2005 March 06 | Chickens in the Road Page 2

Archive for March 6th, 2005

Mar
6

Moving to North Carolina from Texas is like moving to a foreign country where they drive on the wrong side of the road, talk funny, and you can’t find a Wal-Mart. Only in North Carolina it’s that they make barbeque all wrong and you can’t find a Church of Christ. (The talking funny thing is the same.) In Texas, Church of Christs are like armadillo roadkill. They’re everywhere. In a 60-mile radius, we could find only two here. (Church of Christs, not dead armadillos. There are NO armadillos here, dead or alive. As far as I know.) The first, and closest one, was so small it was like going to church in a closet. Plus, they were crazy. They told us if we weren’t going to come on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, we couldn’t go there. We found another one, requiring something of a drive, that would tolerate our slacker Sunday morning-only attendance. It’s bigger (by North Carolina standards) and pretty normal (by Church of Christ standards).

But THEY ARE SO UPTIGHT. No Church of Christ is REALLY normal, you must realize. But since we don’t have mental illness, alcoholism, or physical abuse in our family, we have to have something or how else would we perform our parental duty of screwing up our children? So we have the Church of Christ. Last Sunday, a guy got baptized and some people clapped. (First off, getting baptized in a Church of Christ is like entering a dunking booth, just so you know. It’s quite a production.) Now, I didn’t clap. I was born and bred in the Church of Christ. My dad was a Church of Christ preacher. I AM TOO MESSED UP FOR THAT. But my children, still innocent, clapped, and so did some other apparently rebellious adults. Later, the minister admonished the congregation. NO CLAPPING. Why no clapping? Aren’t people supposed to be happy when someone gets baptized? I hate seeing the clapping trained out of my children.

I think the next time someone gets baptized, I’m going to tell them to get up and do the Macarena. I’ll bring the Fruity F*ckers! Fruity F*ckers for everyone!

I know this will go over well.