Sit on a Tack!

(This is the 25th blog entry and my last for a month. I’m going to the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY, for a writing residency to finish my children’s novel, Sailboat in a Cellar, and am taking a blog hiatus to concentrate on that work. I’ll be back on September 21st. Thanks for reading and for all your comments!)

I was scared to death of going to Sunday School when I was a kid. Really. I liked God and Jesus, but I didn’t like church. I don’t think many people really do, or at least they don’t go for the right reasons. I’d like to take a poll and ask people, reminding them to be completely honest because their answers would remain anonymous, “Would you rather sleep in on Sunday or get up early and go to church?”

I was eight and it was 1980. Reagan was acting like a president. Jerry Falwell was riding the conservative tide and pushing his spiritual and ample physical girth on the Southern Baptist Convention. The church we attended at that time was Open Bible Baptist Church. We had left the Methodist denomination because my dad didn’t like the way the United Methodists were heading. The new church was cavernous: intimidating. We had gone from our town’s quaint turn-of-the-century, white clapboard church to a shiny new mammoth one that could hold up to five hundred believers, and with comfort-enhanced padded pews! (My grandmother, who didn’t leave the Methodist church, quipped: “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned sore hineys?”) Open Bible was also half an hour away, whereas our previous church was a five-minute drive. Now we had to leave earlier in the morning to get to church.

I didn’t know any children there. The two teachers that taught the class were a wife and husband team – let’s call them Joe and Mary – who “couldn’t make babies”. That’s what my sister, Kathy, told me. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. Did she mean they couldn’t sculpt a baby out of clay, or that they didn’t have a job at the baby factory because they didn’t have opposable thumbs? How did one actually craft a baby? Kathy said that the reason they taught Sunday School was because it was the only way they got to hang out with kids, and maybe if they were around them enough, some magic dust would wipe off on them and God would bless them with a child.

There were about four dozen children in the class; too many, and not one was friendly to me. I guess I shouldn’t say that. There was one kid who became immediately attached to me. He had Down’s Syndrome and his name was Angel. He was Puerto Rican. He loved making rather realistic butts out of play-dough. If we were studying Moses, it was Moses’ butt. If our subject was Job, it was Job’s butt, boils and all. Angel would laugh and laugh and I couldn’t help laughing, either, along with the rest of the class. Angel made farting sounds and held the butt up in the air, twirling it around like an airplane. We loved it. Joe and Mary, on the other hand, weren’t amused.

The cliques had been formed before we started attending the church and I, the new kid, was left with Angel. Some might say, “Well, you were a geek and children can sense this. They stay away from weirdos.” But I wasn’t that weird. Sure, I could actually read all the words in the Bible, even big words like “propitiation”. And yes, I wore baby blue button-down shirts with ties that matched, and pants whose cuffs broke right over my penny loafers like they should. My socks always matched, too. I was also one of the first kids I knew to wear brown shoes with navy blue pants. I was peerless and nicely pressed, just the way I liked it. (If my parents hadn’t figured out by then that I was a poof, then they were in a serious state of denial.)

I don’t think any chance of ingratiating myself into the Sunday School fold was helped by the desire at that age to have buck teeth. My friend at school, Gene, had them, and I wanted them, too. Gene’s were huge and stuck out over his lips like two gigantic playing cards. I’d sometimes stick my top teeth out past my lips, so I often looked a bit deranged, if not an appropriate friend for Angel. I didn’t think it was weird at the time.

The teaching duo had a ritual of bringing a child to their home every Sunday after church for lunch and an afternoon of fun and games! They did this alphabetically. After little Abby Steelman (the little strumpet with kinky hair who had eyes like a doll’s), I knew I was next.

I feigned sickness that Sunday, but my mom knew better.

“I don’t wanna go,” I said as my mom pulled down my small Snoopy traveling tote from the closet.

“You have to,” said my mom. “It’ll be fun.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they’re nice people. You’ll have fun, trust me.”

Well, then, I thought, maybe you should go instead.

Mommy packed a t-shirt and my bathing suit because Mary told her I’d be getting wet. She didn’t say how my body was to succumb to wetness, so I could only imagine. Were they going to hose me down at then end of the day behind the house? Make me wash their car? Take me to the local pool and make me swim in other children’s pee? At our own town pool I remember something resembling a large tootsie roll floating on top of the water. A friend thought it actually was one, but was quickly revolted to find out otherwise.

