7 Clips of My New York Life

Here I am, a month into my New York adventure.  Here is how my life is different:

1)      I spend about 2.5 hours on the subway each day, and I devote a lot of that time to wondering how New York has not yet been wiped out by some disgusting disease. How are we not all dead yet? Or at the very least, I find myself wondering how on earth everyone in New York does not constantly have diarrhea. Every time I touch the handle on the subway I think to myself, I should probably stop biting my nails. But then I zone out and my fingers find their way to my mouth and I’m probably that much closer to catching typhoid fever. Either that or my immune system gradually gets a little more immortal. Today I felt a lady on the subway breathe on my face though, and all I could think to myself was how badly and immediately I want to take a shower. But that’s a problem because…

2)      I haven’t showered in a few days. For some reason we are not getting any hot water lately, making showers completely intolerable—I have a theory that it’s because we live in church-owned property and so it’s assumed that, in solidarity with lepers, we want crusty skin. Based on the fact that my roommates do not smell rank, I can only assume that they have braved the icy water and gotten clean. I, however, am from California. Being from California doesn’t mean I can’t handle cold, it just means that I’m better than it and do not need to condescend to mingle with it. It has, however, reached a critical point and something must be done. I’m considering putting the kettle on and making a bath.

3)      The other week I was standing outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, trying to kill time, when a bride got out of a car and walked towards the doors. Because it had snowed so hard the night before, she had to hoist her skirt practically over her head so as not to get it dirty. And…well…thanks to her choice of underwear I accidentally got pretty stellar view of her ass. This, of course, made me feel morally obligated to attend her wedding…so I did. I watched this woman and her (now clothed) butt marry a very decent-seeming man, and she seemed very happy during the entire service. Hopefully her butt also enjoyed the Mass.

4)      Speaking of Mass, I have a cassock and a nun who waves to me whenever she sees me. If that’s not BAMF, I don’t know what is.

5)      Speaking of waving, people in my work neighborhood sometimes wave at me. I suspect it’s because I’m quite literally the only white person walking around, but part of me is hopeful that I’m going to find out soon that I’m actually the Harry Potter of East New York.

6)      At work I have literally nothing to do. And everyone is aware of this. I beg people to give me work, to let me help them with whatever task I can help with, but there simply isn’t anything for me to do. I’ve resorted to the tactic of drinking obscene amounts of water and then peeing every five minutes, just because needing to go to the bathroom lends a sense of importance (or at least urgency) to my day. It gives me an excuse to stride down the hallways purposefully. Otherwise, desperate for no one to resent me, whenever anyone walks by my desk I put my (empty) email inbox up on my screen and frown at it as if in deep thought. “Hmm,” says the look on my face, “I wonder how I can make these numbers crunch.” (Is that even a thing?) I narrow my eyes and scratch my shower-desperate head, as if to say, “Gosh, if I don’t resolve this problem we’re going to have all sorts of other problems.  Man, my work keeps me busy. There are just so many problems that keep me busy with diverse tasks and jobs, not to mention projects.” And then as soon as they walk past my office it’s back to daydreaming, thinking about how I wish Quakers still dressed like the Quaker Oats man, or reading papal encyclicals.

7)      I’m discovering that New Yorkers just do not give one solitary shit about farting. I cannot even tell you how many times I’ve been on a crowded subway and heard a loud bombshell, followed by the look in the bombers’s eyes that conveys a shrug and a “Yeah. What of it?” It's just a bit surprising, to say the least. Even for someone who hates New York, I always assumed that what I'd remember after my hopefully brief stay here would be the bright lights of Times Square or something glamorous. I'm not ashamed to admit that the first time I came to New York as a little girl, I remember singing this song (in Frank Sinatra accents) with my brother in the backseat of the car as we drove over some bridge, with the skyline coming into view:

 Part of me assumed that that'd be my takeaway from my life here. But I know me. I know that what I'll tell my grandkids about my time in the big city is the shameless church farter, or the SBD-dealer in a fine suit on the 3 train, or the people on the 1 train whose asses were attempting a three-part harmony.

Actually, what am I talking about, “New Yorkers do not give one solitary shit about farting”? New Yorkers don’t seem to give a solitary shit about anything.

Malian Butt Kettles

As mentioned in a much earlier blog post, I ended up at a colorful hostel in Paris with several roommates. I’ve already written about one, Mrs. Iceland, but there are many others—Oliver whose sign of respect is eating things, two Brazilians—Talita and her lover, whose named sounded suspiciously like Guano--who seemed to be attempting to set a record for the loudest public sex in the filthiest place (the hostel), and a naked Italian man who would periodically show up in the room despite not being a guest of the hostel or a guest of any of the hostel guests. On my last morning I woke up to find that this morning the part of all of my roommates would be played by four absolutely enormous Asian men.

But today I want to talk to you about Mackenzie*.

Mackenzie was from Napa Valley—a California girl like me, though she was from up north, in wine country. I don’t remember too much what she looked like. She had freckles, but the weird kind that you don’t really notice until you get up close and then you’re like, “WHOOAAAAAAA! YOUR ENTIRE FACE IS FRECKLES!” I know she was sort of petite and had a sort of farm girl quality about her, like you wouldn’t be surprised if she interrupted your conversation with the phrase, “Oh, excuse me for a moment, I just have to go plow the fields, be right back” except she disappointingly never said that.

Like many Americans at small liberal arts colleges, Mackenzie had spent her junior year abroad. After living in Mali for several months, she was taking a vacation in Paris before heading back home. She was thrilled to talk about Mali, and we were thrilled to listen.  Heck, I don’t know anything about Mali. Tell me about the culture! The music! The people! The politics! The food! Come to think of it, I have no idea where the hell Mali is, so maybe also show me where it is on a map…

If Mrs Iceland talked way too much about all aspects of Iceland, Mackenzie spoke exclusively of ONE aspect of Mali:

Butt hygiene.

Yes, in all the fascinating things I assume you could say about Mali (I don’t know for sure, since I still only know about how they clean their asses there), this girl was passionate about the way that the people of Mali apparently use what she dubbed “butt kettles” to clean up after themselves after using the toilet.

To be fair, it’s an interesting thought, and I’m glad she mentioned it. However, the existence of this particular form of butt-washing warrants a couple of David Attenborough-style observations, maybe a few jokes. It does not, as Mackenzie decided it did, warrant an evening-long enthusiastic campaign for us all to adopt the Mali butt kettle system. Noticed by any NORMAL person, this peculiar cultural detail would not have sparked the complete denunciation of toilet paper, as it did in Mackenzie, who raged against toilet paper with the sort of indignation that you might expect from victims of genocide.

