In 5th grade I had this awkward Sunday school teacher who tried entirely too hard to be ironically hip. He was like the Bob Saget of my Christian education. Every Sunday he would show up in his baggy jeans, Christian band tee shirts, leather coat and attempt to teach us wee children what we supposedly didn’t know about our religion. I just don’t get how many times you can hear the same story and expect to get something new out of it, but he seemed dead set on making us find something. Apparently indoctrination is forced to find a new path of hipster-dome at some point, and this was it.
Jesus was a rebel, apparently. He defied everyone and everything, including his own religion, to save us! Did you know that? Well if I didn’t before 5th grade, I did now. I lapped it up, too. I adored the way he would parade across the front of our small classroom, drawing awkward crosses that almost looked like anarchy symbols on our chalkboards, in some attempt at enrapturing us with the religion that has so inspired him. I would say that his attempts were in vain, but sadly, they weren’t. I loved it. We all loved it, except for the kid with downs’ syndrome asleep in the back of the classroom whose parents stuck him here so they could go listen to the sermon in the main hall. Jesus loves retards too, though, because he saved us all. Even if they sleep through his sermon’s and just think the pictures look pretty in the kid’s bible.
Anyways, this man, Enrique if I remember correctly, which is hilarious enough in it’s own right, was dead set on every single one of us thinking the way he does. He had a funny, not-quite-hairy-enough goatee, brown eyes and hair that smelled strongly of Head and Shoulders. His wife was a complete MILF, but I don’t think they’d had kids yet, so she was just… well a good looking woman. MILF is so much more empowering than the word woman though, so we can leave her as that. I’m pretty sure they have kids now and I would still fuck her, so she qualifies.
“Are you kids excited to learn about Jesus?!?!”
“YES!” we would all scream in the awkward, almost- unison that is so ever-present in children’s classrooms. There were always a couple kids who wanted to yell over every other kid to prove they loved Jesus even more, and then there was the kid in the back who was a good five seconds late with his response because he first had to be stirred from his slumber by our initial rabble-rousing, religious declaration.
“Awesome! Open your picture bibles to Matthew 14: 22 so we can hear the amazing story of when Jesus walked on water!”
Now at this point a few things would happen. There were always the twins at the very front of the class who would loudly state “ooooooooooooooohhh” or some variation in a creepy unison, while the annoying girl to their right whose hair is entirely too long and whose glasses were probably her grandmother’s at some point asks in a near monotone, but still somehow incredibly whiny voice “What if we have a real Bible? Is it the same passage in the adult bible? Do you have a page number?” Now, whether or not this little cunt actually needed the glasses is still up for debate, seeing as I have never met a ten year old who wears light green bifocals, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt seeing as her first sexual experience she will probably be, or already has been, unconscious for. Then, as if these two reactions weren’t enough, the two trouble makers in the back, myself and a young boy named Chris something-Hispanic would always, or almost always, be doing something at this point that required direct reprimand, and so the class was forced to halt it’s Jesus-linear progression for a few short moments. What a travesty.
“Young man, what in the world are you doing? Are those pencil shavings in Danielle’s hair? And why does David (yes the downsy kid) have his hands glued together? Really, now you little…” But he would stop there. He had to stop there. A bible school teacher is obviously not allowed to use profanity to scold a child. That would be un-Christian, silly! So the extent of our punishment would be saved for after class when Enrique rats us out to our parents, who generally by that point are more pissed off about having had to wade through a sea of people just to retrieve their kids that they barely hear the nay-saying of this Sunday school Judas. Cursing at or spanking our bratty asses would have been far more effective, but that would have required him to not be a complete pussy.
So after he finally got us all to open our bibles to the correct pages, whether they were in the adult bible or not, the teaching would begin.
“So, why is it important that Jesus could walk on water when nobody else could?”
“Because it proves he’s not human and is the son of God!” from glasses sporting, soccer moms’ worst nightmare- girl, stage-left of me.
“No, not quite, Jesus was human, remember, but he was still the son of God.”
“How could the son of a God be human? I thought those were called Demi-gods or something. That’s what they called Hercules. Was Hercules real?” ejaculated from the mouth of one of the twins, but it was nearly impossible to ever decipher which one. Who knew that twins, even if they aren’t identical, can still be equally, fucking annoying.
“No, Hercules is just a story made up by the ancient Greeks, Joseph. Jesus was real. Real people can’t be Demi-gods.” Obviously.
“Oh, ok. That makes sense.” Crisis averted.
That's just the first couple pages of something I've been working on that I may modify into a fictional piece eventually so I'm just getting the base for it. Lemme know what you think!
