Catechism

This morning, Jason was telling me about a patient he'd seen yesterday with a cool Russian last name and the first name Meshack. Jason apparently asked him if his first name was also Russian and was told no, it's Biblical. At this point in the story, I jumped in with, "Yeah: Shadrack, Meshack and Abendigo." Jason, the one of us with the solid Catholic school education, had never heard of them, so then I had to go ahead and try to show off knowing all the New Testament books of the Bible in order, Psalm 23, and other long-ago-memorized-for-heathen-Protestant-Sunday-School tricks. At one point, the actual Bible was out on the breakfast table and we were trying to remember what, exactly, Daniel was doing in the lion's den. We ate, got dressed, brought Annie to school, and our day went on like the splendid fall day that it was.

One of Annie's tough transition times lately has been the moments between school pick-up and eating lunch. Even though it's usually only a 20-minute period, it almost always results in some sort of dramatics. Today, there was some sort of meltdown about pre-lunch hand-washing (even though I had used my new "everything is a choice" language: "Do you want to wash your hands by yourself in the bathroom or at the kitchen sink with me?") and Annie ended up in her room, yelling, "Poopyhead! Mom, you're stupid! Butthead, poopyhead, butthead, poopyhead . . ." (Also: where is she getting these words?? Stupid, I'm sure I've said, but poopyhead??) She finally pulled it together and came out to eat her turkey sandwich.

It was a gorgeous afternoon. We hung out with bikes and scooters and chalk for a while, then decided to pick up dinner at Panera and head to a park for a picnic dinner since Jason had to work late. The girls were thrilled with their chocolate milk boxes, sandwiches, and drinkable yogurt; they sat side by side on the picnic bench and ate nicely for a solid twenty minutes.

Then, we played. It's a big park, but right away I noticed a dad in another section, wearing a shirt and tie, actually playing very closely with his two kids, especially with his daughter (as opposed to the general watching and yelling "good one!" that I tend to do at the park). A few minutes later, they made their way over to the slide on which Annie and Jemma were playing. Now I could hear just what the dad was following his daughter around saying. It was, "Christ Died For Us. Say it. Christ Died For Us. While We Were Still Sinners, Christ Died For Us. Say it, honey. You need to say it. While . . .? While . . . ? C'mon. Christ Died For Us."

Annie shot me a "what the heck?" look and ran off to play on the swings. I followed, dragging Jemma along, but soon the poor little girl was there, too, because clearly she was just trying to get away from her nutcase father. The child was three, tops. And while I'm all for learning about your faith and even memorizing some good sections of the Bible, I'm going to go ahead and guess that this little girl has No Idea What That Means. Not to mention: this is your teaching method? Following her around the park while she tries to play, repeating the same sentence at the back of her head over and over?

So I kept pushing Annie, giving her underdog after underdog while Jemma hung out on the swing beside me. The dad kept whining, "C'mon, you've only said it once. While . . .? While . . .?" And I was seized with the naughtiest, most irrational hope that Annie might choose this precise moment to yell out "Poopyhead! Butthead!"