I honestly thought she was going to start crying when she spoke of the liberation she felt the first time she switched from Charmin to Butt Kettle. I suppose everyone has something they’re passionate about. For some people it’s gay rights, or animal rights, or abortion, or gun control or whatever. I guess for Mackenzie it’s the abolition of toilet paper.

I often thought about her during my first month of being back in the US, when I was going through my own reverse culture shock. Mine was mostly about realizing that I can no longer make a joke about ____ or ____ anymore. That every story of anything that happened in either where I lived or at school required about 10 minutes of explaining how things work in England. Discovering that if the words “Church of England” come out of my mouth one more time then someone needs to just euthanize me.

But at least I didn't acquire a love of butt kettles while in England. I thought of Mackenzie. Oh man though, Mackenzie, HAVE FUN with that reverse culture shock.

This one time I almost died in St Pancras

Okay, so the title might be a bit of an exaggeration. Let's back up a bit.

I took refuge in St Pancras.

Okay, again, a bit of an exaggeration. Basically I'd been walking around London for far too long, saw a church, and thought, "Ah, there's a place for a good sit." Because, and I think this is something people of all creeds can agree on, churches are great places for sitting. And, as an added bonus, sometimes they even have toilets.

Maybe that's why American tourists seem to always flock to churches in Europe. No, it's not our religiosity or our interest in European ecclesiastical history or even a penchant for fine architecture--it's just that we are a people used to having far more public toilets around. People frequently ask me, because apparently I'm the only American they've ever seen, what my biggest source of culture shock is. Can I finally admit it? Quite honestly I'm shocked by the lack of toilets. I'm not talking about in touristy areas, I'm talking about "real people" areas.

Anyway, you shouldn't have let me get onto the topic of toilets, because actually there's something else I really wanted to talk about.

So... I wandered into St Pancras. It had the feel of a hotel lobby, complete with some unseen person whose piano tinkerings gave me flashbacks to a childhood spent sitting in hotel lobbies around the world, waiting for that travel agent who went on family vacations with us (I seem to remember my brothers addressing her as "Mom") to come back from her tour of the luxury suites.

And then I saw the pews.

Box pews!!!!

The last time I saw pews like this I was a small child on a family vacation to New England. I remember standing in a church somewhere in Boston and seeing these boxes that families would sit in, and being in absolute awe. The height of the box, the size of the door, and the fact that a family would be shut into a box, all reminded me of a roller coaster car. At age nine, just as I was doing now at age 24, I imagined WASPs dressed in their Sunday best, throwing their hands in the air and screaming with fear and excitement as their pew went around a loop and into a corkscrew.

Well, 24 year old me couldn't help herself from living nine year old me's fantasy. I looked both ways (only a man on a piano and a woman praying in the corner) before dashing across the aisle to a particular pew that seemed to be waiting for me. Like a giddy idiot I slid into the pew and closed the door with a satisfying CLICK.

For a while I didn't even realize that I had violated some rule that probably got deleted from an early draft of the Chronicles of Narnia, something about not shutting pew doors shut unless you are absolutely certain how to open them back up. Instead I sat there imagining that I was on the roller coaster at the pier back home. Does that one even have doors? Who the hell cares. All I know is that I sat in this pew, trying to lean from side to side pretending to be on a roller coaster as quietly as possible so as not to disturb people in the church doing actual church things. I figured throwing my hands up and screaming, "WOOOOO!" would probably be frowned upon, so I made do with swaying slowly enough that the creaks of the wooden pew were hardly audible.

After a while I decided it was time for me to grow up and head out to the British Library, so I gathered my things together, pushed the pew door open, exited, and walked along the road.

Oh wait, no. That's not what happened.

Instead, I pushed on the pew door and absolutely nothing happened. I paused for about five seconds, hoping that in that time the pew door would sort itself out, and then I pushed again. Nothing. Again. Nope, still locked. Again? Nope. Nope. Nope. A horrifying realization then dawned on me, namely that I had no idea how to open the stall I had locked myself into. Basically my roller coaster fantasy had come to full fruition, and now I would have to wait for the ride operator to come release me. Except churches don't have ride operators.

At this point I let out a sigh and thought to myself, "Well, this is where I die." Because, let's face it, starving to death locked in a church pew is the preferable option to asking a priest/pastoral assistant/verger/parishioner/passing bishop to release me, an idiot who was pretending to be on a roller coaster in a church. I mean, there are worse ways to go. Just trying to look on the bright side here.

I briefly considered vaulting over the wall and hoping the man on the piano and the praying woman didn't see. Would I get arrested? Then again, is vaulting over a pew wall even an arrestable offence? Can the Church arrest people? Oh man, this is what happens when you let Jews into churches...we accidentally lock ourselves in.

Then I thought about hulking out of the pew. I've [accidentally] hulked out of a t-shirt before. Once. Could I do it with wood, too? Well, it was certainly worth a shot. I tried to think of things that pissed me off, and thoughts of the RE GCSE exam flooded my mind. I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT TEACHING TO THE EXAM...........................BUT WHY AM I NOT TURNING GREEN AND ENORMOUS???

Aw crap. Looks like I don't have the ability to hulk out of things at will. A disappointing discovery...

For a brief moment I looked down at my left hand, resting next to me on the bench. Just beyond the chewed nails and the faded notes to myself I caught sight of a little button. Now I was ready to cross over to the other side. I pushed the button and I was liberated!

I left St Pancras a changed woman. A woman who now realizes that even the hideous stack chairs at St Paul's Cathedral that look like something from a high school multi-purpose room, even these have hidden beauty and benefits. Specifically that they will not try to hold you hostage.

I've reached some new lows.

Let’s get one thing straight, since so many people pity me when they hear I’m a lone tourist. I love it. Until I find a traveling companion who is just as vile as me, I prefer walking around foreign cities by myself because it’s the only time I can walk around publicly belching like a cheap prostitute without consequences. And people who burden me with oppressive hospitality rob me of this joy.

You know what I mean by oppressive hospitality—the most I want from you for breakfast is a finger pointing me to the nearest McDonald’s still serving breakfast. I appreciate your effort, but your three-course breakfast that you watch me exhaustedly cram into my mouth like a chore under your eager, almost evangelical eyes is about as welcome to me as an extended tutorial with my professor who wants to talk about nothing but the golden age of British bus travel.

