I grew up Catholic and my best friend, Marie, was Baptist. She attended a large Baptist church in our neighborhood which had a "Christian Life Center" attached to it. At the CLC they had a pool, a gym, a large game room with pool tables, foosball and air hockey tables. They had a bowling alley, snack machines, and they even allowed roller skating on the gym floor.
At the Catholic church we attended, we had a CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) Hall. You had to attend Catholic school to use it. We were Public (ie; attended public school instead of Catholic school). The Catholic church had talked our parents into being fruitful and multiplying their asses off to the tune of ten kids, then they couldn't afford to send their kids to catholic school because, (get this) there were too many of them! Anyway as far as I could tell all they did in the CYO Hall was play volleyball. And you weren't allowed to wear real shoes on their gym floors, much less roller skates. Heaven forbid you leave a scuff mark.
Well, our Mama didn't mind where we got our bible teaching, so we were allowed to attend Wednesday night service at the Baptist church. If you attended Wednesday night service, you got to go SWIMMING aftwerwards. Jesus must've thought this up himself! It was a brilliant way to get kids to go to church.
Marie's Dad used to drive Marie and our friends Francesca and Lynn to the church on Wednesday nights for praying and swimming. When we hit about junior high, well, we started to backslide a little bit. One night Francesca and I decided to ditch the service and just show up for the swimming. My friends Marie (the Baptist) and Lynn were too chicken to join us so they stayed in the sanctuary for the service.
Francesca and I decided to explore the church a bit. We sneaked down hallways and peeked in Sunday school classrooms, offices, a kitchen and various other rooms. We then came upon the choir rooms.
This was a large church with a very large choir. We went into the choir rehearsal rooms which led to the choir dressing room filled with extra robes and empty hangers dangling in open closets. While the choir members were raising their voices on the risers behind the Pastor, we crept through two curious doors we found.
Upon opening the doors we realized we could hear the sound of the choir much louder and clearer. Below each door, steps went down to a tiled floor with a drain in it. It kind of looked like a shower room. We paused for a moment at opposite ends of the room and turned our heads up and to the side to behold what appeared to be a window. Through the window we could see the tops of the choir member's heads as they stood to sing praises to God.
We looked across and smiled at each other when we realized this was the Baptismal font. We slowly lowered our heads as not to be seen by the congregation. We tiptoed down the steps into the baptismal. As the hymn ended and the pastor began the opening remarks of his sermon, we decided to peak our heads up (ala Kilroy was here) to see if we could see our friends in the sanctuary.
We started to chicken out and quickly ducked back down. But we knew the opportunity to have some fun with this was just too good to pass up. Our fear of being seen was really of being "identified" and having our parents told or being kicked out and not allowed to swim. So we decided we need not show our faces.
As Marie and Lynn sat in their pew, a beach towel under their arm and swimsuit bows resting on the napes of their necks, they wondered where we could have wondered off too. Suddenly Marie was caught off guard by the urgent thwack of Lynn's hand hitting her shoulder. Marie quickly looked at Lynn and saw her with mouth agape and eyes glued forward. Marie looked ahead and quickly muttered "Oh shit!" as she began shrinking in the pew and raising a hymnal to cover her face.
On the alter in front of them, the Pastor was passionately delivering his sermon, behind him the choir sat quietly nodding their agreement to his every syllable and just beyond the choir the large baptismal window had suddenly become stage to the first Southern Baptist Hand Puppet Show ever witnessed by the congregation. The bare hand puppets began mouthing words and taking turns dunking each other in the baptismal. They sang a few quick wide-mouthed hymns and exited the stage with a grand old vaudeville style slanted shuffle.
Franseca and I quickly exited and made a run for it back to the ladies room of the sanctuary, partly to establish an alibi and partly because we were about to pee our pants from laughing so hard. We still got to swim and were never found out.
I still have to wonder what it's going to be like on judgment day when God asks me to explain this. Y'all keep me in your prayers.
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