Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Whatever you do, don’t prop up your arm
We were talking about Noah’s Ark tonight, which reminded me of those Illustrated Bible Stories books that were an inevitable find at any doctor’s or dentist’s office when we were kids. I ate those stories up like Milk Duds. “Remember the Flood, Karen?” She didn’t remember that one. “The Flood was Jesus’ tears.”
Then I reminded her of the one about the kid in the hospital —
Didn’t take any more than that. We both put up our right hands and burst out laughing. Jake thought we were crazy.
I tried to find it online just now, and could only find a discussion of it over on James Randi’s forums. I’ll let “Lisa Simpson” explain the story in her own words:
My “favorite” story was one of a boy, in the hospital for a tonsillectomy or something similarly minor, who was placed in the same hospital room as a boy who had been in a car accident and critically injured. Car accident boy is dying and scared. Tonsillectomy boy tells car accident boy that if he raises his hand, Jesus will know he’s ready to go to heaven and Jesus will take him. But car accident boy is too injured to raise his hand by himself, so tonsillectomy boy uses a pillow to prop up car accident boy’s arm. In the morning, when tonsillectomy boy wakes up, car accident boy is dead, dead, dead.
I spent many a night sleeping with my arms clenched to my sides, afraid that Grim Reaper Jesus would kill me in the night.
My favorite response downthread:
So tonsillectomy boy killed him and got away with it?
And further downthread, commentor joobz explains that there are, in fact, some New Testament stories he likes:
Like the story of Jesus with some dude and a whore.
whore comes in, some dude says, “begone whore!”. And Jesus is all like, “No, come back here whore, it’s ok… That guy is being a D**hebag”
As a kid, religion baffled and titillated me. I fantasized wrestling matches between God and Satan, refereed by Jesus or Moses (depending on who had ref duty that day, I suppose). I was bright enough to recognize the various internal inconsistencies but not a natural cynic enough (like my son) to reject it all out of hand. Christianity in particular fascinated me; I remember reading stories of the Crucifixion that read like torture porn, and I wondered, and still wonder, how God could be kind and good and also be okay with damnation being mankind’s default state.
What amazes me is that so many people DO get their heads around these ideas, and become quite agitated if someone challenges their rationality.
D.
Yes. That book again. That huge black car, that small boy, all those bandages. The propped arm For Jesus. The ghost of god coming in to fondle dead children.
It’s that ol’ time religion, Katie.