Grime, and Pun-ishment

With Christmas just a week away, this evening our parish held what I – a bit irreverently, I'll admit – refer to as a "confessathon". As I explained this past Spring:

[T]wice a year – near the end each of Lent and Advent – most of a dozen priests from more distant points join our own for a communal penance service for the parish.

Basically, it’s a non-Mass service of prayer, reflection, meditation, and Reconciliation (confession); at the culmination of this service, the priests take up (very private) stations around our very big church, and hear confessions until we’ve all been taken care of… and there are generally several hundred parishioners who make it to these services, so this can take a few hours. Fine by me.

So having taken care of that this evening, I'm back to tabula rasa status for now. I'd like to get into the habit of going once a month, in fact, rather than two or three times a year (I squeezed one in over the summer while visiting a shrine). Our previous pope, John Paul II of warmest memory, went once a week. If he found this necessary, especially with that kind of frequency… who am I to argue? For me the objective isn't to have a cleaner sheet of soul-paper to fill up again with dirty scribblings, but rather to recharge that selfsame soul. Yes, much of this needful spiritual recharge I get from weekly reception of the Eucharist – and despite Bart Simpson's assertion, it's not merely "crackers and booze". Still, if I'm going to house Jesus himself within me – body, blood, soul and divinity –, even if only for some ten or fifteen minutes, the least I can do is tidy up the place, you know? QED.

And while my soul is particularly light, allow me something from my light heart, too – more puns and other embarrassments from work and home!

Item: As I mentioned on Sunday, Selma got the tree up at work midweek last week. No, Renaldo didn't trim it after all, despite his impressive throwing-arm; Selma took the honors there as well. Somewhat later, while the boss was out, she helped herself to Renaldo's Cessna model and lodged it near the very top of the tree, in lieu of a star... and in keeping with the firm's airplane-focus (we're located one quick bad landing right off the tarmac of a regional airport). And the plane's position really did make it look like a bad landing... or bad tree-ing, I guess.

Yesterday morning, I found that the model had been replaced with a real, lit five-pointed star. While I was working with some outbound mailers, the departmental manager – Grant – was saying to Selma or LC (as in "Lacrosse", another coworker) that he felt better with a star there than with the more traditional angel. "Some people have trouble with angels," he said (also revealing his rubbery spiritual backbone), and a star would be much more neutral.

I stopped in mid-envelope and squinted at the thing a bit. No; couldn't be mistaken for a Mogen David (Star of David, I mean – not the wine); only had five points, not six. So I said, stroking my chin speculatively, "Isn't that star a Satanic symbol?"

Selma gasped, and Grant stood up abruptly and lifted his phone to his ear. "You can be replaced," he reminded me. I grinned back. I didn't tell him one of my mottoes: If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. Heh-heh.

Item: Today saw a number of departments having their "holiday luncheons" (the term's a joke, and very inaccurate – what, they do have a special lunch on Arbor Day? and on Flag Day?). While pulling a cart of packages to deliver around to some of the upstairs departments, I nearly stepped on a couple pieces of flatware that someone had dropped; I picked them up (commitment to safety, of course). Two employees came up behind me, and I raised the implements, and said, "You know, I've heard of a fork in the road... but a fork in the hallway?"

One of the employees chuckled, and observed, "Must have been quite a party!"

And I bit down hard, smiled, and kept my tongue still; I'm a temporary employee only, from one of the local staffing agencies. But I wanted so badly to say: "Forkin' A!"

Item: Older daughter Shellie called me this evening to berate me in advance, just in case I don't like the Christmas gift she'd ordered for me, and which had just shipped. Actually, I'm sure I'll like it, of course; she's always come up with unexpected and fantastic gifts for friends, family, and loved ones... yours truly delightedly included.

She also asserted that I obviously never loved her as a child. Why? Because all her friends got custom-engraved tree-ornaments every year, and she never received any. (Actually, she has three – but one was made by her kindergarten teacher almost twenty years ago; the other two come from girlfriends of mine over the years. Uh…) "So I guess you want an engraved ornament for Christmas this year?" I deduced.

"No!" she shot back. (I really do love her!) "I want twenty-five of them!" (She'll be 25 just after St. Patrick's Day.) Brat.

She mentioned to me that her male-interest fellow (kept on a short leash so she can easily administer frequent whippings) had invited her to come along hunting with him. She passed; "I'll eat deer meat," she admitted to him, "but someone else has to kill it and cut it up and prepare it first!" The girl knows her boundaries!

Immediately another pun bubbled up to the surface of my brain. I wanted so badly to pass it along to her, and told her so; she quashed the idea – she has no patience at all for these delightful twists of word, and more than once has called me up just to yell at me when she's channeled her Dear Old Dad yet again and found herself spouting a stinky pun to a friend.

So, no; out of respect for her boundaries I kept the pun to myself. But, thinking about the deer meat, I really wanted to suggest she tell this gentleman: "Sure; I've always wanted to see Venison the Spring!"