This is how I ended up spending 5 ½ hours alone with a 40 year old on an internship. See, I was in Geneva for a job interview. My host (and potential boss) had offered to find someone to show me around Geneva on my free day, and not wanting to seem like the anti-social bitch that I actually am, I pretended that this was a fantastic idea—thinking it’d be a brief lunch and visit to a church or museum or whatever it is you’re supposed to see in Geneva. Instead, in an act that gets the award for Most Misguided Act of Hospitality of the Year (Runner Up: Not allowing me to withdraw cash from the cash machine), my host arranged for me to spend the entire day with a complete stranger, and a weird one at that. A man whose first stop on our tour was an English language bookstore, so that he could spend an hour looking for a French dictionary for himself.

And I didn’t even get the job.

When I first met him there was a glimmer of hope when I detected his Midwestern accent. This hope dissipated, about as quickly as a fart caught in the early stages by lowered car windows on a freeway, when I realized his accent didn’t have the same, almost Swedish, sing-songy quality of most Midwesterners, perhaps the chattiest folk in America. Instead it was the gruff, monotone mumble of a defective Midwesterner, like one with a flipper for an arm. He reminded me of the impressions of Louie Andersen saying “Chicken, donuts, cheesecake…” that my brother and I used to do.

I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the conversation going for three hours, even with the occasional awkward silence, particularly when I gave correct navigational instructions that he ignored in favor of just wandering around like a retarded puppy, followed by a sullen me who occasionally offered a weary, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we need to turn right.” Followed by a passive aggressive, “…like I said.” But, as I said, we had three hours of the wonkiest conversation even I’ve ever experienced. The last 2 ½ hours were covered by my occasional murmurs of “Mm…this is a nice neighborhood. Is it known for anything?” And his brief, otherworldly “Yeah.”s.

But no matter. At least I got a hug out of it at the end, and you know how much I like hugs. This being a sweltering, sunny Geneva day, filled with loads of walking, it’s safe to say the hug was a bit wet. So, again, it’s not like I got nothing out of the day.

To be fair, the day wasn’t entirely horrible. I did quite like the Museum of the Reformation, and in particular its depiction of Luther burning in Hell. Also fantastic was seeing two teenagers clearly on a date, passionately making out in front of a portrait of a reformer. I’d like to think it was the boy’s idea to go to this museum on the date. “I’ll take her to the Museum of the Reformation—bitches LOVE ecclesiastical reform!”

But most spectacularly eye-opening was the exhibit where you could actually smell fragrances mentioned in the Bible. As I learned, all Biblical perfumes smell surprisingly of shit mixed with harsh chemical disinfectant. It makes me wonder how bad the ancient Middle East must have smelled if THIS was considered a luxurious improvement. I mean, I lived in the Middle East for a while, and I can tell you I’d rather be next to a sweaty Sephardi man on a bus than a bottle of nard. They tell me that nard is what that famous woman in the New Testament anointed DJ JC with, though perhaps given that nard smells of asparagus-flavored piss this woman should be considered infamous. I can clearly imagine her rubbing this vile, inexplicably expensive trash on Jesus’ feet and the world’s dear savior screaming, “For the love of God, Mary (they were all called Mary back then, weren’t they), get that off my feet!”

I also quite liked the cornball attempt to bring it all to life. I was told at the beginning by some overly enthusiastic Swiss girl that there would be a room with a dining room set up and OH MY GOODNESS if I’d only press 300 on my audio guide then I could “listen in” on John Calvin’s dinner conversations with other reformers. Needing to kill time as my tour guide, in spite of this being his fifth trip to the museum, had decided that every tiny label in the museum needed full, Talmud-length exegesis, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to let 300 be the soundtrack of my sit. I suppose they had tried to make it sound as realistic as possible by adding the sound of beverages being poured, but it had the effect of making the first minute of the recording sound as though I were eavesdropping on John Calvin having a particularly stubborn morning pee in an echoey bathroom. Ah well, points for trying, Museum of the Reformation.

Before we rounded off our day with a silent, hollow walk back to my “hotel,” we visited something called the Maison Tavel, which (as far as I can tell) is a museum. To what in particular, I’m still unsure even after spending an hour in there. Armor? Pub signs? Wallpaper? Dead stuffed pigeons? Who the fuck knows…

There was this one tiny room in Maison Tavel that was especially memorable. It was this tiny sitting room, sort of in a tower. I walked in and—I know I’ve talked about farts, belches, etc. already too many times in this post and that I’ve exceeded the quota, but just bear with me—and I caught a whiff of several hundred years’ worth of accumulated farts that have soaked into the wallpaper and gone stale. I have trouble conveying to you in words the strength of this smell, and the closest I can get is saying that it was actually like something out of a fairy tale.

Just over 48 hours in Geneva, and that’s probably what I’ll remember years from now when I look back on my weekend in Geneva. Foul smells.

Oh right. And having to start off my job interview by leading the chaplain in what was probably the most appalling bit of freestyle prayer he’s ever heard. But that’s a post for another day.

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This Year 11 boy will be me in a few years

Today was an off-timetable day at my school, which meant that I had to sit through the exact same guest lecture given to four different Year 11/Sophomore groups. Which meant that, as I was sitting in front of the class within view of all the children, I had to have a look on my face that suggested that this was the most fascinating lecture ever to have been given in the history of lectures. My goodness, children, this is such a groundbreaking lecture that as soon as this class is over I shall rush off to alert the presses. Nay, I must alert God Himself. In the meantime I shall grip the arms of my chair for support as I struggle to contain my growing excitement over the course of 70 minutes each time the lecturer uses words like "functionalist" and "essentialist." For the fourth time that day.

At some point during this 70-minute lecture, perhaps about 45 minutes in, one of the boys burst out laughing. It was the sort of joyous laugh where he knew damn well he was going to be in big trouble, but so great was the comedy that stifling this laugh would be hazardous to his health. So let 'er rip. After a few seconds he managed to repress the rebellion, but he couldn't quite manage to stop the shaking, the silent, mirthful tears that steadily streamed out of his eyes, and the occasional snorts and squawks that accompany any laughter made to be silent for a long period of time.

The lecturer ignored this boy, who was essentially having a seizure in the corner, and continued on with his lecture, either with the courage of the Titanic band or with the helpless stupidity of a Mariokart player who has just driven off Rainbow Road. I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I quietly suggested to the senior teacher that we invite this boy to step outside to compose himself and then come back in.

Instead of taking advice from someone who knows a thing or two about uncontrollable giggling, the senior teacher stomped over to the giggling boy and started bawling him out. As soon as she started doing this I had to stifle a sympathy giggle, because anyone prone to fits of uncontrollable giggles can tell you that the only thing funnier than something funny is something funny in an inappropriate situation. And so the boy started almost hiccuping laughter, alternating between silent giggles and very loud guffaws that would burst out every now and then. I actually felt terrible for him because he looked desperate to stop giggling so that he wouldn't get in trouble, but each time the teacher yelled at him to stop being silly whatever he originally found funny increased exponentially in hilarity.

