How I Spent My Summer Vacation

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column was full of humorous material when it left the office. Some settling may have occurred during shipment.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

Now that we're back from distant locales and enjoying the afterglow from restful family excursions, why don't we compare notes. Was your summer vacation as fun as mine? Did you relax, see the sights, have quality family time? Me neither.

But seriously, let's find out who got the most from their vacation by taking this quick and easy test:

For your summer trip, did you:
a) Enjoy a delightful week on the beach?
b) Relax on a scenic mountainside?
c) Drive 4,000 miles in a two-door Civic?

Your most memorable vacation experience was:
a) Making a human pyramid on the beach with your kids.
b) Taking a long, meaningful walk with your parents.
c) Getting an emergency root canal in Dallas.

Now that the vacation is over, you wonder why:
a) It seemed to go by so quickly.
b) Your family put off this wonderful trip for so long.
c) Your jaw still hurts.

You'll never forget this year's trip because:
a) Memories like these last forever.
b) The photos are great.
c) You can feel the hole with your tongue.

If you answered "C" to any of these questions, then you had just as much fun as I did. And you're already hoping that next year's vacation will offer some equally special times. Like maybe an appendectomy.

Religious News Corner

A few weeks ago a car was stopped for speeding in Fenton, Louisiana. Inside the car police found 20 naked people who claimed they disrobed because their clothes were "possessed by the Devil."

Now the media poked a lot of fun at these poor souls, but I won't, because I've had clothes like that myself. I remember in junior high when an aunt gave me a wool turtleneck that she bought at Satan's House of Regrettable Clothing. The neck part was so high and tight that my head looked like a golfball on a tee. Given a choice, I gladly would have preferred fleeing naked in a speeding car rather than going out in public looking like the Blind Date From Hell. I understand how these folks feel about clothes.

I do not understand how they all squeezed into one car.

To Boldly Go Where...

NASA's Mars Observer Probe continues its month-long deep space pout by refusing to return calls. NASA has no explanation, but did not rule out the possibility that the probe switched long-distance services without telling anybody. MCI was running a special before launch and, well, you know....

Words to Live By

Struggling with the daily challenges of urban life, I often seek spiritual direction from great works of scholarship. Reinhold Niebuhr, the father of modern liberal theology, spoke clearly to all of us in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society, where he offered a thoughtful critique of modern Christianity. And 60 years after they were penned, his words still ring true:

Oh, I'm the type of guy,
who likes to run around.
I roam from place to place.
I roam from town to town.
And when I find myself, ah,
falling for some girl,
I hop right into my car, yeah,
and I drive around the world.
Cause I'm a wanderer.
Yeah, I'm a wanderer.
I roam around and 'round and...."

Wait a minute! That's not Reinhold Niebuhr. That's Dion.

Sorry.

Short Subjects

It occurs to us that A River Runs Through It would have been a much shorter movie had it been filmed from the fish's point of view:

Act One. Scene One. "What a great day for a swim. Think I'll eat that bug. WHAT THE HEY...!" The End.

Study Questions

When you park your car, why do you put on the emergency brake? It's not an emergency, is it? Discuss.

Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners.