Assholes Anonymous

It seems the Fundamentalist Police have a warrant out for my arrest. Anonymous has filed a complaint against me for rebellion, alcohol consumption, cursing, crude references to sexual activity, and trying to destroy 40 years’ worth of ministry. For a complete list of the charges, go to http://graceadams-sandpapers.blogspot.com/2010/02/combatting-assholiness.html

She’s right. I’m rebellious. I haven’t washed my hair in three days, and I left my bed unmade this morning.

As for the boozing and bad language, I plead guilty as charged. In fact, just so everyone knows how bad I am, in the past week I’ve had two beers and a glass of cabernet. I’ve said “ass” six times, “shit” twice, and “hump” four times.

Just so we’re clear, I only said the word “hump.” Since I’m not married, I didn’t actually hump. That could get me stoned.

But trying to destroy 40 years’ worth of ministry? I’m not guilty of that. First of all, I wouldn’t do that. I love the church, and I love my family. Secondly, it’s impossible. Thinking I could single-handedly take down that institution is giving myself way too much credit. I’d have to have an ego bigger than my ass to think I was that important. (Dang. I said “ass” again).

Basically, Anonymous wants me to shut the hell up because, in her words, she’s feeling very protective of my brother, seeing as how he must feel so betrayed over the breakup of MY marriage.

This woman drives a tricycle.

She has, however, graciously offered to drop the charges if I will see a counselor on the other side of town and only write things she considers helpful to humanity.

My counselor in Roswell will happily confirm my presence in her office more than fifty times in the past two years. Good thing I sold my soul for money, or I wouldn’t be able to afford the expensive therapy.

And here’s a helpful hint for humanity, something my therapist has been trying to hammer into my head: Don’t let people like Anonymous stop you from telling the truth. For the first thirty-five years of my life, I tried to live up to the impossible standard of being perfect so that no one would ever say the preacher did a bad job of raising his daughter. Quite frankly, perfectionism doesn’t work for me. I’m human. That’s my truth.

Unfortunately, Anonymous appointed herself the judge and jury in my case. She won’t appreciate my truthfulness. And since I’m so unrepentantly trying to hurt my brother, who she feels the need to protect, I’m screwed.

I hope there’s enough spandex on the planet to cover her tricycle-riding ass.

And I hope they serve beer in hell.

Scoopid Knows Best

My niece, Kate, turned five today. She’s the youngest of my sister’s four children and also the youngest of my parents’ nine grandchildren. Kate often makes me think of the nursery rhyme about the “Little girl with the little curl/right in the center of her forehead/When she was good, she was very, very good/but when she was bad, she was horrid.”

Not that Kate is ever bad, much less horrid. But she does have that little curl in the center of her forehead, and on top of that, her curls are red, which I think helps a little bit to explain why Kate never has and never will take crap off of anyone.

Now, those of you who know my family also know that, for over thirty years, my dad was the pastor of a very large church.

As a young child growing up in the Christian school, I can remember looking out the windows of many different classrooms and seeing my dad holding a large Styrofoam cup of coffee and trudging across the church parking lot, crossing the street, and disappearing into the woods that were part of Reynolds Park in Clayton County. He went to the woods every day of the week to escape the barrage of telephone calls and meetings inherent in his work so that he could, as he put it, “talk to God.”

I always thought those hours in the woods must have been more about God talking to my dad, because he always seemed to know exactly how to handle everything. I realize this is the opinion of a devoted daddy’s girl, but, simply put, my daddy was perfect. As I remember things, Dad always knew best.

Several years ago, I was asked to describe my dad by completing two sentences. The first sentence was, “On a good day, my dad was always . . .” The second sentence: “On a bad day, my dad was always . . .” I used the same words to complete both sentences. On a good day, my dad was always right. And on a bad day, he was (still) always right.

During the early days of the church, someone hung a cartoon on the door to his office. It depicted a man with his behind missing and looking as if it had literally been chewed off. The caption read, “Nothing serious, just a little chat with the boss.” Everyone who passed through the office laughed about it, and that cartoon hung on his door for years. No one -- and I mean no one -- ever had the nerve to cross the man.

My brother, sister, and I certainly never had the nerve to dispute him. We three children gave them nine grandchildren, and the first eight never had the nerve to talk back to him.

But then came Kate.