The first part of Sunday School involved drop-off. Open Bible had a Christian School behind the church where all the Sunday School classes were held. Kathy pushed me into the room and took off. Paper and crayons were spread around different tables. There were also some Ten Commandments and Jesus jigsaw puzzles some kids liked to do, screaming with delight when finished, “I made Jesus!” or, “What’s adultery?” I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, but simply sat down and doodled. The teachers then called us all over to the rows of aluminum chairs that were too big for us, our feet dangling above the floor like mini-pendulums.

We sang songs, and many had familiar tunes, like “Rahab”, a song about a prostitute from Jericho that was sung to the tune of “Bingo”: “And Rahab was her name-o!!!” Whenever I meet anyone who grew up in a Baptist church, I immediately sound off a few familiar opening notes and lyrics and the person’s eyes light up either in soulful recollection or horror; she or he is invariably able to finish the song as if on auto-pilot.

Here’s one in which you had to use your body as you sang. On the “inrights” you had to point at yourself, on the “outrights” you pointed away from yourself, etc.:

I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time
I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time.
Since Jesus Christ came in,
and cleansed my heart from sin,
I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time!

There were some Sundays when I wasn’t happy, though. Why did I have to be happy all the time?

One particular song scared me because it conjured up the image of the devil, and telling the devil to sit on a tack seemed like a bad idea to me. The words below in caps are supposed to be shouted. Some kids shouted as loud as they could, screaming in my ears from both sides. Surrounded by overzealous shrieks, the song often left me shaking at the end:

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
WHERE?!
Down in my heart!
WHERE?!
Down in my heart!
I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart,
WHERE?!
Down in my heart to stay.

And if the Devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack.
OUCH!
Sit on a tack.
OUCH!
Sit on a tack.
And if the Devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack.
OUCH!
Sit on a tack today.

Another song that sticks with me to this day was a militaristic one. Some might say its innocuous, but sometimes I really thought I was in the Lord’s army and that I had to fight for God, but often I thought, If God’s the ruler of the universe, why’s he need an army of kids?

I may never march in the Infantry, (march)
Ride in the cavalry, (pretend you're riding a horse)
Shoot the artillery. (fire pretend guns in the air)
I may never zoom o'er the enemy, (spread arms out and pretend to be a plane)
But I'm in the Lord's Army. (point one finger up to God)
I'm in the Lord's Army, yes, sir! (salute)
I'm in the Lord's Army, yes, sir! (salute)
I may never march in the Infantry, (repeat motions from above)
Ride in the cavalry,
Shoot the artillery.
I may never zoom o'er the enemy,
But I'm in the Lord's Army.
Yes, sir!

Developmentally, some children at age seven or eight are missing the component of their brains that allows them to have a good sense of the boundaries of their physical bodies. I learned this later in graduate school. On the “shoot the artillery” and “zoom” parts, inevitably I was struck on the face or poked in the back of the head. If Angel was next to me, I was guaranteed a few bruises.

After singing, Joe and Mary would put on a little bible lesson puppet show. Joe did his best to do different voices for different characters, but each one sounded the same: like Kermit the frog being run through a meat grinder. Sometimes they used a felt board with felt figures and houses and landscapes to tell a story, perhaps one about Ruth. I always wanted to play with that, but we weren’t allowed.

“If I let you play with it, Timmie,” Mary said, “then I have to let everyone play with it.”

Aaa, phooey! I thought. Play favorites, go ahead. I know you like me better than everyone else because I always raise my hand. Let them watch and suffer as I play with the felt board, especially Brandon for poking me in the eye last week!

Following this, we’d do some kind of craft in conjunction with the lesson. For the story of Joseph and his robe, we might make our own miniature rainbow-colored robe out of construction paper. At Easter we made crosses. I remember one kid colored his red and said it was from Jesus’ blood. Mary, aghast, her mouth agape, handed him another crayon and cross – “I think you should use brown. That’s the color of a cross.” I wanted to make paper Easter eggs and bunnies, but Joe said those things were pagan, hailing back to a goddess in Egypt named Ishtar. Apparently Easter was a day that commemorated the resurrection of a god called “Tammuz”, Ishtar’s son, who was believed to be the only begotten son of the sun god, Baal.

