Mostly Anecdotal

The pizza arrived, a thin crust vegetarian. I found my wife on the couch in the family room, the TV on, her snoring and a ballgame the only sounds in the room.

“Gail,” I said, “the pizza is here are you hungry?” She kept snoring, a light very feminine snore. “Gail,” I yelled, she awoke, startled, I was immediately sorry I hadn’t taken the time to walk over and gently shake her awake, but it was too late for that, the damage was done. Oh yes, she was annoyed, and angry, and it was a righteous anger.

Later the boys and I sat down to watch a movie, I, thinking the anger had passed, made a crack about sleeping beauty and the beast reappeared and took me to task once again.

I tried to defend myself with the only possible tool, humor.

“You do the same thing to me,” I said.

“Never,” she replied.

“Uh huh,” I said.

“Give me a single example of where I yelled to wake you up.

“You do it almost every morning,” I said.

“Okay smart ass,” she said “explain.”

I looked at my audience, the boys, and smiled.

“Yap Yap,” I said, doing my best impression of our barking dog Chole and then in what I must say was a pretty good impression of my wife noble effort to get the dog to be quiet so I could sleep a little longer yelling, “CHOLE QUIT BARKING, CHLOE, CHLOOEE!”

I continued to address the boys, and on other mornings it’s “Harry leave Tegan alone, in an equally loud voice. Harry and Tegan are cats, Harry a young male and Tegan an elegant old lady.

I looked over at Gail to see whether I was off the hook yet, or still in the stew of my own making. The boys were laughing, and she had the hint of a smile on her lips.

“Tegan’s a person too,” I said.

I’m not a church going kind of guy. I haven’t been inside a church for worshipping purposes for over 40 years. I’m a nonbeliever, an atheist.

Some would say that not only am I an atheist but a rather outspoken one, and I am, but I’ve mellowed over the years.

There was a time when my car sported the magnetic bumper sticker, “Religion is the Problem not the Solution,” magnetic because the religious, at least a sizable contingent of them, contrary to their claims are not very tolerant. A keyed door panel convinced me it wasn’t prudent to have such an in-your-face message permanently affixed to my car.

But back to the story of my bumper sticker and those loving tolerant God fearing souls who populate our cities and towns. I was driving down Interstate 15 one Sunday afternoon with my family, this was when gas prices were under two dollars a gallon and my two boys were young, maybe six and ten. We pulled even with another car, an older couple, perhaps on their way to visit their grandchildren, or maybe on the way home from church.

They looked over at us, and seeing, what I’m sure they thought was the standard issue happy Christian family out for a Sunday drive, smiled their we-approve smile. And then, a strange thing happened, we pulled slightly ahead of them and they noticed the bumper sticker. Their smiles immediately turned to frowns, and the frowns to sneers, their heads then snapped to the straight ahead position, and they changed lanes increasing the distance between our cars as fast as they could.

You’d have thought we’d turned into the devil and his minions, so much for “love your neighbor as thyself.” In the past 30 years an intolerance toward nonbelievers has, I believe, increased. Indeed, I still believe that religion is more often the problem than it is the solution.