Eventually the teacher realized that she was only making the situation worse. Unfortunately, she still didn't quite get it. She stopped yelling at him, but replaced the yelling with the stink eye.

And so the lecturer droned on with his horrifically boring lecture as the teacher angrily glared at a child whose laughter was actually starting to propel him out of his seat. And instead of relieving this poor soul of his misery by sending him out into the hall, the teacher continued to maintain intense eye contact, as though her looking angry enough had the power to make something stop being funny.

Eventually (after grumpily staring at this child for about five minutes with hilarious results) she took my advice and kicked the kid out of the class, leaving him to cross the room to the door as he wiped joyful tears from his eyes and noisily walked into chairs and walls because of his laughter-induced blindness.
And the lecturer just kept plodding on.

The Bungalow.

So there’s this one classroom that I teach in that’s a bit like a mobile home. Every time I walk into it I always half expect to find some obese Mississippian named Sharla who is missing several teeth, and so it’s always a shock to instead find 25-or so English 12 year olds.

What I mean by “like a mobile home” is that it feels as though it’s one tornado, or heck, it’s even one half-hearted gust of wind away from completely collapsing and killing us all in a news story that the Daily Mail will somehow find a way to blame on both immigrants and ‘elf ‘n safety.

How do I know that this bungalow is unsafe? Because it quakes like…like….shit. Every simile I’ve tried to come up with is offensive, so I’m just going to skip the similes. But I feel as though with every step I take another window pane wobbles and screams for mercy before exploding, while meanwhile the bookshelves wearily concede defeat and willingly implode into themselves as they give their children one last, sad, knowing glance. “This fate awaits you, too, my child,” the bookshelves say as they collapse into restful oblivion.

Okay, obviously nothing’s collapsed or shattered yet. Though I am convinced that my shaking our classroom trailer by my ENORMOUS T-REX FOOTSTEPS will eventually bounce some of the smaller children out of their chairs just like in a moonbounce. And, yes, I get it. I’m fat. But there is still no excuse for how much the bungalow shakes when I walk around. Or indeed when anyone walks around. One of the smaller girls who has the same mass/density/whatever the relevant science word is, as a three month old baby manages almost as well as I do to get the trailer to rattle around like a washing machine making its break for freedom. It’s the sort of eerie, inexplicable thing that the Doctor needs to sort out for us.

I gotta admit, it’s distracting. Though not, admittedly, as distracting as the constant smell of fart. I told someone earlier today that young teenagers always smell of fart, BO, anxiety, and (in the case of girls) way too much perfume. And that’s not strictly true. Much like the city of Chicago, middle school/KS3 classrooms have Fart Pockets. And I’ve said on this blog many times that I think farts are hilarious, but that’s also not strictly true—the truth is that I think OWNED farts, farts whose credit is proudly claimed, are funny. So in the case of the silent fart pockets that lurk in my classroom and haunt my teaching experience, I’m not a happy camper. Basically my teaching experience can be summed up with this: I wander around the classroom and from time to time think to myself, “Oh goddamn it, not again.”

I also want to take this opportunity to express my fear at the thought that the more I teach the more the farts of children take over my life.

Jackie: Year 8 Champion Farter, Girls Division

Today a girl farted in my lesson and laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair.

And, dear reader, I must be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a clearer sense of vocation than I did right there. I am 100% meant to be working with children.

It was during an ICT lesson, so it wasn’t the sort of thing done to interrupt a lesson. All the kids were getting on with their work. I saw this girl was giggling a bit, and her friend called me over. Without any kind of warning to brace myself, I entered into a new level of stench just as the friend announced, “Miss, Jackie farted!” At which point Jackie turned bright red and completely lost her shit (not literally, thank God!), and before I knew it she was convulsing with laughter on the floor. This angelic, well-behaved and intelligent young woman was reduced to a hilarious mess on the floor by a single fart.

“Yes, child,” I wanted to say to her. “Just yes. Clearly you understand what is truly amusing in this world. I have nothing left to teach you. Your education is complete. Go forth and be awesome.”

These kids are just so amazing. This champion farter is just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness. Sometimes they horrify me, but mostly they just say the most delightfully bizarre shit. And I mean “shit” in the wonderful sense.

One girl decided that the British Empire was not the result of a desire for power or money, but rather a desire to acquire a bunch of lands with strange names like Swaziland. Another girl wrote a letter to her husband fighting in the trenches of World War I and confessed her affair with the milkman. Another kid created a new religious TV character who was a vampire and a Christian, someone who begged his victims for forgiveness right before draining them of all their blood. Another boy argued that Christians should be in favor of cloning because then we could resurrect Jesus, clone him, and then “we could all have our own personal Jesus.” And then there’s the Year 8 child who doesn’t say awesome things but just looks like Edward Scissorhands, minus the scissorhands.

Man, I’m going to miss these kids when I leave this school at the end of next week. I am genuinely worried that the kids at my next school won’t be as strange and wonderful as the ones I adore at this school.

Oh God. I just got all soppy and sentimental over a fart.

Tell us more about the lineage

Friday morning I spent about an hour and 45 minutes staring at some dude's hairline. And when I say some dude I actually mean a Buddhist monk. And when I say Buddhist monk, I mean some guy who dressed in red robes and worked at a Buddhist center. To be honest I have no idea what he introduced himself as because, as I shall explain, I did not understand a single word that came out of this man's mouth.

There were definitely a solid few minutes where I was shaking with suppressed laughter when, sitting Indian style with my ass propped on a meditation cushion, I realized that I was stuck in a never-ending lecture with a man who was less intelligible than my newborn niece. I wasn't laughing at him, mind you--no way, having been the unintelligible foreigner in Israel, I'd never laugh at someone else's accent. Rather, I was laughing at myself, because at the time I thought I was the only person who didn't understand this man.

I looked around me as this lovely gentleman spoke to us, and all I saw were all of my classmates nodding attentively, as though this man had just provided some life-changing insight into the nature of the world. An insight which was completely lost on me. Needless to say, I began to zone out and wonder about things. For as much as I tried to understand this man he seemed to get even harder to understand. And after witnessing our tutor continually ask questions about lineage and history that invited hour-long responses, not a second of which I could understand, I began to wonder if I had had a stroke.

At one point the monk may have asked me a question. Yes, me personally. Actually though I'm not entirely sure it was a question, and I'm not entirely sure it was addressed to me. It was sort of the aural equivalent of someone with a lazy eye addressing you. There was definitely a moment where I considered pointing at myself and mouthing the words, "Sorry, me?" and quickly glancing behind me and slightly to the left.

