For the Love of Christ

All day every day I put things in alphabetical order. Go ahead test me. Kelly what’s between J and M? KL. Bam. No pausing. Right there back with it. I know the alphabet like…well like the alphabet. Which I know even better than the back of my hand. The back of my hand is something I’m not all that familiar with. How many freckles are on my left hand? No clue. How many letters in the alphabet? 26.

I’m rambling. The point is I am employed but still looking. I am casually dating this job with the option for seeing other jobs (which always means you are hoping to meet a better job I mean seriously.)

A man named Rod called me four days ago, responding to a resume I had forgotten I emailed to basically every place in Louisville whose web address ended in dot org. So Rod of an unknown dot org says he’s looking for a sort of creative director type person to help organize this uber-progressive school he runs. He wants someone to organize trips into the woods where kids learn to write poetry/gut fish/be at one with nature/etc. Rod wants to know if I am qualified to maybe do this and teach a few writing/lit classes to inner city homeless kids. He also wants me to know that my resume is pretty much his favorite resume ever and he’ll do some number crunching and figure out a way to make the salary competitive with what I put as my salary requirement on some phantom email I forgot I sent. Rod is basically sent from heaven is what Rod is.

But then it turns out Rod really IS sent from Heaven. Capitalized Heaven.

Rod says, “And Kelly before I go ahead and get really excited about this, I just want to make sure that you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your savior.”

Rod says this offhand like he’s asking if I know that service necessitates the wearing of shirts and shoes. Like embarrassed to even be asking a question whose answer is so obviously yes.

And I have this weird moment. Could I be Sister Mary Iambic Pentameter? This moment slowed down Zach Morris style, like he had just snapped his fingers and frozen time so I could discuss with the audience whether or not I wanted to tell Mr. Belding that I was an atheist/aspiring Jew/potential antichrist…

Two years ago a friend of mine embattled the both of us in an argument the crux of which was this: if we are both characters on Seinfeld, who is Elaine? This seems irrelevant and nonsequitorish but it isn’t. You see, after several arguments, it was decided that she was Elaine and I was GEORGE. And up until Rod’s phone call I had been able to tell myself that this comparison wasn’t in any way based on my deportment but rather alluded to my adorable ability to, um, “aim above morality.”

But could I, as George certainly would have, pretend to be a devout Christian in order to get a job? Could I sit there and tell Rod Mister teach poetry in the woods for money that when in doubt about a certain action I stop and wonder what course of action Jesus would take and that if I forget there’s a little plastic bracelet on my wrist to remind me? Could I deny that the only time I say the father, son, and holy ghost is when I’m singing along with Don Mclean? Could I stomach creationism in science class? I could not. Which delivered the cold hard truth about my Costanzaness lying not in my morals but my BMI. Damn.

So I said to Rod, "And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them." -Isaiah 10:18-20

Okay I didn't say that. I just kinda hung up.