When Kate was three, the whole family managed to spend Spring Break in St. Augustine. And for the first time since my sister had four children in less than three years, the whole family went to a nice restaurant together. We had a lovely meal. The children behaved, the adults shared a couple of bottles of J. Lohr Cabernet, and we ate steamed oysters while watching the sunset over the Intercoastal Waterway.

After dinner, as we made our way to the parking lot, Kate’s brother, Joe, picked up a stick and started swinging it at two of his cousins. Dad saw what was happening and moved to grab the stick from Joe, ordering in his sternest “chat-with-the-boss” voice, “Joe, don’t you do it!” And as we have done our whole lives, my sister, brother, and I stopped to watch him take care of the matter.

But Kate was having none of it. She saw him heading for her brother and apparently did not like the look on his face. She reached down and grabbed two handfuls of sand and threw them at him. Then this fiery little curly-headed, red-haired powerhouse yelled at the top of her lungs, “You shut up, you scoopid!”

Dad stopped. And then my mom, all ninety-five pounds and five feet of her, threw herself in between the two of them and yelled at my dad, “You’re bullying a little kid. You go get in the car right now!

And he did.

That is not the man I grew up with. Or at least, it’s not how I perceived the man as I was growing up in his house.

This man was stopped by two furious females with a combined weight of 117 pounds. I was stunned. And so were my brother, his wife, my sister, her husband, and most of his grandchildren.

What happened? Is the Type-A personality permanently gone, washed away with retirement like the sandcastles we build on the beach? Or has he simply mellowed, maybe as a result of trading the coffee for cabernet?

Or did he finally, after all these years, have a little chat with someone who hadn't gotten the memo that he was supposed to be the boss?

Stories from Church

The lavalier microphone was invented in the late 1950s and first used nationally during television broadcasts of the 1960 Republican and Democratic conventions.

The device was named after a particular pendant worn by the Duchess de la Valierre, a mistress of Louis XIV, because it is most often clipped at the neckline.

The church purchased its first lavalier mic in the 1980s, thus freeing the pastoral staff to roam the stage while speaking. Dad loved it. The ability to forget about speaking directly into the microphone and the freedom from being confined to a two-foot square during a forty-five minute sermon seemed to add a new vigor to his sermons.

It also gave a certain music teacher the freedom to strut down the aisle dressed in a red, white, and blue sequined and starred vest singing Neil Diamond's “We’re Coming to America” while backed up by sixty elementary-school children.

But with great freedom comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, the lavalier was so tiny one might occasionally forget it was attached and that it was turned on.

During a four-year-old-kindergarten graduation program a few years ago, as the children were filing in and filling up the stage, the young emcee, wearing a dark suit and a lavalier mic, leaned over to the boy next to him and, not knowing he was “on,” whispered, “This is BULLSHIT!”

Needless to say, Dad was completely aware of the dangers of having the equivalent of three megaphones four inches from his face. For nearly twenty years, he successfully avoided doing what we once saw depicted in a church cartoon. A pastor leans over to his associate pastor following a lovely operatic version of “O Holy Night” and whispers, “The fat lady has sung. Can we just go home?”

But early one Sunday late in his career, as the choir and orchestra were rehearsing for the morning performances, the unthinkable happened. Over the speakers came a tinkling sound followed by the unmistakable “whoosh” of a flushing toilet. He emerged from the restroom to hear uproarious laughter coming from the auditorium, and he immediately realized he was “on.”

Thankfully, he had remembered to wash his hands.

Another Way to Use that English Degree: Cafeteria Worker

The insurance company refused to return my post-interview telephone calls. I finally concluded that they were put off when I said, “I never imagined using my degree in creative writing to come up with creative ways to deny insurance coverage in writing.”

The Christian schools both wanted me, but I would have to wear dresses every day, attend the churches affiliated with their schools, and moonlight as a server in the school cafeteria during lunch. In addition, they proposed paying me with free tuition for the children I didn’t yet have.

So I went to work for the very large church. And before I ever got to write the first word of the first script, the pastor’s wife decided she wanted the job. So they redirected me to the church cafeteria, where I began my career as a writer by making large posters of the weekly menus for the Oasis Seniors Club, which we in the cafeteria affectionately called the Old-asses Club. And when I finished with the menu posters, I got to serve mashed potatoes to people so old they remembered the last Great Irish Potato Famine.

Given the lack of actual writing my new job demanded, I continued using my writing skills to further my husband’s Bible college education.

But I refused to be paid in sex. I opted instead for dinner out at the nicest restaurant we could afford, Taco Bell. Hell, I’ll take a burrito over a blow job any day of the week!