All I know though is that I'm grateful we didn't do any silent meditation. When I saw the hippie white guy lead us into this room with mats and cushions I got a little afraid. I'm not afraid of finding Enlightenment, but I am afraid of the weird noises my stomach makes. Public silent meditation and I don't get along because my stomach is a bit of a diva. Well, he's not really a diva--maybe he's just one of those people that is afraid of awkward silences. "HEY GUYS!" my stomach likes to scream in silent moments. And even though most of these dear classmates have seen me fall over furniture, molest trees, fall in front of an ambulance, and eat disgusting amounts of kebab, I don't want them to misunderstand my stomach noises and think I'm the sort of person who goes to other people's shrines just to fart in them.

This did, however, lead to a private silent mediation during the monk's lecture. I began to ponder meaningful questions about the relationship between farts and Buddhism. Namely, "If you're about to reach Enlightenment in a shrine and somebody farts, do you get sent back a bit?" And "If you intentionally fart in a shrine to distract someone from reaching Enlightenment, will you get reborn as something really nasty?"

I can't believe they let me teach RE...

Double double toil and please just let me die now...

Oh man, I've been bitten by the theater bug. I offered to help with props/building/whatever with the local Passion Play, and a shortage of willing players has meant that I've since been upgraded to the status of actor, with an actual honest-to-goodness line. I flatter myself by thinking that the person who allowed me to take on this role thinks I can draw upon inner acting strength I didn't know I had to add meat to this one line, when in reality (as learned from this past Sunday's rehearsal) when I act--on a good day--I just sound like a quietly constipated version of my normal, dull self.

To be fair, I am enjoying myself and I'm happy to be part of it. But honestly it also brings back horrific memories of my time as a theater major at college. All I wanted to do was play with lights and use the occasional power tool, but my college thought that in order to be a good lighting designer I needed to know how to act.

All I remember about that class is that every day was humiliating agony. I still cringe at the thought of having to perform that witches thing from the beginning of Macbeth in front of everybody. I remember during rehearsals for it my partners would nag me to put more effort into it. Get into character, they'd tell me. Double double toil and trouble... And I'd just silently pray that either I or everyone else or both would die before the performance date, because the thought of enthusiastically crouching around an imaginary cauldron and speaking in verse seemed somehow even worse than simply shitting my pants both visibly and audibly while onstage.

It got to the point where 18 year old me considered drastic solutions. Whenever I had to perform in front of my class I would fantasize that while I was reciting my poem/monologue/whatever I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume. "Surely that'd embarrass you even more, Sam," you're probably saying. But the fact is that imagining I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume made the rest of the class seem ridiculous. Here I am, wearing an invisible inflatable penis costume in front of the entire class--and these dumbasses don't even realize it! I'm giving a serious monologue in my dull voice of indigestion and I'm NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT I'M DRESSED AS A HUGE INFLATABLE PENIS! And you're taking me seriously! Who's the idiot now, guys? Oh, that's right, YOU!

Well, a girl can dream...

I eventually gave up on the whole theater major thing. It wasn't just the horrific acting classes, but also the crap jobs I had to do backstage. My personal favorite was "Lint Mistress," where my job was literally picking lint off the leading man.

As part of the costume crew I had to follow around the costume designer, a grad student who had such a strong Great Lakes accent that I thought her jaw was going to pop off at any minute from the vowel strain. On one memorable occasion I was called in to help her with the leading man's pants (TROUSERS!), so I followed her into a small dressing room where the three of us could be alone together. She decided that the leading man's pants needed to be expanded, so without any kind of warning she just tore this guy's pants open. So the guy was just standing there with a huge, gaping hole in the region of Ass, looking completely appalled. The costume designer had to hurry out of the room to get more pins, leaving me alone with this guy I don't know but who I regularly pick lint off of, now with him in underpants and pathetic tatters that were once pants. I remember trying to turn around to preserve some semblance of this guy's modesty, only to find that a mirror was behind me. So instead I just sort of stared off to the side while the leading man and I both grew increasingly red in the face as we both tried to pretend like he was not wearing shredded pants right now. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so he tried to break up the awkwardness of the situation by asking me how I was settling in. "Not very well at the moment," I wanted to tell him.

After about five eternities the costume designer finally returned to fix the pants, but by that point I was pretty convinced that theater was no longer for me. I needed order in this chaotic world. I needed to know that pants would not suddenly be ripped apart at any given moment without any kind of a warning.

The whole realization that theater was not the major for me made me think of Roland the Farter, or more importantly Le Petomane.

Le Petomane was a guy who farted professionally in the Victorian era, a guy who is sometimes referred to as a "fartiste." Apparently he used to do farting impressions of the San Francisco Earthquake, and he'd do animal sounds. This flatulist retired during World War I because he thought the world was too inhumane. Just as I only wanted to play with lights, he just wanted to fart. That's all he wanted.

And that, my friends, is beautiful.


(Speaking of theater, if you'd like to read a short scene about St Thomas a Becket that I wrote when I was 16, please click here)

Of course I spend the weekend in Paris and the only comment I have is about its bathrooms.

So this one time I fled to Paris on a whim. After a ridiculously long sit in Sacre Coeur contemplating what a complete and utter jackass I am, I decided that I was being called to something. Not to a vocation but to the toilets. I went on a quest that took me through narrow alleyways, stands of men desperate to sell me crepes, and European Urine Pockets. (Just as Chicago has random pockets of fart smell called, quite shockingly, Fart Pockets, Europe has random areas that smell of pee even when no urine is visibly presence)

Hang on, we interrupt this blog post to inform you that the two bespectacled, scrawny and massively nerdy folks, one female the other presumably male, at the table next to me at Café O’Conway at Gare du Nord Paris keep discussing what great quantities of weed they’re going to smoke in Amsterdam. Have fun with that, guys.

Once talk of drugs died down an awkward silence fell over their table. The guy pushed his glasses up and puffed his chest out like he was one of those birds hopping around trying to attract a mate. His voice dropped about five octaves and his accent even shifted to sound less Midwestern and more Californian: “Dude, at my college we have soooooo many pigeons.”

For a brief, unguarded moment the girl gave him a stare that seemed to suggest she was appalled at how boring this guy was, and then quickly looked away as she uncomfortably folded and unfolded the empty sugar packets that were on their table. Another awkward silence. You could practically hear the thoughts in the guy’s head: “How can I save this?” And clearly the best answer his brain could come up with was to say to the girl, “So we used to play ‘Kick the Pigeon.’”

