2007
I was in the Great Room at the First Baptist church this morning, where I was a day-ringer in the choir, waiting for the congregation and choir-regulars to finish their pre-service "adult forum", a round table discussion in the downstairs coffee room in which flock and pastor discuss the past week's sermon. The coffee room is as church basement as it gets, complete with
sliding folding doors and linoleum, but the adjacent Great Room is full of old things (the reason this church is called the First Baptist Church is because it is) -- old clocks and old chairs and old Shaker furniture and old bibles and old portraits of old pastors. Etc. I was sitting in an old rocking chair, rocking, when an old man walked in and said "hello. there's nice furniture
in here. are you waiting for them to finish that forum, too? i always make fun of them because they're getting too big. its gotten so you can't even get to the coffee."
We talked about the size of the forum, and the size of churches (he said the buildings had gotten too big) for a while, and then I offered him the other rocking chair, which was across the room, but he said he could rock anytime at home and sat down in the old stuffed chair right next to me. After some silence -- its OK to be silent with old people, and I was rocking so I felt busy -- he said "you know, you have to have a lot of cards these days. you have a card for the library and a card for the bank, and well its gotten so you need a card for just about everything." And then he pulled out his wallet and showed me his Stop n' Shop card. This was, in fact, the only card he had in his wallet, but I didn’t want to point this out. And then he pulled out a credit card receipt for a restaurant in North Providence, and said "look at this. see?" I looked. Not sure what he was getting at. "You know this place? Its right near my house. Its a restaurant and I drive past it every day." I asked him if the food was good, and he stopped and thought a while, and said "you know, cows are pretty dumb. there was a farmer once who saw a fly go into his cow's ear when he was milking it, and then he looked down in the milk pail, and he saw a fly in it: in one ear and out the udder."
I want to be like him when I am old.
I was in the Great Room at the First Baptist church this morning, where I was a day-ringer in the choir, waiting for the congregation and choir-regulars to finish their pre-service "adult forum", a round table discussion in the downstairs coffee room in which flock and pastor discuss the past week's sermon. The coffee room is as church basement as it gets, complete with
sliding folding doors and linoleum, but the adjacent Great Room is full of old things (the reason this church is called the First Baptist Church is because it is) -- old clocks and old chairs and old Shaker furniture and old bibles and old portraits of old pastors. Etc. I was sitting in an old rocking chair, rocking, when an old man walked in and said "hello. there's nice furniture
in here. are you waiting for them to finish that forum, too? i always make fun of them because they're getting too big. its gotten so you can't even get to the coffee."
We talked about the size of the forum, and the size of churches (he said the buildings had gotten too big) for a while, and then I offered him the other rocking chair, which was across the room, but he said he could rock anytime at home and sat down in the old stuffed chair right next to me. After some silence -- its OK to be silent with old people, and I was rocking so I felt busy -- he said "you know, you have to have a lot of cards these days. you have a card for the library and a card for the bank, and well its gotten so you need a card for just about everything." And then he pulled out his wallet and showed me his Stop n' Shop card. This was, in fact, the only card he had in his wallet, but I didn’t want to point this out. And then he pulled out a credit card receipt for a restaurant in North Providence, and said "look at this. see?" I looked. Not sure what he was getting at. "You know this place? Its right near my house. Its a restaurant and I drive past it every day." I asked him if the food was good, and he stopped and thought a while, and said "you know, cows are pretty dumb. there was a farmer once who saw a fly go into his cow's ear when he was milking it, and then he looked down in the milk pail, and he saw a fly in it: in one ear and out the udder."
I want to be like him when I am old.