Re: ADD and religion

[allan wallace]

Hmm, interesting Ginniebean. That hadn’t occured to me…when my wife and I only had one kid, and she was quite a new baby we went on a church camp. It was with a very conservative Protestant Church, and I ended up embarrassing my wife and I…okay, the crazy laughing that brought a solemn prayer meeting to a shambolic end had been building up for a few days. It started with ‘The Stepford Wiveish’ hovering in and around the kitchen, almost as if there was a silent ‘who can act like like the most submissive wife’ competition. This observation was only re-inforced by the way the Pastors and Elders would grimly stalk into the hall. It was fascinating as the low murmurs evaporated into silence at the arrival of the cortege…all these guys needed was sackcloth and ash to demonstrate the sunniness of their dispositions! Oh, and maybe Oliver Cromwell masks while clumping along in those buckle shoes from the Middle Ages! Anyway, most annoying of all was this old bastard with a whistle who seemed to have the campsite under 24 hour surveillance, for every time the whistle blew the campers had to converge to the hall where he would express his latest disappointment of The Flock’s failure to adhere to the Camp Rules….The Nuremberg Trials were a drag compared to the shocking admonishments that I heard over those few days…a few that spring to mind are the failure of all people to return dirty dishes and cutlery to the kitchen, how children were not permitted to play any ball games unless there were adults present, but the best one, or the one that I remember most vividly was the way that his voice quivered one morning when admonishing the unknown offender that had been heard urinating just outside the sleeping quarters in the dead of night when there was a perfectly functional communal toilet and shower block just 50 metres or so away….I’ll wager that the perpetrator was quite relieved that some teenage boys began to nervously look around accusingly at one another as wary parents cast their progeny searing looks 😆 Anyway, on the last night as we had small group prayers I kept hearing about some baby in Fiji from The Missions that had been announced earlier. I had tuned out and didn’t hear the scoop, so as the people from within my group prayed I deduced that a baby had died, that it was a tragic accident, and then that it had happened when a coconut had fallen from a tree…thus as I was putting all these pieces together, I kinda visualised a cartoon in my mind and started to giggle. just a little hee hee to start with every 10 seconds or so. My wife nudged me and shot me a look….anyway, once I had started she started. We couldn’t stop, and the crazy thing was that the people just kept praying! Eventually it ended up with us both laughing so much that they had no choice but to stop. The grumpy looks drew profuse and embarassed apologies blaming tiredness etc. but as they were just pausing to make us aware that we should compose ourselves we sorta stopped….as soon as the next prayer started I felt the big bellylaugh coming and dived from my chair through the door of our unit and seized the sleeping baby so that I could shove my face into her belly and dearly hoping that her screaming would start before my big laughter! I’m getting the hurry up! Um, obviously the actual event that occured was a terribly heartbreaking tragedy, and it goes without saying that it’s not funny, but that silly ‘lil cartoon that I saw in my head was bloody hilarious! 😳

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