Sunday Sillies

Benjamin didn't wear shoes to church today. I did a lot of talking about finding shoes for him but I think it was a case of having too many cooks in the kitchen and nobody ended up helping Benjamin with his shoes. He left the house and climbed into the van with his sisters. Rachel dutifully buckled him in.

Andrew and I finished grabbing all the last minute things (church bag, lesson manuals, house keys, etc.) and headed out the door so we'd be on time to pick up a friend who needed a ride so we'd be on time for church.

When we got to church I noticed that Benjamin had bare feet.

"Where are your shoes, buddy?" I asked.

Benjamin just shrugged his shoulders so I kept hunting around the van for them. He's in the habit of taking off his shoes and chucking them as far as he can away from himself. My search yielded nothing.

"Who put shoes on Benjamin this morning?" I asked.

No one answered.

"Did anyone put shoes on Benjamin?"

Everyone eyeballed everyone else with curious looks on their faces.

"No one put shoes on Benjamin. How did he get out to the car?" I asked. "Why would he be in the car without his shoes?"

"He walked out by himself," I was told by the girls. "He just followed us out."

"Who buckled him in?" I asked.

"I did," Rachel said, "But I didn't check his feet."

To be fair I had checked to make sure his buckle was secure, but I didn't check his feet shoes either. So Benjamin went to church without shoes and he was not bothered one little bit.

Once in the chapel, Andrew set about arranging a ride home for the friend we gave a ride to this morning. We stay for choir, this friend doesn't. For some reason Andrew asked the executive secretary if he could give out friend a ride home. The executive secretary is responsible for many things—one of his duties (at least in our ward—is it the same everywhere? I don't know) is asking people to say the invocation and benediction.

"Oh, sure, I can give him a ride," the secretary teased, "But only if you'll say the opening prayer."


So Andrew agreed to say the opening prayer and then promptly forgot about doing so until his name was announced. And then he fretted about it for the whole opening song. There's something a little more intimidating about praying in front of and on behalf of an entire congregation of people than there is about pouring out your heart to the Lord in the privacy of your own home.

Nervously, Andrew closed his hymnal in the middle of the last verse of opening hymn and made his way up to the stand. It wasn't a long walk—we were sitting in the third pew.

Andrew said the prayer and rushed off the stand as fast as he could without looking like he was rushing. He hurried down the aisle and slid into his seat where he gave a relieved sigh. Then he started stretching his arm out along the back of the bench, intending to give me a little squeeze but...I wasn't there.

I was giggling in the row behind him!

He was shocked—and rather embarrassed—when he realized he was about to put his arm around another woman. The look on his face was priceless. He immediately recoiled, stood up, and fled to our row where our whole family collapsed in a very irreverent heap of laughter. Rachel and Andrew had tears streaming down their faces and we didn't fully recover for about half an hour into the meeting (though I spent the day randomly relapsing every time I thought about it).

In Andrew's defense, my friend Marian was sitting in the row in front of us and she had left an Andrew-sized gap beside her. I don't think she meant to leave that gap. Her children had merely migrated to the other side of her. Marian's husband was recently called into the bishopric and this was his first Sunday conducting the meeting. He was so nervous about having to get up to conduct after the prayer that, although he was sitting on the stand, he didn't even notice Andrew making a move on his wife.

In Andrew's defense, Marian, like me, was wearing a pink top. And, like me, she was trying to wrangle three kids on her own. In his nervous stupor Andrew overlooked any other identifying traits. To make up for his brashness, we took Baby Jay for a large portion of the meeting, leaving each of us (me, Andrew, and Marian) to deal with only two kids each.

After sacrament meeting we split up to go to primary. I took all three kids with me, dropped Benjamin off at the nursery, and then went to sharing time with the girls. Andrew took all our stuff and went to his classroom, which incidentally is my classroom the following hour.

Andrew was still in the room tidying up when I arrived with my class.

"Oh, just so you know, there's a huge spider lurking around somewhere—I mean, it's huge. I tried to find it but I can't so it's just in the room somewhere, crawling around," he said to me as he left.

"Thanks, honey," I said. "Thanks for that."

Some things are better left unsaid.

I didn't find the spider until the end of church when Miriam and I were packing up to leave (or to go to choir, same thing). The spider had decided to hide in our church bag! And it was just as huge as Andrew suggested it was. Oh, boy!

I dropped the bag on the floor and the spider scuttled out. I dropped my binder on the floor, aiming for the spider, and missed. The silly—and probably very terrified—spider kept taking cover by every object I was trying to clean up but it eventually got the message and got far, far away.

So it's still lurking in that classroom, just so you know...