Miracles

I’m not anti-religion or anything, but I haven’t been to church in a few years.  Last time I went, I had a rather jarring experience—one of those that’s so impactful it results in a chemical imbalance in your brain and forever alters your senses.  You know the kind.  For example, when I was younger, just a wee little tyke, my mom made me a Marie Callender’s microwaveable chicken pot pie for dinner.  I’m not sure if it was expired, or if Marie Callender’s is of such a lesser quality compared to some of the other big names in the frozen dinner game, but I remember spending the entire night throwing up into my Legos bin.  Haven’t been able to stomach a chicken pot pie since.  Another example: in college, some pals and I made plans to go out on the town—to drop it low, to pop our collars, to partake in anything and everything that would place us firmly under the umbrella of “tearing da club up.”  That was the plan, anyway.  For the pregame, somebody brought over a handle of birthday cake-flavored vodka, and, believe me, we threw those shots back like an anti-vax Michael Jordan.  Needless to say, no one made it out—the ladies were safe another night!—and I can’t eat birthday cake anymore.

So, a week before my experience in church, I’d fucked my ankle going down a water slide.  I’d ended up on my stomach somehow, and when I shot out of the opening, my foot caught the bottom of the pool and got all twisted.  I must’ve been going 60 mph.  It didn’t take long before it started looking like the week-old carcass of a beached beluga whale, all bruised and bloated and gross.  When Al caught wind of my convalescence, he paid me a visit and told me to come to his evening service that Saturday.  Said something about the healing powers of the Lord and how he works in mysterious ways.  Well, if His highness could untwist my ankle and send me back up that water slide, I said I’d give it a shot. 

Saturday rolled around and, because I hadn’t really gotten out of the house since the accident, I thought it’d be a good idea to take some precautionary measures.  I was still hobbling around a bit, so I rubbed a mighty healthy dollop of capsaicin ointment all over my foot—got the ankle, the heel, the arch, in between the toes.  Everywhere.  Figured it couldn’t hurt.  Boyo, was I wrong!  It was right when Rev. Al had begun his homily that I started feeling funny.  Or my foot, rather.  And by funny, I mean a burning sensation.  Like Michael Scott when he clamped his in the George Foreman.  I tried to shake it off, rubbed my shoe against my other leg, stomped it on the ground, but yeah, if your foot has ever been on fire, you know—as I do now—that there is only one way to soothe it.  But I didn’t know that at the time, so I hopped on one leg to the bathroom, plopped myself up on the sink, took my shoe and sock off, and stuck it under the tap.  Right as I was cursing the piss poor water pressure of the automatic faucet, a man and his son walked in.  I could tell they were confused, appalled perhaps, so I tried to explain myself, from the beginning with the water slide, but they skedaddled out of there before I could finish. 

As you may have guessed, the sink was no help.  I was in so much pain and wasn’t thinking straight that I exited the bathroom without first putting my sock and shoe back on.  And, as I said at the beginning, I’m not anti-religion—I’m actually quite pro-religion—because I have no other way to explain what happened next other than that a lovely old lady—quite possibly the Virgin Mother herself—noticed me in my distress, took me by the arm back to some sort of office or breakroom, and sat me down.  She then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tub of vanilla yogurt.  Christ, the relief when she scooped out a handful and began to lather it on my blazing, naked dog.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven right then and there, but I must’ve just passed out from the pure ecstasy.  When I awoke, I was alone in the chair, but I was wearing socks and shoes on both of my feet.  I got up and opened the refrigerator.  It was empty.  As I turned to leave the room, I swore I could smell the faintest hint of vanilla.