269
by JamLifeIntoDeath_Archive
As a young boy, my parents would send my brother and I to Sparks meetings. It was some kind of Awana bible camp ccd funcare cult for kids, and I don't remember too much about it other than the red felt uniform vests we had to wear and the bronze, silver, and gold crown badges that we were somehow supposed to fill up with plastic "gems" to show our progress towards making Jesus happy. Aaaanyway, I guess it was something I liked at the time, but I really didn't have a clue what was going on and it wasn't until later that I realized how embarrassing my retirement from Sparks was for all involved.
During the course of the meetings, many activities were available to us. Typically, if I remember correctly (this was long time ago when I wasn't too far removed from eating dirty band-aids off of sidewalks), we would break into groups according to age for a period of "storytelling" or "sports" (usually duck-duck-goose, in which both my brother and I were evenly matched and undefeated champions), only to later regroup as a whole. On this particular night, once all the kids had been herded into their chairs, the first whole-group activity was hangman. The priest fellow drew the little 2D gallows and the spaces for the letters, and began to call on the most eager of us for guesses. As the number of letters grew, the first two words took shape. "God is..." was what we had to run with.
At that moment, sanity flew the coop, and I had a wild idea. Looking up at the smiling priest, it seemed to me that we both knew a wonderful joke, and that I had figured it out before anyone else. Something in my delirious joy over discovering the secret must have attracted his attention, because (and I can remember his face clearly to this day) he called my name. Since we were all good little girls and boys, it was silent in the room, but my confidence momentarily faltered, and I was only able to mumble my guess at the puzzle. He smiled even more broadly and beamed at me. "What was that?! Say it again?!" He said, loudly and happily.
I spoke.
"God is an asshole?"
The next thing I remember was having my head dragged by his crane game-like head until I was inches from the corner and hearing him hiss "don't move". It wasn't long before my parents came to get me. I never went to another Sparks meeting, and neither did my brother. I don't even know where I'd heard the word "asshole" at that age.
Madness waits for some. It creeps up on others.