This can't be a good idea
As my wife and I strolled into her church yesterday (15 minutes late, as usual) I suddenly realized it was Palm Sunday; one of the ushers was doing an impression of a tree, holding a large collection of palm leaves in front of him. To my surprise, he gave one to my wife and another to me. To summarize: he gave a palm leaf to me. TO ME!!!
Are they frickin' idiots or something?
2.5 ft long, fairly sturdy, sword-shaped palm leaf. Relatively dark enclosed room. Mind-numbing, gut-wrenching, jaw-dropping boredom.
And me.
AND.
ME.
On the scale of ideas, this is below Boston's maligned Big Dig and only slightly above giving a loaded AK-47 to an orangutan.
That is to say, not a very good idea at all.
*poke* *poke* *poke*
I'm amazed I didn't get thrown out.
Happy St. Patty's day, boys and girls.
Decreed by King Aardvark @ 9:31 a.m.
10 Comments
10 Comments:
You think that's bad? Try giving palm leaves to an entire Sunday School of kids from ages 4 through 12.
I think I'm in the same league as the Sunday School kids, only with perhaps a bit less crying involved.
It was obviously a wonderful idea! It kept you entertained, didn't it? My husband insists that the rich liturgical music of the Renaissance came about because churches, at least for a little while, caught on that they had to keep their congregations entertained.
In the Catholic church, the palm leaves are blessed by the priest at the Palm Sunday service, and thus become "sacred". After my practicing-Catholic mother died, I found a whole cache of palm leaves at the back of a dresser drawer, an accumulation from several years of Palm Sunday services. I took great pleasure in tossing them into the fireplace.
BTW, they get stiffer and sharper when they're really dry.
Stiffer and sharper?
How interesting.
Guess what: we kept ours too. Put 'em in a vase to add some meagre colour to our bleak apartment. Now I'm going to make sure to keep them. Hehehe.
Well, they seemed to get sharper. I object to pricking my finger on a part of a plant that isn't in my care. (Every one of my roses and citrus has me targeted, but that's another story.)
But you have totally the wrong attitude. Remember, this Palm Sunday thing was to commemorate Jesus riding into town on a donkey, and people throwing palm leaves at his feet (well, presumably at the donkey's feet). Therefore, next Palm Sunday, maybe you should hire a donkey, ride it into church, and see how they react. Purely in the interest of psychological experimentation, of course.
I have such an irreligious attitude. Comes from being a Recovering ex-Catholic. Don't let my attitude sway you. :-)
You know, Karen, if I wasn't so averse to my wife killing me, and if I wasn't such a cheap bastard, I just might do that.
Btw, when I see someone I admire, my first instinct probably isn't to throw bigass leaves at his donkey. People were weird 2000 years ago.
KA, I do appreciate the aversion to spousicide, especially when you're the potential victim. The closest
I've come to understanding the leaves-underfoot routine involved listening to the sound track from Jesus Christ Superstar. You could just sort of sway along to the uncomplicated, but really infectious music, and imagine dropping palm fronds in the street. (I saw the musical on its first San Francisco, California run. Yeah, dammit, I am that old. At least I wasn't an adult then.)
I'll bet you don't automatically think of throwing roses at somebody's feet either, but that was apparently a custom in some times/places. I never did figure out whether they included the thorns...
Karen, if you leave the thorns on, it makes for a good getaway, a la caltrops.
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