Song for a Vanilla Cynic

After I had finished crying and frantically rummaging through all of my drawers, I was the lucky winner of one bedraggled teabag. I looked in the mirror and thought that if the bags under my eyes had contained any coffee I would be perkier than Dick Van Dyke. I was exhausted and not used to getting up at the crack of dawn. (This is yet another reason to not go to church. Perhaps even the very best one. Where does it say in the Bible that to be a Christian you have to wake up early? It isn’t written on any tablet!)

I dashed out the door with sunglasses over my teabag eyes, slurping away at my tea, only to find freezing, gloomy rain coming down. We all know that churches don’t turn the heat on until ten seconds before the service starts, as churchgoers shudder over cups of cheap coffee in itty-bitty Styrofoam cups. There is no more bitter potion than church coffee. I slid-lurched to my car. 

After a twenty-minute drive through the drizzle, I pulled up to the church. I was stuffing a Tim Horton’s Everything Bagel with butter into my maw, making sure to drip some of it onto my pants. As I stopped the car, I realized that I’d gotten my monthly pal on the way over. Of course, I had no feminine hygiene products on me. I was going to have to resort to a wad of toilet paper. I scurried into the building. First stop was the bathroom. My clogs and I clomped damply past a duet of old church ladies in the kitchen, who were engrossed in arranging and rearranging sugar cookies on plates (a post-service Lutheran tradition) and into the chilly bathroom, to clean up.

It felt like my childhood, that bathroom. The tile, the cheap air-freshener smell, the chilly seat, and the mental-ward colors all gave me an alarming sense of calm and well-being. I splashed water in my face to dispel it, and clomped back and up the stairs to where I assumed Morty was rehearsing the choir. I stood awkwardly by, as he took them through the day’s hymns, until finally he noticed me and leapt up from the piano bench to make introductions.

“Patricia is the soloist for today,” he announced broadly. I flapped my hand at the choir lamely in greeting and plopped down in a pew on the sidelines to wait for my solo number. “Come join us if you want!” chirped Morty. If I want? Now I had to join in or I’d look like a total heel!