The murky bottom of Catfish Bay.

I asked a woman for a date today. For supper.  At Frischs'. It turned out not to be a fortuitous question. She replied "Probably, but do you know Jesus Christ?"  That should have warned me about something right then.  I told her he was a pretty good friend and great conversationalist.  Perversely she has to pray about it and 'take counsel.'  I am thinking that I am getting into something way to deep for me.  I need to pick possible supper dates more wisely.  Like a nice trailer trash girl. Or a heavily muscled biker bitch. When she got to the Personal Savior bit, I mentioned, in addition to Jesus, Allah, I Am Who Am, Buddha, Freya, Jack and Diane, and Vishnu.  I think that might have scared her off.  She started breathing heavily. It was not excitement.

We had a deal here in town last year where the wife in a very religious family disappeared and turned up later in Florida with the husband of a lady who had 14 cats.  Not a great way to start a relationship.  Married and all.  The In Depth commentaries were attempting to solve the puzzle of why two otherwise perfectly normal people would do something like this.  Hell, I knew all the time:  he got tired of cat hair in his Fruit of the Looms and she got tired of being beaten to death with church, bible and Jesus.  (Been there and have the t-shirt.)  They divorced their respective spouses and are now living together in the real world.  Do I approve?  Well, you never know what you can do until you're choking to death.

In the sixties, in college, we had a group of people we called PK's - Preacher's Kids.  After twelve or more years of having religion crammed down their throats, they were inevitably the first ones who got into the kind of mischief we were all warned by our mothers about - sex, drugs, booze and rock 'n roll.

If you think this is a statement on religion, it isn't.  It's about who you date.  Whenever I discuss my religion with anybody they always want to convert me because I am not somehow Saved in the proper manner. Like the lady in the first part of this story.

 

 

This tiny lake we have here outside my window is about one hundred feet deep.  Used to be a limestone quarry.  Every boat I've seen out there this summer contains people who show no vestige of a life vest of any kind.  The first one was a grandmother and three grand kids, little grand kids.  Happily splashing along in a paddle boat.  Today there were some bass fishermen doing the same thing.

Now you can most assuredly drown in two inches of water, and in one if you're really creative.  But you drown a lot better in one hundred feet.  Kind of like, more completely.  If you get far enough down the catfish and snapping turtles will eat you and save us the trouble of calling the Police and Fire Department.  Makes me think you might get to know Jesus and company very intimately and pretty fast.

Ta!