Once Upon A Mid-day Dreary
Mormon churches are almost always too hot during the first spring warm up. Yesterday was no exception. I found myself listening to the High Council speaker so closely that I’d close my eyes to concentrate on what he was saying. I’d then have wonderful visions of things that were extremely interesting only to feel the punch on my arm bringing me back to reality. At least I usually don’t snore when I doze in church…at least I don’t think I do!
The one thing I couldn’t get out of my head yesterday as I dozed in sacrament meeting was my encounter with the sick pigeon. I went out to the garage on my way to an early* church meeting and there he was standing on the top of our van.
At first I was extremely startled to find a bird sitting on top of the van…not because I’m afraid of pigeons but because I had been out to the van a couple times that morning and I never noticed him. I’m sure he had been there for a while because he was asleep…at least he appeared to be. I approached the bird and he opened his eyes and looked at me with an extremely annoyed look on his face…he seemed so irritated that I would disturb him. I was a little nervous about the fact that he didn’t seem the least bit afraid of me. This irritated me…birds are supposed to be afraid of people. I almost expected him to say something to me but he never opened his mouth…he just kept looking at me like I was the biggest jerk in the world. I thought to myself “you’ll see what a jerk I am in a few seconds” and chuckled.
I started the van and slowly backed out…I didn’t want him to jump off and fly around in the garage…I hate when birds get stuck in the garage. They are too stupid to fly out the giant front door so they just fly into the ceiling and walls hoping they will break through or something. The pigeon didn’t jump off the van…I figured he was still on top. When I was out of the garage I stopped suddenly hoping he’d jump off or slide off if he was too weak to fly. I heard nothing. I then believed that he must have flown off already so I decided to forget the whole thing and drive to the welfare meeting I was late for. As I accelerated up on the road in front of our house I heard a couple big thumps on the top of the van and looked in the rear view mirror to see a ball of feathers bouncing on the road behind me.
For the first time I began to feel sorry for the bird. I turned the van around to drive back and see if he was dead or injured and found him standing in the shade under a large utility truck. He looked up at me with that same annoyed look on his face and immediately I stopped feeling bad.
*When I say early I mean 11:00AM. That’s early when your church starts at 2:30PM. I hate the late block schedule.
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Just wait until word gets around… the bird’s whole family is going to come and poop on your van… you better not leave it outside.
Comment by Lars-Erik Rundquist — April 23, 2004 @ 2:37 pm
Well….if you snore when you sleep at home…you would probably snore at church too!
I am careful not to doze in sacrament meeting, because my wife has revealed to me that I snore in my sleep. I don’t think I’d hear the end of it if I did that in my ward!
Comment by Cody — May 5, 2004 @ 12:30 pm