In Remembrance of Childhood

Now that I have most of the trappings of a person my age in the way of federal and state-issued identifications and licenses, now that I have joined the working masses, and now that I don't wear colorful sneakers every day of the week, I sometimes forget how odd it all began, that spending a good chunk of your childhood in churches and seminaries does make you a little different from everyone else. For example, when I was 4 or 5, playing 'wedding' in with other children of seminarians, we spent a lot less time focused on the walk down the aisle and a lot more focused on finding the right passage in Corinthians, our 'Dearly Beloved' speech, and how the benediction would go. Then there was the matter of communion...

Moi: ...when I was little, I used to play communion.

(Entire table looks at me, puzzled)

Dwight: Oh please, that's just something you said in your BP interview to get the job.

Jackie: No, I've heard of this. I've met a few PKs who have told me that before. They really do that.

Sarah: How do you 'play' communion?

Moi: Oh, it was like playing house but with real food. You take some grape juice and break some bread and bless it, and you say the whole "this is my body" bit.

Sarah: How's that different from real communion?

Moi: It wasn't the first Sunday of the month?

I think it was the ritual of it that was cool. Then once at a last supper for a retreat, we were playing when [our old youth minister] saw us and told us that that wasn't taking the Lord's Supper seriously and when people had joked about it in Paul's time in the Bible, they died. So we stopped playing.

Dwight: What a downer.