Had we been in a slapstick film this would have been the moment for the girl to do a spit-take. But this being real life she just managed to somehow kind of choke on the last remaining drops of her Diet Coke. After the coughing died down she spluttered out a “WHAT?!”

Again, the guy tried to save it: “Um…um…yeah, it was a bloodbath! [*uncomfortable forced laugh*]” At this the girl started looking around desperately, presumably to find the hidden cameras, as she shouted, “WHAT? THERE WAS BLOOD???” The boy turned bright red, muttering, “Well, no, now that I think of it there was no blood…”

Anyway. Sacre Coeur. France. Toilets. I needed one. Soooo: after a long quest through Montmartre in which I suspect I may have at one point crossed into Belgium, I finally found a set of bathrooms that (to my paranoid, San Adreas Fault-warped eyes) looked rather precariously perched on top of this hill. In fact, even the sidewalk in the area was tilted and seemed to have fallen about halfway down the hill. Though nature kept calling and leaving increasingly frustrated voicemails, I couldn’t help but hesitate after imagining the entire bathroom sliding down the mountain about as gracefully as little me would slide down our hardwood stairs in a sleeping bag. Sliding down the stairs always ended in a few bruises on my ass, whereas riding the bathroom like a flume ride down this mountain would prolly end with my lifeless body in a mass grave somewhere in France because at the time my parents had no idea I was even in France. So do I risk riding the bathroom? Do I go big or go home (with wet pants)?

Pee gets the best of me and I end up entering this bathroom only to find a sort of old-fashioned courtyard. It’s tiled and wooden and for some reason it makes me think of Main Street at Disneyland, that same sort of faux old timey charm, though this being Paris the old timey charm was more likely vrai than faux. In the center of this courtyard—nay, piazza—was an attendant safely encased in what looked like an old-fashioned movie theater ticket window.

In general I find the European concept of someone being employed to facilitate your bowel movement experience a challenging one. But I find the bathroom attendants hidden away behind glass like they work in a high security bank instead of a place where people shit, write on walls, and occasionally have sex, to be a step beyond weird. If I had to rob something I don’t think the toilets at Sacre Coeur would be the first large haul target to come to mind. Then again, maybe I just haven’t given this enough thought.

I stood staring at this woman and her movie ticket window forcefield (“Hi, I’d like one ticket to the 2:00 pm showing of ‘Sam Urinates Today: Part II’”), and I tried to look for a sign indicating how much the Europeans would make me pay this time. Would I be able to hear her response or was this the sort of ticket window glass that as the bane of my existence, the type where the other person shouts (or mimes shouting) and all you hear is a faint buzzing?

Well, my questions were answered when I heard frantic knocking. Startled, I looked up to find the attendant knocking on the window with a panicked look on her face. Thinking my time had come to help someone in distress, I rushed up to the window to save this woman from whatever evil had befallen her. Heart attack? I’ve seen enough “House” to administer CPR. Invisible alien murderer strangling her? I’ve seen a similar amount of “Doctor Who.”

At this point the lady stopped her morse code of distress, pointed at a stall, and commanded me in French to go to it. Again, I was slightly confused so I hesitated. She tapped again, looking like she cannot BELIEVE how much time I’m wasting, and again barked at me in Paris talk to go to that stall. And in case I didn’t get the point, she had a terrified look in her eyes as she punctuated her command with an “ALLEZ-Y!” that seemed to herald the end of the world should I not make my way to that stall immediately.

I knew at this point I should just get my ass to the damn stall, but again I paused. I turned around and slowly passed a wary hand through the empty air to see if there were until now unseen hordes waiting behind me. No, this bathroom was so empty that if the movie ticket lady weren’t tapping the window and shouting “ALLEZ-Y” like it’s her job (maybe it is?), then I’m sure you could have heard crickets chirping, although in France I bet crickets play mournful accordion tunes of loves lost instead.

So I’m completely alone in this enormous bathroom up a mountain in Paris. And yet someone has decided I need to get my happy ass into a stall RIGHT NOW, hurrying like Indiana Jones trying to escape the Temple. Clearly the only appropriate response to this would have been, “Lady, how badly do you think I need to go pee?”

And then Julia went home and sobbed quietly as she hugged her knees on the floor of the shower

Our last education lecture can only be described as a machinegun fire of awkward, uncomfortable and just generally unfunny jokes and comments. A couple times a week all 180 of us are locked into a claustrophobe’s nightmare, this horrific lecture theater with rows so tight that, come Hell or high water or the Apocalypse, once you’re in you’re in it until everyone else in your row decides to leave, and we are forced to listen to someone drone on and on for a little over an hour about how to deal with kids with problems*. Because apparently there are absolutely no healthy or “normal” children in the entire county.

*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”

Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.

See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.

I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”

That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”

What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”

And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”

So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”

I think I'm too immature to get to Heaven.

Well, the good news is that I did finally venture out of the library. This morning your favorite (yeah, I said it. What of it?) field anthropologist ended up attending mass, and in terms of having a meaningful experience I think I would have to call it an indisputable failure. And, as always, that was my own damn fault. True, it wasn’t as bad as the time I spent almost all of a Quaker meeting thinking about what would happen if someone were to fart (would they just stand up and claim it as divine inspiration?), but it wasn’t much better.

Usually when I venture into mass or any other service I tend to use it as an opportunity for a nice think, since I’m not much of a participant. Sometimes it turns into a great experience, as if it’s meditation for stuffy Republicans like me, but other times…like today…it’s basically an hour of me trying to block out inappropriate thoughts. And no, you filthy perverts, when I say “inappropriate thoughts” I don’t mean vulgar mental images. Today “inappropriate thoughts” means, “What is the worst song I could possibly start belting right now in the middle of mass?”

This is my version of a Koan, I guess.

Think about it. You are in a large church, surrounded by priests, people training for the priesthood, and the saintly people they know and love. It’s an incredibly important service, there’s a sacrament in it and everything, and my God is there a lot of solemn kneeling in prayer. You’ve given it a lot of thought and you’ve concluded that you’ll probably only be able to get a few bars in before one of the acolytes tackles you into submission—so which song is it? Which song is the most hideously inappropriate thing you could possibly imagine belting during the middle of mass?

What got me thinking about this was all the special clothing they put on for services. Observing the cassock and cotta-fest that is mass made me think of muumuus. Thinking of muumuus made me think of fat ladies. Thinking of fat ladies made me think of the busty black women who sing, “It’s Raining Men.” Which, obviously, gave me the urge to stand on top of my chair and start belting “It’s Raining Men.”

As soon as I became conscious of that thought I conceded defeat. Trying to have a proper think during today’s mass would be an exercise in futility, so I might as well devote the next hour or so to coming up with an even worse thought than singing “It’s Raining Men” instead of “Agnus Dei.”