“Tammuz was killed by a pig,” said Joe. “That’s why we eat ham on Easter.”

“What’s pagan?” I asked.

“It’s satanic,” he replied.

When I told my mom this, she said, “I don’t care. We don’t worship Ishtar and there’s nothing wrong with an Easter Basket and eating chocolate bunnies.”

After church, Joe and Mary took me back to their home. I don’t know what Joe did for a job, but the place was a tiny ramshackle bungalow that he was fixing up in his spare time, he said. I felt sorry for them. I felt like they were poor. Not that my family was rich, but there was a difference in aesthetic. When I changed into my bathing suit and t-shirt, I found a quarter in my pants pocket. I’d forgotten to put it in the offering plate. I left it on the floor for Mary to find when I was gone, a tip, so to speak, for her hospitality.

Not only was I concerned about how I was going to get wet, but it should be known that I was a finicky eater back then, so I always fretted about what food I would be served whenever I went over someone’s house. The one thing I hate is seafood. Occasionally I’ll eat a shrimp, and I’ve been known to have a clam, as long as it’s sautéed in white wine, lemon, and butter. Whenever my mom made tuna fish salad, I’d have a ham sandwich instead.

What did Mary serve for lunch? Tuna casserole. My mom had told me that no matter what was served, I was to eat it – no fussing.

“Do you like tuna noodle casserole?” Mary asked.

“Love it!” I blurted out.

“Then I’ll give you an extra big helping.”

I was very hungry. The sugar cookies and Hawaiian Punch at church weren’t sticking to my ribs and my stomach rumbled like a dried up wooden rollercoaster at full speed.

I managed to pick through the dish and eat the egg noodles. Was that mayonnaise? Onions?! Celery? Yech! Occasionally a flake of tuna would make its way into my mouth. I immediately swallowed some watered down Kool-Aid to take the fishy taste away. When it was all done and told, the lunch from hell ended this way: me still hungry and a pile of tuna on my plate. It reminded me of when my dad would put a pill in our dog’s food. When the dog was finished, at the bottom of the bowl lay the solitary pill, so that my dad had to shove it down it’s throat.

After lunch, Joe took me to a local pond to catch guppies. This sounded promising and exciting, but I was still a bit wary.

“I don’t have to touch them, do I?”

“The guppies? We’ll catch ‘em with this.” He held up a mesh net on a wire, the kind someone might use with a fishtank.

I had a wonderful time catching the guppies. Joe explained to me how they would eventually grow legs and change into frogs and that when they did, I was to release them into another pond. I told him there was a pond in the woods behind our house. This guy Joe was okay, I decided. And I liked his car, too – an old VW Bug that rattled and was really noisy. I didn’t want to leave the pond, but the time eventually came when we had to go. I still hadn’t gotten wet, though, and I wondered if I was going to. Perhaps if I had fallen into the pond, I might have gotten wet. Maybe that’s what Mary meant – the bathing suit was only a precaution.

Mary had a snack for me when I got back: fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Wow. I wasn’t much of a dessert person, but chocolate chips cookies were my favorite, as long as they didn’t have nuts in them.

“Joe loves walnuts in his cookies,” she said as she passed the plate.

“Can I eat it outside?” I asked.

I went out the backdoor and sucked on the cookie, eating around the nuts, picking and spitting them out, until the cookie was gone and a handful of nuts remained. I threw them in the bushes and went back inside.

“Are you hot?” asked Mary.

“A little,” I said.

“Some kids next door are coming over and I’m going to turn on the sprinkler.”

Sprinkler? It would probably be better than a pee-sodden pool.

The kids who came over were of different ages and they were a lot of fun. We ran through the sprinkler, playing tag, throwing a big beach ball around. Joe and Mary watched and laughed. One kid was really fat. He looked like a young Curly from the Three Stooges and kept slipping on the wet grass, falling down and rolling around like a drenched piggy. I was soaking wet by the end of it.

Later, I dressed back into my church clothes and Joe and Mary drove me back home.

“I found a quarter in the bedroom,” said Mary. “Is it yours?”

“Nope,” I said.

After a few words with my mom, they left and Mommy came into my room where I was changing into my pajamas. “How was it?”

I nodded my head. “I actually had fun.” More fun than Sunday School.