Just Like a Prayer

Tonight, we met little Clara Hope.  Our friends Dave and Mandi Tuck's first, a little girl all wrapped snug in pink, looking as cutie-patootie as you could possibly imagine.  Mommy was good, and we met Daddy's own parents--Tuck's pop is awesome, complete with a bow tie and high socks, with his khakis stuffed into his socks, looking like he just stepped out of a 1958 television set--even though Tuck himself was in law class. 

Clara Hope being so cute is just one more piece of evidence in our theory that there is only so much cuteness to go around, and The Lovely Steph Leann and I are sorely afraid that we won't get any for our own kid.  Cause, whether you admit it or not, there are in fact ugly babies out there, and even though we'd like to think we could recognize an unattractive baby if we had one, we both know that we'll think our baby is gorgeous.   We'll listen for key words like "Precious" and "So sweet" to let us know that you think our child is a troll. 

Bear with me, I'll come back to this...

So, the other day, I'm wandering around behind the bar at work, humming and singing to myself as I am wont to do sometimes... the song of choice was Madonna's hit from 1992, "Like a Prayer".   I was softly singing, "Life is a mystery... and we all must stand alone... I hear you call my name... and it feels like... home... when you call my name, it's like a little prayer, I'm down on my knees, I want to take you there, in the midnight hour, I can feel your power, just like a prayer, you know I'll take you there..."

And for whatever reason, I stopped singing.  Then I slowly began to recite the words in my mind and came to a stark realization... this song is kinda dirty.  Like, really, really dirty.  Like, its all about sex.  So, for almost 20 years, I've been singing this song without a clue.

I guess it makes sense, I just never really paid much attention to it.  But it gave me true pause, because I was like "Wow... I guess I'll listen a little differently to this now..."  I did mention this to Melanie right after, and she stared at me. "Uh... duh.  Why do you think the Catholics went nuts over that song?  It was all dirty and stuff."

So, back to the Tucks.  We dropped off a meal at their house tonight... in our Sunday School Life Connection Class at Valleydale Church (an sbc fellowship), when a couple in our class has a baby, we all sign up and bring them meals.   Of course, The Lovely Steph Leann and I both agree that we won't get much food when Camp/Lorelei shows up, because in all our years of babies in our class, we've taken meals to two couples... The Halperts and The Tucks.  And The Halperts just moved back to Houston, so we've crossed them off the list.  Hey, The Tucks, we like pasta, and I love cheesecake.

After we left The Tuckstead, we went off to find our own dinner, and we got into a discussion between Olive Garden and O'Charley's.  She asked me if I'd rather have one or the other, and I simply replied, "Either, don't care.  Kinda the same, aren't they?"

Pause.

"Huh?" The Lovely Steph Leann asked.

"O'Charley's and Olive Garden... kind of the same, aren't they?  Like, I can't really tell them apart," I shrugged.

"Holy crap, d$, Olive Garden is Italian!  O'Charley's is American.  They aren't anything alike!  You really don't know the difference?"

"Ah.  So the endless pasta bowl is..."

"Olive Garden, the Italian Place."

"So, which one is it that when you are there, you are family?"

"Olive Garden.  Wow.  You really don't know?"

"Sorry," I shrugged again, "just never paid much attention."

So, we ended up a O'Charley's, because it wasn't out of the way like Olive Garden (we were on 31, traveling from Pelham, headed to our home on 280, so 119 was the easiest route).  For the record, dinner wasn't that great, she had a salad which she liked, but some potato soup which was drenched in cheese, while my baked potato wasn't fully cooked, and some seafood which was straight out the white bag that you get fish sticks from, in the frozen food section of Publix.  The bread was good, though it took forever to get any, then took another set of forevers to get another basket. 

During dinner conversation, I did mention the "Like a Prayer" revelation, and how it took me 18 years for it to click concerning the meaning of this.  The Lovely Steph Leann laughed, then said, "That doesn't surprise me."

Wait... what?

"Well," she explained, "you don't really think like that.  That's not how your mind works."  I explained that, you know, I'm a boy, so I think dumb stuff all the time, and she replied, "I didn't say it was necessarily a bad thing, to not think that way."  Essentially, she was saying I can be a bit naive.  And, as observed with the O'Charleys vs Olive Garden conversation, many times I also and extremely unobservant.

The waitress came over, and brought our food, and left.  The Lovely Steph Leann whispered to me to look at the waitress to see if she reminded me of someone that I knew.  When the waitress came back around to refill the tea glass, and then left, The Lovely Steph Leann said, "Did you see it?" and I, of course, replied, "Did I see what?"  And I wasn't joking.  I completely forgot about looking at the waitress.

Naive, forgetful and unobservant.  Sigh.  Guess that is true.  I'm always saying things that are taken entirely in a different, sometimes, negative thing that I didn't mean.  Many times I'll do things that are also taken completely out of the context in which I meant it... which is to say, I speak and act before I think about it, many times.

And it tends to bite me.  Especially in the blogging world.  Now, I'm 760+ posts into Clouds in My Coffee, six years later, and I've written a lot.  Like, a lot a lot.  Like, a whole bunch a lot.  And I've gone back and read many things I've written and thought to myself, "Did I really say that?" or "Wow, that's a little bold..." or "Um... I probably shouldn't have said that either."  And there are many things that I have written out of complete innocence, without a negative thought in the world that I read later and think, "Yeah, I meant that this way... but I can totally see how it can be taken that way."

I'm completely committed to my darling wife (love you much baby doll), completely loyal to her, but I've come upon a few sentences here and there written in years past that, if you didn't know me or just stumbled upon that one single post without reading anything else, you might think, "Hmmm... whats going on with this guy?"  I've found myself doing some editing and "fixing" from years past, just to make sure that if you do stumble upon such things, you won't have that "hmmm" moment.

I guess years ago, when the blog first started, and like, ten people per day was pulling this up, it wasn't a big deal because, who's going to read this?  Nobody, right?  But now?  The Summer of Blogging is pulling down 100+ hits per day, and with that comes the random person surfing the site and who knows what they will find.  I've got 100 people that know me that will read what I write and know I'm joking, they will know I'm not being malicious or out of bounds... but there's always those few people who don't know me well enough.  Then again, that's on me... I should say and do things that no one has a chance to question, right?  Right. 

Thus is the eternal struggle to be funny and myself to those who know me, and yet be above reproach and appealing for those who don't. 

Does this make sense?  I guess I don't want my own blog to be a stumbling block to me or anyone else, and especially glorifying--at the least, honorable--to Christ.  Perhaps it would help if I just paid attention to what I was saying or doing.   I mean, heck... Naive + Speaking before thinking x unobservant = lots of defending myself.  Not good times.  Bad times indeed. 

Am I naive?  Probably.  Is that something to be ashamed of?  I dunno.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Unobservant?  I'm sorry, what was the question?

When you read my blog, its like a little prayer, I'm down on my keyboard I want to take... well, never mind.  Let's not even go there.

The Summer of Blogging Day Fifty One