Failure Bread

Hi, everyone!  Thanks for being so patient in waiting for updates.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed, so I took a few days off.  Then the excisions became infected, leading to severe pain and sleeplessness, and I took a few more days off.  Then my sister and niece came to visit and I was distracted by all the cuteness and baby talk.  Yesterday I was too busy leveling my Draenei hunter.  But today, I’m back and hopefully will have the discipline and unyielding support network to keep on updating.*

Speaking of my wisdom teeth, today I received some interesting… insight, shall we say?  I was at work, and explaining to a guy who works in the building why I had been out sick so much last week.  I even told him that I had to go back to the dentist on my birthday.**  The guy looked at me and said, “You need to go to church more often.”

Now please don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the first time I’ve had that opinion leveled at me, but this was the first time I really couldn’t see how it could even remotely apply to my problem.

Laughing, I said, “What?  How does that work?”

“If you go to church, He’ll take care of you, then you won’t be at the dentist on your birthday.”

Then the patient who was watching out exchange chimed in about the Healing Mass she frequents, which apparently involves standing on the altar while you listen to a TWO HOUR sermon.  Hey, whatever works, lady, but in my world we have hydrocodone.

Long story short, I stood there smiling half-heartedly while two people insisted that Christian religious fervor would have stopped four gaping wounds in my mouth (the orifice that gets the most action…  I’m talking about food, of course) from managing to find even one virus or bacterium  amidst the TRILLIONS that it is exposed to every day that could hang on for the long haul.  Jesus himself would have seen to it, I guess.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a Christian; however, anyone who knows me well would also know that I’m not one of those indignant non-Christians who get all uptight whenever someone mentions the Christian faith.  I have lived amongst Catholics and Protestants and one very cool Methodist for my entire life and the number of times I felt seriously religiously oppressed can be counted on one hand with enough fingers left to hold my Tom Collins.

I am not angered by the fact that religions with which I disagree exist around me.  I am not offended when someone says “God bless you,” and I am more amused than irritated when someone insists that I should consider abandoning my heathen ways and converting, because I understand that sort of concern is an integral part of the Christian faith, and I’m comfortable enough with myself that no one is going to make me feel stupid or dirty for choosing a non-Christian religion that makes sense to me.

(Interesting side story: a girl with whom I used to wait tables once had a post-church breakfast crowd splash the drinking water at her yelling, “Repent!  Repent!” and another co-worker once had a nutty zealot who sat in his section for five straight hours during an overnight shift, yelling, “Turn or burn!” everytime he walked by.  Truckstop restaurants bring out the best in people.)

The point is, despite my experience and usual laidbackedness,*** I honestly had no idea what to say to these people, so I made up some shit about how nice it is they found a church they liked in the area and quickly ran off under the guise of having to fax a prescription or some crap.

It’s not the “go to church” that stumped me.  It was the utter ridiculousness of the idea that the Lord and Savior of the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD was going to take the time to personally oversee not only my very minor dental procedure, but also my recovery.  You mean to tell me people who follow Christianity will be granted a clean soul, forgiveness of all sins, entrance into Heaven AND a hella good immune system?  It’s too good to be true; it’s the ShamWow of theology!!!

Seriously.  If I was a Christian, I’d be pretty angry with Jesus if he was all like, “So how’s your teeth?”  Firstly because of the poor grammar, but also because I would think he had more pressing issues to be tending.  If you’re Jesus and this is the most important thing you have to do with your time, I want my Sunday mornings back; either the guy’s already got all the problems of the world so well under control that he can afford to slack off and look at my yanked teeth with me, or he’s seriously not prioritizing well.  I’d be concerned.  I’d write a letter.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, fuck your dentist and pray those cavities away, children.

A real post will follow tomorrow, but I really had to rant about that.

*This of course refers to the e-mail I got stating: “Your lazy days are piling up!  Update already!”

**So he could poke my inflamed, raw injuries with a FUCKING IRON HOOK!!! and then say, “Hm, yeah, you might have an infection.”

***It’s a word, look it up.****

****It’s so not a word.