Monday, August 11, 2008

thank god.

I have an “I love Jesus” pendant on my keychain. Someone at work asked to borrow my keys, and after using them, awkwardly inquired if they were in fact, my keys.

I sensed she had seen the pendant. Yes, I said. Don’t worry, I’m not going to invite you to some creepy youth group who goes out for ice cream and talks about their love for God’s miracles. It’s ironic.

Not in a “23 year old with a mullet” or “young lady wearing an power suit to a dive bar” ironic way. And although that is the way in which many New Yorkers proclaim their surprisingly common fashion “ingenuity” on the streets of Brooklyn, my pendant comes from a real life experience based irony that stems from my earliest beginnings.

I was forced to go to Sunday school for the first fifteen years of my human life. And when I say forced, I mean that my mother absolutely used physical force if necessary to get us to church. We HAD to go. No option. Seven am Sundays. Wake up and get moving. Church time.

Sunday school took two solid hours from start to finish, and as I grew older I hated it with an exponentially increasing intensity. I actually never remember liking it. Cool kids from my school either never went, or only went on the special holidays when cookies and punch followed service. Even semi-cool kids weren’t Sunday school regulars. I was forced to be a regular along with my dorky, smiling, excitable, “let’s have a bible race,” Jesus loving classmates. Every week.

“God will fix you right up,” my mother would say if she were to encounter one of her children who felt under the weather on a Sunday morning. “Get up, let’s go. You can pray you feel better when you get there.”

“If you guys can’t go to church, then I guess I can’t pay for your ballet lessons. Do you know how much those cost? And you can’t even go to church once a week? Unbelievable, my children.”

“No church today?” She’d ask my whining 8 year old self. “Then we won’t have Christmas. Okay, guys, Joselyn’s not getting any Christmas presents this year. I’ll call up Santa, since he won’t have to make a stop for the Hughes kids this year. Real nice.”

My mother was hellbent on getting us to Sunday school and I never figured out why, I just knew she wasn’t messing around. My father somehow managed to drop out of his church duty at some point, and as we were ushered out to the car in our Sunday best, I would stare enviously at his freedom from Jesus and wish that I too, was a grown up who didn’t need Mom to pay for ballet lessons.

When I was 15, I went through a confirmation year that included more church than anyone should ever have to attend. The Sunday morning they announced our names, presented us with gold crosses and bibles, and welcomed us into the church as members was one of the last times I’ve set foot in that place.

While I’m not a devil worshipper and I don’t have beef with Christianity itself, I as sure as hell will never be attending church in the near future or force my children to, for that matter.

And I’ll get an ironic keychain to remind myself that I don’t have to, dammit.

Worst part about the whole thing- it’s not even Jesus’ fault. Turns out he was a pretty good guy.

Comments

Taylor Hughes @ Monday, August 11, 2008:

Perhaps the most amazing part is that I don't remember a G.D. thing about the bible. I probably had to go less than you and Joel, but really. Not a thing.

Joselyn Hughes @ Monday, August 11, 2008:

Yeah, I have no idea either. It's all been blocked out completely from my memory. Seriously.