I was sitting next to a cousin at another relative's funeral memorial service a couple of years ago. My cousin was raised in a pretty secular household so she hadn't spent much time in churches growing up. About 3/4 of the way through the service the priest started blessing everyone.
The entire service this guy had been sweating. I don’t know if his robes were polyester or he had just gotten back from a run or what the deal was, but he was red-faced and dripping with perspiration. Huffing into his little microphone.
It’s also probably helpful to know that I was incredibly sunburned that day and was having a lot of trouble sitting/wearing clothes/being around people because I was uncomfortable. Being in a bent-legs position with my skin feeling like it was about to actually burst into flames had me primed for poor manners and a lot of my family was already annoyed with my complaining.
During the service the priest started smacking loudly, breathily, open-mouthed into his microphone. Smacking. That dry, floury crap on his cotton ball tongue and all of it playing out for us in that magnified, magic microphone way that only a crappy church sound system can provide.
About a minute later he was still going, assumedly because his body was expending all of its fluids budget on sweat, but he was trying to talk through it all. Praying while smacking. Spittle on the p’s and th’s.
After a while, my cousin leaned over to me and said, “What’s he got up there? Quiznos?” and I lost it. Could not stop laughing. Tears, gasping, shaking. I tried to shut my mouth and stare forward but it did nothing. I was snorting. I was done for.
My aunt elbowed me in my ribs, which of course made me laugh harder. The rage made it funnier, somehow. That that man on that stage could be as ridiculous as he wanted and everyone would be solemn, but I could laugh at something genuinely perfectly-timed and be frowned at like a farty dog during a dinner party.
After it became abundantly clear that I could not get my act together, I quietly got up and stood in the lobby near a Crystal Rock water bubbler for the remainder of the service. When my family came out, they just shook their heads at me like I was an unfeeling heathen. Then we went out to brunch and I ordered a Shirley Temple.
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