 60’s Catholicism remember. Here he gets to drink this HUGE chalice of wine, and I received a dry, and I do mean DRY communion wafer that instantly stuck to the roof of my mouth and stayed there while I tried to pry it loose with my tongue. What was up with that? Why weren’t you given wine, Denise? I. Don’t. Know. There was also this doctrine that the bread and wine, magically, turned into the literal body and blood of Jesus. That’s why it is called the sacrifice of the Mass. That’s right people. We, the church, were sacrificing Jesus all over again! And that’s right folks. EATING His body and DRINKING His blood. And that, my friends, is how we were members of the body of Chirist. We were cannibals. With this in mind, we were told NOT to chew the communion wafer, because we would be chewing JESUS and that was downright disrespectful. It was, however, OK to pry Him off the roof of your mouth and suck on Him until He slowly (and respectfully), dissolved. Okee dokee….. The priest, however, was allowed to wash Him down with a hefty helping of wine. This implanted in my young brain that the priest (and, secondarily) the nuns were the upper ranks in the church and the rest of us mere mortals had little, if any, chance of escaping a long stint in purgatory (shudder). So at a very young age I gave up any chance of making it to heaven. We were supposed to follow the rules, do good deeds but there were no guarantees. The afterlife was looking pretty gloomy. I mean, God was big, scary, and rather impersonal. Oh, and really angry with us most of the time. He was perfect, and I wasn’t. Not the best basis for a relationship. I was a sinner, and He wasn’t. Not even a little bit. On top of that, He was invisible. Oh, and He didn’t speak to you in an audible voice. The only people that I knew of who heard God audibly were serial killers. You see the problem, right? Next post: Confession through the eyes of a seven year old. Love to all.
Growin’ Up Catholic
My first image of God, as I recall, was that of a very angry, scary old man with a club. (Vivid picture from my Catholic missle, or prayer book, if you like, burned into my brain to this day). One wrong move, and…wham! Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go straight to hell. Or, if you are fortunate enough to call a priest and get ‘last rites’ which involve candles, being anointed with oil, and some extremely frightening prayers, you might get lucky and slide on into purgatory. Once situated in the fiery realms of the holding place between heaven and hell, you may only have to burn in agony for one or two thousand years before enough Our Fathers and Hail Marys spring you, and, sentence served, your singed and scorched spirit is finally expelled from the torturous flames and through the pearly gates into eternal bliss! This is a very complicated religion, this. I would wonder sometimes, as a kid, what do you say when you finally get to heaven? As you pick yourself up (your eyebrows singed and your hair still smoking)… Are there clubs to join? Like, the Thousand Year Club? “Yep, I was in Purgatory for a thousand years”! “What?! A thousand years? I only did five hundred. I’m in the Five Hundred Club. We have a few more perks than you. Our mansions are in the suburbs over on Halleluiah Ave. We’ve got a clubhouse and a pool”. Who teaches these concepts to six year olds? The pictures in my Catholic prayer book of Purgatory didn’t look that much different than the pictures I saw of HELL. So, fear being the main motivating factor, we were urged to be good little Catholic kids, learn our catechism lessons, go to mass on Sundays, and of course partake of the sacraments of the church. This was my Catholic experience in the sixties. I’m sure it has changed in some aspects. And I know it varies from parish to parish. All depends on who’s got their hand on the wheel. Unfortunately, at my particular parish, we didn’t have very many (by my observation) happy nuns or priests. I do remember one nun (1st grade) who was joyful and kind and smiled a lot. The rest of the gang were stern, scary, strict and some of them were just downright mean. Not the fondest of memories. Next post: Communion and Confession. Oh, yeah. Love to all. Lollybutt.
lollybutt 