I decided that “It’s Raining Men” clearly wasn’t beaten by such favorites as Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb” or Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl,” but it was definitively trumped by anything produced by the Village People, particularly the YMCA. (Though, once the fog machine that is the thurible really gets going, what is the church if not a massive and cheesy bar mitzvah? Get some cheap DJ lighting in there to play on the fog and you got yourself a Jewish rite of passage.)

The ready-made ridiculous dance moves (and I don’t just mean the wacky arm movements—yes, I mean the embarrassing pelvic thrusting, too) that come with the territory made the YMCA a strong candidate, but thinking about bar mitzvahs made me consider the potential of music from other faiths. The obvious choice was the Islamic call to prayer, but that seemed less ridiculous and more dickish. Simply drowning out one statement of faith with another would be turning a bit of fantasy into a bit of jihad, and that just ain’t my style.  

What about the song “Chai”? 

We had to learn how to dance to this travesty in religious school. I have to imagine that Israeli dancing is probably the most offensive thing you could possibly do in a church; not because it’s offensive to the church in particular, but just because Israeli dancing is simply offensive in all contexts. I should probably provide full disclosure though: the fact that my uncoordinated ass was forced to dance in circles as a crucial part of my religious education from the age of 3 until I was 12 might have something to do with my dislike of Israeli dance. So maybe singing and dancing to “Chai” in the middle of mass is not objectively all that awful, when compared with the option of the YMCA.

But I don’t want to rule out all faith-related musical inappropriateness. Although, to be honest, the worst thing you could possibly sing in the middle of a mass in a high church setting probably comes from the Christian tradition itself:

RE according to Sam

After Friday you should expect a massive post about my first taste of teaching (it’s in the works, I just can’t be bothered to finish it until I turn in my paper on Friday), but in the meantime I’ve been thinking a lot about this paper. If you’re not part of the Religious Education Massive*, then I should probably explain that we need to plan how to teach Christianity to middle schoolers (Key Stage 3) over six weeks. So basically I have six lessons to teach all of Christianity. Whatever, no big deal.

(*I learned the word “Massive” the other week, and apparently it’s like a gang…and now I can’t stop using it for everything. I’ve even started using it to refer to certain items of clothing, like my underwear is no longer my underwear but rather the “TOP DRAWER MASSIVE.”)

What I hate about this assignment is that I have to make the lesson plan that looks good, not the lesson plan that I would desperately like to do. The lesson plan I have to do is carefully justified with education policy documents and research into how kids learn. The lesson plan I would LIKE to do is justified with “because I feel like it.”

Actually, my justification would be in the form of song. I’d sing “because” to the tune of “We’re Off To See The Wizard” from “The Wizard of Oz.” So it’d be like, “Because because because because becaaaaaauuuuuuuse….” And then say, “Because I said so.” It’s the sort of thing that makes me think I’ll be a fantastic parent one day.

Anyway, what is this fantasy scheme of work? Well, basically we’d just sort of walk around—my God would there be a lot of walking. And we’d listen to Christian pop and haredi techno and Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise,” and it’d be fine. Occasionally we’d feed ducks and talk about it, and when we felt like it we would spend hours with our noses in the Bible, looking for something to laugh about. You know, the sort of thing that gives me the giggles during services (“These men are not drunk as you assume—it’s only 9 in the morning!”).

When we got bored we’d make fun of Midrash and then, if we were still bored, we’d invent the field of Christian Midrash just for laughs. We’d make fun of the Talmud for obsessing over minutiae that God Himself doesn’t have time to worry about, and after we finished we’d put together a “WHO WORE IT BEST?” fashion magazine spread for various popes.

We’d make frequent visits to churches, mosques, synagogues, cult centers, whatever, and for once in my whole method I’d lay down the law and I’d beat any kid who set one foot out of line. Unless someone farted, in which case the children would be encouraged first to laugh and then to loudly debate which member of the congregation dealt it. And rank the church on The List.

As I have completely unpredictable whims, one moment we’d be kumaya-ing it up and looking at squirrels somewhere, and five minutes later I’d be screaming at them to sit their happy asses down, shut up and open their books. I very humbly believe that this system, my system, is the best system of education. Ever.

“Religious Services: Come for the farts, stay for the God.”

Warning: it’s another immature one.

After the unrivalled success of “High School Graduation Bingo, 2006 Edition” (I got to call out “Bingo!” after hearing, for example, the words “journey,” “spread your wings,” “look to your left,” and a joke about doing laundry very poorly at college), I’ve decided to create a new version of Bingo for farts during religious services.

Obviously you’ll be wantin’ some instructions on how to play Church Fart Bingo: The way it’d work is that any time a participant went church surfing or synagogue chasing they’d bring their Bingo card with them. On it would be different services you could go to: mass, evensong, shacharit, maariv, kol nidre, Rosh Hashanah morning (1st day), Quaker meeting, zen meditation, etc. And then you’d just play the waiting game. Because, if you go to church/synagogue as often as I do, you’ll end up hearing enough farts to get Bingo eventually. And then, no matter if the cantor is in the middle of wailing away in Hebrew about how different people are going to die this year or if the priest is in the middle of turning wine into the blood of Christ, you would be LEGALLY OBLIGATED to scream out at the top of your lungs, “BINGOOOOO!”

So the reason I bring this up is that tonight I ended up at Kol Nidre. Partly because I’m training to teach religion and need to keep up with how different people are praying, partly because I still sometimes feel as though if I don’t go to services on Yom Kippur I’m going to get smote/smited/whatever the word is, and partly because I was missing some old, dear friends. I thought going to Kol Nidre would be a nice way to recall fond memories of getting the inappropriate giggles with friends during Yamei Kippur past, when someone farted during the morning service, when the old professor acting as cantor had a peculiar voice that a friend spent the following years imitating at completely random intervals, or when the cantor went ridiculously slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-owly and caused the fast to drag on for even longer than necessary.

Hearing all that Hebrew and hearing the familiar tunes made me think of old friends in LA, Chicago and Jerusalem, and I’ll completely unashamedly admit that my eyes started tearing up. It’s rather embarrassing to do this during Kol Nidre, because I’m sure crying while you’re begging God for forgiveness in Hebrew can only look to your neighbors as though you did something well and truly fucked up this year that needs some serious atoning for. I imagine neighbors would be thinking, “Bitch, you clearly need to prostrate yourself.” Not really in the mood for a hearty helping of homesickness, I started to regret coming to the service, repeatedly asking myself, “What the hell were you thinking when you came?”


And then someone in my row ripped a substantial fart.


