The author after possible Rapture
I was apparently, at least to the casual observer, Raptured over the weekend. The casual observer in this case was my Significant Other. Having gotten up briskly instead of lying around in a sprawled stupor like she was, I decided to go hiking in the local mountains after completing my computing chores. This meant I needed to change shorts, and I left the first pair on in her pink leather office chair, draping them over the seat in a manner that suggested, to a certain sleepy individual when she eventually dragged herself out from under the sheets near noon, that I had been abruptly foofed aloft to the company of angels.
I have never claimed being Raptured to be my likely eventual fate. I have ridiculed the whole concept at length in previous posts. My religious beliefs could be described as atheist or agnostic, although I don't give them that much rigorous thought. I'm more of a serial blasphemer than a coherent anti-theologian. That I keep most of the Commandments on an average day is probably more the result of natural laziness and moral inertia rather than any dedicated effort to adhere to a divinely-inspired code. On a below average day, when I am trying to complete some aggravating manual chore with the wrong tools and a bad attitude, the Second Commandment, in particular, gets pretty well blistered. I also said something surly to a street preacher just this weekend because she was blocking my way into a baseball game. She wanted me to start worrying about my eternal soul immediately; I was planning to worry about my team for at least a few innings or possibly the entire season first. They are a team that inspires worry.
I told her I was already cool, salvation wise, because I root for the Padres. You've got to figure that at least we're going to get into Heaven ahead of Jersey Devils fans.
So when I returned from the outdoors and my S.O. confessed that she had momentarily thought I had been slurped right out of my cargo shorts into eternal bliss, I was flabbergasted. The Catholic religion I had been raised in doesn't even have Rapture; they have a standard Apocalypse full of deadly horseman and beasts, in keeping with the whole Catholic religious tradition of making everything about God seem much scarier than anything in this world. That's tough, but they work at it.
It's true that a crown of thorns had appeared in a bagel shop sandwich I had purchased earlier in the week, but I hardly thought that made me one of the heavenly elect, especially since if the rest of the sandwich had contained an image of the Savior, I had thoughtlessly narfed Him down before I noticed the crown.
My S.O is Jewish—everybody, including them, knows Jews aren't going anywhere, but apparently she had counted on me not being abruptly flung into heavenly orbit by the rocket booster of Rapture, either. I experienced a sentimental moment briefly, right before I asked her what she had first thought when she saw my unpopulated shorts on her chair and considered that I might have been bubbled into eternity by the intake valve of God's mercy.
"I thought, Wow, he must have been a lot better person than I ever thought he was, "she replied.
"And your second thought?"
"Wonder if he made coffee before it happened?"
RSS Feed