My husband went to work with a terrible sinus infection today. He works outdoors and it rained today, so I felt really bad for him and decided to cook him a nice dinner.
The local grocery store had a promotion in the month before Easter where when you shop there for 4 weeks in a row you get a free Easter ham. We got the ham, I never coded it in my head as an Easter ham, just a ham which, for us, is a very nice dinner.
So, today I popped the ham in the oven as a kind of consolation prize to my husband for having to work while sick today.
I completely forgot that today is Good Friday. And, Catholics definitely DO NOT eat meat on Good Friday!
So, my husband comes in from work looking like a drowned rat. He is exhausted and hungry and I enthusiastically informed him that I had cooked a ham especially for him because he wasn't feeling well.
He sat down at the table and dug in with appreciative noises. It was delicious, he says. Then, the Catholic guilt kicks in.
"Don't tell MomMom we're having ham on Good Friday," he says to my son, speaking about his Catholic mother.
"Why?" my son wants to know.
"Well," my husband says, "Catholics don't eat meat on Fridays and especially not on Good Friday."
My 14 year old son thought about that for a second or two. I was curious about what he thought about religion in general and the two lapsed religions of his parents in particular.
He giggled. "I've got something you need to see." And he pulled out his I-Pod and found a video for us to watch. He sat the I-Pod on the table and hit play.
It was George Carlin's "Religion is Bullshit" comedy sketch! I had seen it before and loved it. Carlin goes on to complain how god is really bad at managing his finances and he's always asking for money. He's decided to pray to Joe Pesci because he gets the same rate of response he gets from god, which is to say 50-50, just like when he wishes upon a star. Carlin really calls out blind belief in god as ridiculous. He does it with humour and a fair amount of potty mouth, but it seems my son identifies with his point of view.
I am so relieved! I have been endlessly worried that my mother's jw witnessing might get to him, but he seems to have figured out that religion is a snare and a racket on his own. One less worry for me.
I'm on my tablet, but if anyone could post George Carlin's "Religion is Bullshit" sketch, that would be great. It's a classic and says what so many nonbelievers think but don't always feel like they can say in public, especially in uber-religious America.
I don't think he's going to spill the beans to his MomMom!