Stifling a quick giggle, I brushed it off as just a squeaky chair or a shoe noise. But then an unmistakable odor filled the air and confirmed my suspicions. And, dear readers, surely at this point in our relationship you can correctly predict my immensely mature reaction. Yes, the correct answer is indeed a solid 20 minutes of silent giggles, tears streaming down my face, a lobster-red face, and my entire body shaking like I was having some kind of a seizure.

Being trapped in a crowded Yom Kippur service with the severe people of England only made my struggle worse, as my brain kept trying to convince my sense of humor that we needed to behave ourselves. It’s supposed to be the most serious night of the year and I’m laughing about flatulence. Typical Sam, I’m afraid.

I calmed down for a minute, but then reflected on the number of religious services I’ve been to in which a member of the congregation audibly cheesed. After realizing that the number is actually appallingly high, and that the Jews have (according to empirical data that I have compiled) been the worst offenders, I completely lost it again and was back to silently shaking with giggles. With these kinds of stats I feel like I should pass Tums around at religious services, though maybe I’ll wait to see what patterns emerge on the graphs before deciding on a course of action.

But I promise I do have a point in sharing my story of someone farting during Kol Nidre. See, this is what I love about my life. At the very moment when I was feeling my lowest, like I made a huge mistake, like everything was now totally shit…at that very moment what I think is the single funniest thing in the world that could possibly happen ACTUALLY HAPPENED. If that’s not unquestionable proof that God exists and is a loving god, I don’t know what is.

Aw crap though, I’ve started using farts as proof of God’s existence. What would Anselm say?

Flying Catholic Priests and "The List"

I think I might possibly be the most immature person in all of England. Well, not that that’s really saying all that much. I mean, take a look at this place, high school kids here dress more professionally than I do, and I think my 15 days in England so far have been the only 15 days of my life in which I haven’t heard the phrase, “That’s what she said!” …followed by an exchange of high fives. (And, on that note, I’ve had only a few high fives these past two weeks—and I’m pretty sure the few I’ve had were just done to humo(u)r the silly American.)

There was a moment today where I thought all this had changed, where I thought that finally the legendary English refinement had rubbed off on me and I was actually a proper adult now, no longer a small child in a 23-year-old’s body, constantly on the look-out for opportunities to tell a good fart joke. Or even a bad fart joke. I ain’t picky.

I’m talking, obviously, about the fact that today I met a Catholic priest and I was not tempted—-not even for a second—-to scream out, “YOU’RE NOT HAVING SEX!” And if you know me you know what a big deal this is. As someone who studies religion and who has met celibate members of a couple different religions, it’s something I used to always struggle with. I mean, the words have never actually escaped my lips (though I have planned a follow-up recovery sentence should I ever scream the first one: “Oops, sorry, I mean, it’s just—NOT EVER! NEVER EVER!”), but the fear of accidentally letting it slip one day used to always color my interactions with these people.

And please don’t think I’m picking on Catholics or Buddhists or Shakers or whoever—being a future RE teacher I am proud to announce that I have strange urges around people of ALL creeds. For example, whenever I’m in certain parts of Jerusalem (*COUGHMEAHSHEARIM*) it takes every ounce of my limited self-control NOT to run around naked and eat bacon.

Anyway, not having to fight the urge to loudly point out to this priest (in case he wasn’t aware) that he wasn’t having sex, I saw this as a sort of graduation into adulthood. “Finally,” I thought to myself, “I am a goddess of serenity. I am not thinking about this man’s lack of a sex life. Therefore I am the mature equal of my English cousins.”

But then I realized that, while sitting in a chair in front of an altar, this priest’s legs did not reach the ground. They just sort of hung there, occasionally kicking about, like a small kid chilling out on a swing. No, it actually made him look like a fairy or pixie, or something. And once I realized this there was basically no point in him continuing his lecture on John Henry Newman, because how are you supposed to concentrate on JHN’s Oxford links when there is essentially a wood sprite sitting in front of you? I’m doing a terrible job of explaining this, and maybe even there isn’t a good way to explain it at all, but the fact that this guy’s feet weren’t touching the ground and were instead swinging around basically made me think that at any moment he was going to sprout wings and take flight, fluttering all over the Oratory like that terrifying Israeli cartoon from the 70’s I once saw—it wasn’t about priests flying around churches, but it was about creepy cartoon butterflies…so…it’s sort of the same thing. Thankfully I didn’t break down into the giggles that threatened to form, but I sat there with a glazed happy expression on my face, like I was high on incense or something.

Later on in the day, after I’d had time to shake off images of this priest zooming around the church on his fairy wings (and not having sex), we went off to another church. It was an old, gorgeous college chapel, you know, dead people in the floor and everything. All was going smoothly as, thankfully, this time the priest leading us around was Anglican, whose sex life was therefore wholly uninteresting to me. But unfortunately he commented on the “stillness” of the chapel. We all paused to take in the silence and the stillness…

…which, of course, made me think of The List.

If you’ve read this far you’re surely curious/masochistic enough to want to know what The List is. So I’ll tell you. Rewind a bit: I like to go church surfing. I like to go to different churches and see what they’re all about. Sure, I like to pay attention to the liturgy, and the music, and the sermon, and the architecture, and the congregation…but I also like to make a note of where this church ranks on my “The List of the Least Fart-Friendly Congregation.” It’s hard to explain why I do this, and to be honest I’m not really sure why I do. It’s not like I’m really planning on launching some kind of bio-terrorist attack in church, it’s more like the same sort of thing that inspires people to climb mountains. Just because.

To fill you in, The List of the Least Fart-Friendly Congregations is topped by the Evanston Society of Friends and is bottomed out by whichever charismatic church has the best sound system. So there I am in this historic college chapel, lead by a fantastic tour guide, and all I can think about is, “On a scale of one to horrific, how bad would it be if one were to fart here?” And I started smiling and giggling to myself when I concluded that this chapel was almost as discriminatory against farts as the Quakers.

And this is normal for me. I have a feeling that if I had mentioned this particular aspect of my church surfing adventures on my grad school application, expensive overseas tuition fees or not, nothing would have tempted those poor bastards into accepting me. (Whenever I make eye contact with my RE tutor the phrase “NO TAKE BACKSIES!” comes to mind.) And I just don’t get it. I don’t get how I could be so immature and giggly. I am a dedicated student, a chair in the library here is already intimately acquainted with my ass, and I genuinely want to know more. But then everything is just so fucking hilarious.

Part of me wants to ask God/Shiva/Richard Dawkins just what the hell is wrong with me. But then an even larger part of me is so thrilled that I wrongfully find everything to be so delightful that, well, I just don’t want to be right.