Between classes tonight, I met Hub at McDonald’s and we ate INSIDE. This means, it was a real date.

Across from us, crammed into one smallish booth even though there were empty seats nearby, was a group of people who had obviously NOT been raised by my mother. They were loud and obnoxious, and it was impossible not to hear almost everything they said. Or, rather, everything the old man said, because his voice rose above the others.

You know, there are some topics of conversation that really have no place being discussed loudly in public, and this old man may have hit on every one of them.

First of all, and I know that this statement will offend a few people, the appearance of these people was offensive to me. The old man, the younger man, and the boy were all dressed normally, in nice khakis and attractive shirts, but the old woman, the younger woman, and the two girls were all wearing Disney t-shirts, long dowdy denim skirts, anklets, and huge tennis shoes. The older women had the bulbous bouffant hair, and the two girls had long stringy hair with highly teased top hair and huge bushy bangs. Everyone has the right to dress as he/she pleases, but my point is, the men looked fine and the women looked like cartoon characters. Why is it that some churches allow their males to look nice but require their women to look dowdy and ridiculous?

The old man expounded loudly on his contention that he could tell, at a glance, the approximate income of everyone in his church, and that there were people, and he named names, who were not tithing as much as they should. He was also really angry because he’d asked a man to pray last Sunday and since the prayer lasted less than five full minutes, he knew that God had not heard it.

He was also telling everyone at his booth, and all the other booths, the names of the people in the church who had drug/alcohol problems, and how if they would only pray sincerely, God would heal them. The fact that these people still had the problems was proof that they weren’t praying properly and God was ignoring them until they learned to pray correctly.

It’s little wonder that so many people are turning away from organized religion. I know these people are not typical, but they were OUT THERE where people could see them, which made them into an example, the worst possible kind of example. The old man’s loud prayers, in a McDonald’s, didn’t help his cause, either.

To paraphrase Emily of New Moon, “Giving God advice, and abusing the devil, is NOT prayer.”

My eyes still ache from those Disney shirts on a 250-pound elderly woman. Ouch. Also, their basic table manners were terrible: they talked with their mouths full and waved french fries in the air to emphasize their indignation.

The mother and her two very well-behaved sons in the booth just behind these people, on the other hand, impressed me very much with their silent grace, indoor voices, and excellent public table manners. If I knew where they went to church, I might give it a try again. Also, she was wearing jeans and a sweater.

This should not mean anything to me, but it does. I consider the dowdy outfits a kind of pretension, a “Look at me, I’m better than you” kind of condescension, and I resent the hell out of it. Especially when coupled with the decently-dressed men. Bah.

All of those dreadful people crammed into one booth. . . can’t you just see them driving up to the gates of Heaven and laying on the horn?

Incredible.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly