One reason I love the Internet is that I can be avail myself of the preaching and thought of other religious leaders besides my own. Don’t get me wrong — Fr. Dominic is a great guy — but you can only benefit when you expose yourself to other ideas and teaching styles. I really like this guy who pastors a protestant church in Fairfax Virginia and this guy from Ginghamsburg, Ohio, both of whom I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for the Internet.
I wish our parish has a cyberministry like the one at Ginghamsburg. Nowadays when I mention the word cyberministry around St. Paul’s people smile at me with a patronizing air reserved for a well-meaning but deluded geek. Well, I have the vision. Maybe one day. When it’s time.
I just have to get this down in writing.
Let me say that we are most excellent customers of our local Kar King repair shop. Today our $1500 looks like crap but paid for 1986 Suburban is in for:
Windshield wipers. Yes, folks, in the middle of severe storms, heading up the Hardy Toll Road to visit friends across town, our wipers crapped out. Instant blindness. Panic. Raised voices. Pull over pull over. Dangerous looking neighborhood. Dark. Find dimly lit parking lot. Get out and check the situation…
As I stood there in the rain and gave the stuck wipers a little nudge, they thankfully advanced one swish and stuck again in the very same place. So they weren’t totally gone. Thank you God. They just needed a little help. Since putting someone on the hood to nudge the wipers was not an option, we cooked up a plan that was both ingenious and ludicrous.
Using my briefcase strap and a length of the cord that was holding our steering wheel cover, we tied a line to the wiper and gave it a tug every time it got stuck. About 50 times a minute. All. the. way. there. and. home. again. We were some sight with me squinting through the blinding rain while Heidi sat beside me, tugging and flapping, doing some absurd version of a poor man’s Soloflex workout. It was so ridiculous that it was funny and every so often one of us would let out a little tittering giggle at our predicament, despite the Prevailing Crabby Mood resulting from almost being stranded with four kids in a bad neighborhood in the flooding rain.
I love my wife. With any other woman, we might have just topped the evening off with a double homicide or even divorce papers. But in this case, despite some tersely-worded exchanges, my wife was unflappable. Or given the situation last night, quite flappable.
I should be outraged, being a Catholic and all, but this is funny.