Sunday, 22 June 2008

• Church Anecdote

  So, like any sincere Christian or self-righteous Pharisee out there, I went to church today. My team was also rostered to take care of the awesome 1-3 year olds of my church, so off I went. (Little kids are great. They love you, shower affection and wet kisses and playdough bits and butter+vegemite smears on you. I think I get more out of my time with them than they do.)

  Now you see, I've been waiting for a very important phone call for the past couple of days. I have been househunting and I really need to move out of my current residence in a week's time. I viewed a place (a room in a sharehouse situation) on Friday,  liked it, and told the owner a couple of hours later I'll take it. He was supposed to call and fix a time for us to discuss paperwork and for me to hand over bond and rent money. I've met with so many setbacks this year and the stress and disappointments of househunting, along with the final dash of my semester, made me wary of trusting that I'll now have a new home until I've signed some legally binding papers. So, I've been obsessively waiting for the phonecall, and the longer the wait, the more intense my fear that the deal has fallen through.

  So I walk into church this morning, take out my mobile phone to find that it's on its last bar of battery life. Now, I was going to go to uni after church and would not have been able to get home till late afternoon at best. Panicking, my imagination started to get the better of me. I thought of the owner calling me while my phone sleeps like a poisoned Snow White. He would think that I must have changed my mobile number and name and facial features and ethnicity to avoid him, and he would then give my room, MY room, and I emphasise, MY room, to another interested party. I would be left in the streets with two hundred boxes of stuff, because I'm a packrat, and I won't even be able to go to a shelter because I'm a packrat! How would I go to the toilet with all my stuff? (Yes I've been told I think too much and have a bizarre imagination.)

  I quickly called my housemate, while continuing to walk into church (it's a big church), to see if she was coming to church as well (her fiance picks her up) so that she can bring me my phone charger, but she wasn't planning to come. Immediately after the conversation, my phone beeped its surrender.

  I swore. "Damn!"

  Then I look up to find that I've walked into the children's area and am surrounded by anxious parents and innocent, malleable children ready to absorb anything the world throws at them.

  Any chance they didn't hear me amidst the chaos?

  Any chance they thought I said "Good morning"?

  At least I didn't use the 'F' word?

  I am the antithesis of a good Christian children's worker.

  • 10:00 AM
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