![]() January 16, 2021--Religious Freedom Day While out in our yards one day playing with all of the neighbors' children, a lady drove a dark sedan through the street slowly. When she saw all of us youngsters about our house and the two homes across the street, she stopped and got out. She handed us each a flyer. I could not read yet, but I didn't need to because she told us all what it said. She said to show the paper to our parents and have them drop us off at her church that evening at six o'clock. They were having a revival and were going to hand out the biggest candy bar in the world to a waiting child. She said we would all have a chance at winning the giant bar just by attending the service. "The biggest candy bar in the world?" we shouted. "Will it be Hershey's?" Someone chimed in, "I hope it's a Crunch bar." "I can't tell you what kind it will be, but it will be at least twenty feet long," said the lady. My brother and I ran inside to tell our mom about this exciting kid-friendly adventure. My mom said, "No," initially. We were Presbyterian, and this was not going to be the same as our church. However, we pleaded. We cajoled. We begged. Finally, my mom went outside to talk to the other neighborhood moms. A meeting was held in the middle of our street. All of us kids stood on our respective sidewalks and waited. Eventually, the mothers adjourned, and we all went inside. Once in our house, my mother said my brother and I could go, but we would probably be disappointed. She warned us that there might not even be a giant candy bar given away to anyone at the end of the service. However, her words fell on deaf ears. We said we would share the candy bar with each other if we were the lucky winners. Finally, that evening, after dinner, we put on church clothes and loaded into the neighbor's car who had agreed to drive us all there. My mom had filled my head with so many warnings about how different this church was going to be that at first I was disappointed. From both the inside and the outside, it looked like any ordinary church. We sat side by side on a normal church pew. There were songs, and prayers. Finally a lady came out and started talking about our names that were written in a big book somewhere. She kept turning around and pretending to write names in a giant Bible that was propped open on the alter. This action confused me because she said our names were in a huge heavenly book that we couldn't see. However, I could see the Bible up there. I didn't know what she meant. She continued to call out the names of children in the crowd. She said every time they did something good, a check mark was put next to their name. My name never got called out. And I listened specifically for it. