Oh, Go Kiss A Baptist...
Academic clubs. Activist clubs. Social clubs. I hate them. Granted, my antipathy is mostly due to my nonexistent artistic talent and negligible cooking skill; apparently the tasks of making posters and organizing Bake Sales are vitally important to the success of any self-respecting Club. Maybe I'm just bitter. But, rational or not, the fact remains that I despise them. They all have a really annoying habit of plastering the walls with posters and notices and sign-up sheets and petitions and anything else that will adhere to a flat surface with liberal amounts of tape. I generally remove all the duplicates I can find. As far as I'm concerned, it's fine to have one notice for a specific purpose in view, but there's no need to have a couple dozen in quick succession. Sure, it's cute when you're driving on back roads and every half mile of so there's a billboard that adds on to a sentence. Like: EAT... AT... JOE'S... GET... GAS... LODGING. Those are fun to laugh at.
But today I pulled a stack of those damn Bible Study fliers down. There were 27 in one hallway. Besides which, they annoyed the hell out of me. Pink and orange lettering. Removing them was a great kindness on my part. The things could have triggered seizures. They were all: Come to Bible Study!!! Be Saved!!! As a certified Grammar Whore, I find multiple exclamation points unendurably offensive. What annoyed me the most, however, was the litany of sins the Bible Study offered to save people from. There were the old standards such as pride and blasphemy, but they added in a few extras like extramarital sex, homosexuality, and dishonesty. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway. By the time I made it down the hallway, I had about 35 fliers to drop into the student center, where people could take whatever they wanted. I was about twenty seconds away from said student center when this happened:
I turned a corner and a girl (who looked like Little Bo Peep gone Prairie) latched onto my arm, shoved a flier at me and shrieked, right into my ear, "Jesus Loves You!" Moreover, I'm absolutely certain that if I'd asked her to write it down, the result would have been Jesus Loves U!!! I really didn't like her. But she was clinging to my arm, and I just couldn't shake her off. So I looked at the flier she gave me, which, obviously, was for Bible Study. I added it to my stack of Shit To Get Rid Of. She still wouldn't let me go, so I gave her that look you're supposed to give to small children and dogs to get them off the furniture. It worked, and she stepped back a pace and released me. But she was looking at me in this completely whacked out Children of the Corn way, so I just stood there and tried not to make any sudden movement. I value my life. She stared me right in the eye, leaned forward, and patted the flier. Which gave me the wicked creeps. And then, boom, she was smiling and happy again. So I was pissed. Now I had 28 Bible Study fliers to get rid of instead of 27, and I'm not sure why that bugged me so much, but it did.
So I got even. She saw that I was about to walk away, so she grabbed my arm and shrilled "Jesus Loves You!" again. I yanked a Gay/Straight Alliance flier from the stack of duplicates, shoved it into her hand and hollered back, "The Gays Love You!" She looked at the flier and made that self-righteous Ugh face, then realized that her hand was still on my arm. Her eyes almost fell out of her head, and before she could let go of me I grabbed her hand. She looked into my eyes again, but not in that creepy way. It was more an "Oh God, Cooties!" sort of look. So I winked at her. And her jaw dropped. Yeah, it was fun. But I had places to be, and I didn't have time for her to recover and smite me. When I left, her mouth was still hanging open and her eyes had sort of rolled back in her head.
Anyway. I actually dragged Lexi to Bible Study with me, just to see if the chick was there. She was, and she wasn't pleased to see me. Or Lexi. Which was exactly what I'd hoped for. I dunno. Sometimes it's just fun to play with the Baptists. Lexi wandered around and gathered all of the handouts and just made a general ass out of herself. But she enjoys being a dork, and that was really why I'd brought her. She managed to piss the royal shit out of some woman by admiring her WWJD necklace. The lady was all, "Thank you, it's white gold," and Lexi, bless her heart, said, "Yeah, I've got a keychain kinda like that..." And she pulled out her keys with the WWXD keychain. (That's "What Would Xena Do" for those stuck scratching their heads.) The lady turned a stunning shade of red and proceeded to lecture Lexi. "That's blasphemy!" But Lexi's a bad person to debate, so eventually the fight turned into Christianity as a Financial Enterprise and the lady lost ground fast.
