Easter Sunday. An Episcopal church in Birmingham. Vaulted ceilings. Ornate masonry. A pipe organ. A choir dressed in lacework cottas. Individual stained-glass windows that cost more than tactical government helicopters. The whole works.
My wife and I arrived late. The place was loaded with parishioners in pastel colors. There were no available seats in the back.
“We have room on the front row,” said the usher.
“The front row?” I said. “Isn’t there anywhere else? Somewhere less… Frontal?”
He shook his head. “Full house today, sir.”
I am not a front pew guy. I come from mild, soft-spoken fundamentalist people who hug each other sideways; we prefer to fill up the sanctuary from the back to the front.
He guided us to the front pew so that we were practically sitting in the priest’s lap. The whole church was looking at us.
Service began. The organ bellowed. People stood.
Before we sang the first song, a kid in the pew behind me started making flatulent sounds with his mouth. I could not concentrate.
As a former little
boy, I am qualified to tell you that these were not just your run-of-the-mill mouth-based sound effects. These were long, juicy, squirty sounds that, if I hadn’t known better, sounded like minor digestive issues.
And he never quit. During the communal singing, the kid made this noise. During the call to worship: The Noise. During the Lord’s Prayer: nuclear blasts.
Spittle was flying onto the back of my neck as the boy’s sustained raspberry sounds reverberated off the stone walls. I was certain someone would tell the boy to knock it off, but it never happened.
So I turned around to give the child a stern look.
He might have been 3 years old. The kid was blond, plump, dressed festively in a seersucker jumpsuit adorned with lace.
His mother smiled. I grinned back, hoping she’d get my drift and put an end…