Me? Nothin much. Let’s see…Oh, Lillian asked me what a tit was last week. We were driving along and she said,
“Dad, what’s a tit?” Her two sisters snorted and then smothered their laughs in
their palms. She’s the youngest, and sometimes she says things that make us all
laugh. The week before there was a maxi pad in its
little flat package sitting on the kitchen table. Don’t ask. There are days when
we’re doing good if everyone is alive and home in time for bed. We don’t have
time to worry about what’s on the table.
So Lillian pipes up and says, “What’s that?
Astronaut food?”
Shelby clapped her hand over her mouth and ran
out of the room. I could hear her muffled guffaws through the wall even though I
think she was smothering her laugh in a pillow.
Lillian hates it when the big girls laugh at
something she says, so I tried to be very serious about the tit question.
“Well, okay...um, tit is another word for a woman’s
breast. It’s kind of a slang term.”
“Gross!” she said and turned her face and her
little glasses to the window.
What else...
Okay, yesterday at the grocery store some woman
was staring at my food and stuff while it was sitting on the little conveyor
belt at the register. Really giving it the once over, you know? I was a little
irritated because I tend to be self-conscious about what I buy at the grocery
store. It feels like my Rorschach test results are being displayed on the store
security monitors.
I don’t know what she was so interested in. It
was just regular stuff. A couple of cans of pinto beans, some olives stuffed
with bleu cheese, peppermint ice cream, a box of astronaut food with wings, a
baguette, some salami, and a "Joe vs. The Volcano" DVD that was on special for
five bucks.
Why is it that every time I go to the grocery
store I feel like I’m 14 years old? It seems like all the other grownups are
buying real food and important things like shampoo and scotch tape.
Maybe one more thing…
Oh yeah, Tim (whom I once
wrote about and called
Tom) gave me the royal screw job last week. He and his three kids joined our
church after all that stuff that happened to him. We love him; he’s great; his
kids are great; his daughters and my daughters are buddies; sleepovers; drop in
anytime for a Cowboys game; make fun of each other; all that.
This fall he’s been teaching a class on Mark's
gospel on Sunday mornings. He takes one chapter a week and hits the high points.
I fill in for him when he’s gone. So he says, “Hey, I’m not going to be there on
Sunday. Can you take my class?”
“Sure,” I say. “What chapter are you on?”
He gets this funny smile on his face and says,
“Thirteen.”
I’m not too good at remembering chapters and
verses. I don’t really think of the books of the bible as chapters and verses. I
think of them as stories or letters or whatever. I’ll say things like, “You
know, it’s in Acts right before all that stuff with Paul and Barnabus."
Tim has a fantastic memory, so I'm pretty sure
he knew exactly what was in chapter thirteen.
I
pulled out my New Testament to take a look at what we’d be talking about. Rather
grim is Mark 13, as it turns out. Here’s a quick outline:
- The Destruction of the Temple predicted.
- Hideous persecution is just around the
corner.
- The desolating sacrilege is on its way.
You might want to get ready for that.
- The sun will die; the moon will go out;
the stars will fall from the sky.
- Keep your eye on the fig tree in the
meantime. You know, to give you something to do while you’re waiting.
- And no, Jesus doesn’t know when any of
this is going to take place, so you really can’t make emergency plans.
Nice.
Thanks Tim or Tom or whatever your name is. I’m
convinced you planned your entire Fall calendar around avoiding Mark 13 this
week.
...
So that's what's going on with me. You?
rlp
