(no subject)
While leaving HyVee last night, a woman was chatting with someone briefly near the exit. I walked past and got to my truck, then as I stepped away from the door, my bag of apples tipped over and spilled. While I was picking them up, she was behind my truck and commented on my Texas plate. She proceeded to chat with me for what must've been around an hour at least. I wasn't really in a hurry to get home as if I was anticipating something. She had some funny things to tell me. She's a graduate-level theologian, Lutheran, and goes to St. Matthew's on 18th and White street, her son-in-law works for Microsoft, and she lives with her husband at the top of 5th street. There are 27 names for the civil war, and in the 70s, there were people in Florida who thought Minnesota was a settlement where there were still Native Americans. Of all the things she chatted with me about, funny, obscure things from the history of the Catholic church were what amused her the most. There used to be as many as three different papacies, and one of the significant ones was the Avignon Papacy. Some of the saints are kind of crazy: Agatha of Sicily is depicted in art with her severed breasts on a platter, and Saint Dunstan held the Devil by the nose with scalding tongs. In the 15th century, there was penis theft by witches, and they kept them alive in bird's nests. I imagine if I hadn't been the guy who, after being surprised at her having gone to Hebrew school then asking if she knew the shema, then reciting the v'ahavta in my best Hebrew accent in response to her recitation, I might've gotten to leave before 9:30. Instead, she chatted me up, welcomed me to the real midwest (of which Ohio is not a part), called me a literate Lutheran, and bid me shalom.