At work today, the big bosses had a meeting with some people who will someday soon, give us their money. Whenever this happens, a few of us run around all frantic-like trying to make sure that we all have our crap together. We get like that not necessarily because we need to, but because it makes us feel important and then we can go home at night and explain to those with whom we live how we saved the day.
I was trying to get a computer and display set-up working in the main conference room and had this guy Dan helping me. He’s pretty cool, considering that he’s in his forties ( I had to). We had just hung a monitor on the wall, which really is a two-man job, because the bloody thing weighs as much as I do. . . when I started throwing death-threats over my shoulder about cords and cables and how I might be forced to strangle Dan with them if I didn’t get this garbage figured out. (I’ve been testing the waters with people to see just how much I can really be myself at work, I’m making progress. I need to de-sensitize the rest of the staff to violence then I’m truly in.)
The joy came in when Teresa, my work mother, who had snuck in and was watching us blurted out,
I was overjoyed! She got it, and it seems as though the woman approves! Anyways, I kept talking to Dan, and essentially had diarrhea of the mouth, mostly because I think that he was enjoying it too, when the fact that I’m a seminary student came out. This was perplexing to my friend and co-worker, based on what he had been hearing me say. Not that I was saying anything that terrible, but rather, he’s not so sure that he could imagine a preacher threatening lives and casually throwing violence around. So I explained that it’s really just how I joke, but it made me think (as so many ridiculous things do). Perhaps I should lay off.
I asked Teresa about this, and she said that part of growing up is knowing when to censor yourself. I almost threw up right then and there, because all this time, I’ve been imagining that as i got older, I could just become more abrasive because in my experience, old people don’t give a crap about who thinks what. I just figured that I would be one of those intolerable old farts who runs around yelling about fire and brimstone and making threats that I’d never follow through with when I got to be a little bit older. Now, I’m not so sure. Either way, I have conclusions with this.
1- I will probably have to work at some emerging church that’s filled with young people who can stomach the death threats
*There are some pentecostal churches in the Ozarks that might work, as long as I’m
threatening any outsiders who plan to bring change to that small world with them
2- People have been lying to me about aging, now it looks like it sucks again.
*Liver spots, hanging, loose skin AND not being able to say whatever I want? Forget it.
