I Really Was Trying To Use My Powers For Good

This weekend I did something really fun. But I wasn’t sure whether or not to write about it, because the context in which the funny stuff happened was a church, and I never want to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities.

But I really like telling funny stories, so I will just say here at the beginning that, as always, the only person I’m making fun of here is myself, due to my Outstanding Inability To Blend In.

So this weekend I drove up to Greenville, SC in order to attend a woman’s conference. It was actually really cool, because the woman who was speaking there this weekend was, back in 1987 and 1988, one of the Youth Ministers at the church I was attending at that time. But she left at the end of that year to go onto other things, and I hadn’t seen her since then.

But then a couple of weeks ago I was on the Internet and I found her website, completely by accident. As it turns out she has become an author and a speaker, and when I found out that she would be speaking at a church that was only 2 hours away from where I live, then I just had to go and see her.

So I did, and she was great. And after the session on Friday night I went down to the front to talk to her and to give her a copy of a picture of us I’d found from the summer of 1988. The people who were organizing the conference were trying to keep things flowing, as there were a lot of people besides me who had come down to the front of the church.

Church Lady: (in a gentle, subdued church-appropriate tone) “So, are you here for prayer?”
Me: “Nope.”
Church Lady: (Completely stunned into silence. Apparently no one has ever turned her down for prayer before.)
Me: “I’m here to talk to Angela.”
Church Lady: “Well, then would you mind letting all of these other people (who apparently were there for prayer) go in front of you?” (I guess that was my punishment for only being up there to talk.)

Eventually I did get to talk to Angela, and then I went over to the church bookstore to order a recording of the conference. And it was so hot. So hot that my hair was sweating. So hot because the air conditioner in the church was broken, and that is never a good thing, but especially bad when you have a large group of people gathered together in one place.

So I went into the bookstore, and there was this sweet, gentle, elderly, proper Southern church lady there taking the orders. And apparently the suffocating heat had totally dissolved my ability to read people and situations, and then make appropriate responses. Because we then had the following interchange:

Church Lady: “May I help you?”
Me: “Yes, I’d like to order a recording of this conference.”
Church Lady: “OK.”
Me: “And then I’d like to peel off my skin, lay down in a bathtub, and drench myself in ice cubes.”

The poor woman had absolutely no idea what to do with that. So, being the proper Southern gentlewoman that she is, she generously decided to simply overlook my verbal faux pas and continue on to other things.

And even though I had a really good time, and every one was totally generous and kind and welcoming, I did learn an important lesson last weekend.

Church Ladies=SO NOT the target audience for my particular brand of self-expression. Good to know.