The argument finally ended when Lexi got bored. She bounced her way over to where I was sitting and proceeded to drape herself over me. The group didn't like that much (well, the guys did but the girls mostly didn't - one of the girls just looked envious) but since there's a tolerance policy in effect for every club that meets on campus no one said anything. They all got down to business, discussing something that sounded religious. I made sure to stare at the Jesus Loves You Girl and Lexi feigned interest. Eventually she got bored, and interrupted with, "So... what does begat mean, again?" The group leader was like, "Um, birthed. Gave birth to." And Lexi kind of nodded and said, "Oh. I thought it meant, like, fucked." Needless to say, we left soon after that exchange. But I feel much more enlightened now.
But today I pulled a stack of those damn Bible Study fliers down. There were 27 in one hallway. Besides which, they annoyed the hell out of me. Pink and orange lettering. Removing them was a great kindness on my part. The things could have triggered seizures. They were all: Come to Bible Study!!! Be Saved!!! As a certified Grammar Whore, I find multiple exclamation points unendurably offensive. What annoyed me the most, however, was the litany of sins the Bible Study offered to save people from. There were the old standards such as pride and blasphemy, but they added in a few extras like extramarital sex, homosexuality, and dishonesty. Yeah. Whatever. Anyway. By the time I made it down the hallway, I had about 35 fliers to drop into the student center, where people could take whatever they wanted. I was about twenty seconds away from said student center when this happened:
I turned a corner and a girl (who looked like Little Bo Peep gone Prairie) latched onto my arm, shoved a flier at me and shrieked, right into my ear, "Jesus Loves You!" Moreover, I'm absolutely certain that if I'd asked her to write it down, the result would have been Jesus Loves U!!! I really didn't like her. But she was clinging to my arm, and I just couldn't shake her off. So I looked at the flier she gave me, which, obviously, was for Bible Study. I added it to my stack of Shit To Get Rid Of. She still wouldn't let me go, so I gave her that look you're supposed to give to small children and dogs to get them off the furniture. It worked, and she stepped back a pace and released me. But she was looking at me in this completely whacked out Children of the Corn way, so I just stood there and tried not to make any sudden movement. I value my life. She stared me right in the eye, leaned forward, and patted the flier. Which gave me the wicked creeps. And then, boom, she was smiling and happy again. So I was pissed. Now I had 28 Bible Study fliers to get rid of instead of 27, and I'm not sure why that bugged me so much, but it did.
So I got even. She saw that I was about to walk away, so she grabbed my arm and shrilled "Jesus Loves You!" again. I yanked a Gay/Straight Alliance flier from the stack of duplicates, shoved it into her hand and hollered back, "The Gays Love You!" She looked at the flier and made that self-righteous Ugh face, then realized that her hand was still on my arm. Her eyes almost fell out of her head, and before she could let go of me I grabbed her hand. She looked into my eyes again, but not in that creepy way. It was more an "Oh God, Cooties!" sort of look. So I winked at her. And her jaw dropped. Yeah, it was fun. But I had places to be, and I didn't have time for her to recover and smite me. When I left, her mouth was still hanging open and her eyes had sort of rolled back in her head.
Anyway. I actually dragged Lexi to Bible Study with me, just to see if the chick was there. She was, and she wasn't pleased to see me. Or Lexi. Which was exactly what I'd hoped for. I dunno. Sometimes it's just fun to play with the Baptists. Lexi wandered around and gathered all of the handouts and just made a general ass out of herself. But she enjoys being a dork, and that was really why I'd brought her. She managed to piss the royal shit out of some woman by admiring her WWJD necklace. The lady was all, "Thank you, it's white gold," and Lexi, bless her heart, said, "Yeah, I've got a keychain kinda like that..." And she pulled out her keys with the WWXD keychain. (That's "What Would Xena Do" for those stuck scratching their heads.) The lady turned a stunning shade of red and proceeded to lecture Lexi. "That's blasphemy!" But Lexi's a bad person to debate, so eventually the fight turned into Christianity as a Financial Enterprise and the lady lost ground fast.
The argument finally ended when Lexi got bored. She bounced her way over to where I was sitting and proceeded to drape herself over me. The group didn't like that much (well, the guys did but the girls mostly didn't - one of the girls just looked envious) but since there's a tolerance policy in effect for every club that meets on campus no one said anything. They all got down to business, discussing something that sounded religious. I made sure to stare at the Jesus Loves You Girl and Lexi feigned interest. Eventually she got bored, and interrupted with, "So... what does begat mean, again?" The group leader was like, "Um, birthed. Gave birth to." And Lexi kind of nodded and said, "Oh. I thought it meant, like, fucked." Needless to say, we left soon after that exchange. But I feel much more enlightened now.