Holy Week Hilarity

These people understand.

I like to think that Jesus was looking down at us and laughing.

Holy Week in a Roman Catholic church is always nerve-racking for those involved in the services, including the music people.  In the best of circumstances it's easy to forget, from year to year, exactly how each service goes.  If you have a new pastor in charge, though, and that new pastor has ideas of his own, you can end up with a train wreck.

That's what happened to us on Holy Thursday evening.

As "Leader of Song" I was the soloist during the mass.  The choir was there, too, and, as usual during times like this, I was singing with them as well as handling my own music.

That's enough background.  Let's get to the story.

The whole mass went without a hitch, including the washing of the feet.  Several men from the congregation came up to the altar, sat on folding chairs, took off their shoes and socks and had water poured over their feet.  We could only hope they had all showered that day and that their socks were clean.  During this, I sang a solo.  I know that some people were able to listen to me in spite of the more interesting things happening up on the altar, because I actually got a compliment for my rendition.  The compliment was for how softly I sang it, which might not be such a compliment after all, but that's okay.

Anyway, it came time for the end of the mass, where the choir chants the Pange Lingua and everyone processes to the smaller church downstairs.  Our organist, who is very good at staying on top of things and always knows what we have to do, told us that we would sing ONE VERSE in the back of the church, then hightail it downstairs through the main entrance, take our places in one of the front pews down in the lower church, and sing the rest of it when everyone else came down.  Nobody had told him anything different.

This is just what we started to do.  The choir members, who are better at descending church stairs than I am, went first and got well ahead of me.

In the meantime, our pastor was walking toward us, hissing "We're going up the middle aisle!  We're going up the middle aisle!"  We either didn't hear him or didn't understand what he was getting at. I thought he was referring to the middle aisle downstairs.

I made it outside and down the front steps of the church, and was walking toward the lower church when our organist came out and told me that we had to get back upstairs because we had to process up the middle aisle of the MAIN CHURCH, not the downstairs church!

I shouted, "Come back!" and waved my hands around in an effort to get the choir to come back, but nobody heard me, especially the ones who had already gone inside.

I was still doing this when a guy from the church upstairs came down, sent me back up and said that he would get everyone else back in place.

At long last, we all got back up to where we were supposed to be and were led up the middle aisle, chanting the Latin verses, by the same gentleman who had fetched us.  He eventually led us through a SIDE DOOR to the downstairs church.  Because I have to take steps slowly, one at a time, the pastor accidentally bumped into me from behind.  My 1950s Catholic school upbringing makes me think of being bumped by a priest as a major catastrophe.  This time, though, I hardly gave it a thought.  I had more important things on my mind, such as singing the right verses and getting to my pew.

The last five minutes were fine.

And I got a story out of this!

Cheap Thrills for Seniors

Does this look like an obscene phone caller?

There are two things that are true about many or most senior citizens:

1.     We’re bored;

2.     We’re broke and/or we still expect to pay 1970 prices for everything.  We never buy anything that doesn’t come from a thrift shop or a flea market and, even then, we complain that it’s too expensive.  We are paying a ridiculously low rent, because we won’t move from the rent-controlled 5^th floor walk-up apartment we have been living in for 40 years.

This leaves us with a big problem:  how to have some fun without spending any money.  Here are some suggestions.

Make your hearing aid squeal into your ear.  The achievable level of noise depends on the freshness of the battery and your own manual skill.  You should be able to get up a good decibel level just by passing your hand over the device.  Some people will wonder why this is classified as fun.  If someone can explain that to me, I will be happy.

Ride your power chair on the sidewalk, and, whenever you hit a bump, yell “Oops!  There goes another one!”  Make note of the looks you get from people.

Make an anonymous obscene phone call to the pastor of your church.  When you see him/her on Sunday, act as if naughty words would never leave your lips and you have a shining halo around your head.

Go to the movies.  Oops!  You have to spend money for that.  Scratch that idea.  Wait until it comes on the cable TV that your grandson so kindly showed you how to steal from the people next door.

Goose people on the rear with your cane.  This is even more fun if you can get them to jump.  When they turn around and come after you with the intention of squashing you like a bug, put on the helpless old person act and get everyone around you to gang up on your assailant.

Remain silent while everyone around you talks, then suddenly come up with an intelligent, well thought out, educated commentary.  This will shock everyone, especially the ones who think that everyone over 60 is senile.

This is only a handful of the things that we seniors can do to take the boredom out of our lives.  You just need some imagination, a willingness to look ridiculous and maybe get arrested, and a lot of freakin’ nerve.

Bugs and People

Wolf spider.  The name says it all.

I am like most women (and some men, I’m sure).  Insects and mice give me the willies.  I can face an audience of 4,000 in a theater without a problem.  I travel in airplanes and ask for a window seat.  I fantasize about being a storm chaser.  I laugh at death.

Well, I don’t laugh at it, but death doesn’t scare me as much as it should, which is pretty strange, when you think about it.

But let me see a mouse or be accidentally touched by a centipede and I will be the first person out the door, screaming at a pitch only dogs can hear.

There must be an evolutionary reason for the way human females react to creepy crawlers, going back to the days of the caveman.  Our male ancestors probably came home from a hard day of hunting bison to something like this:

FEMALE:  Og!  You home!  Good!  Big spider in cave!  Go kill it!

MALE:  Spider little.  You big woman.  Why YOU no kill it?  Take rock, go bang!  Easy!

FEMALE:  It make big squish!  I got to look at it, clean it up.  You big man.  You kill bug or I make you sleep on floor tonight.

MALE (as he reluctantly goes into the cave to assassinate the critter):  Women!

Well, it will soon be time for me to go home.  I hope to have a nice, restful evening – unless there’s a water bug there, ready to pounce on me.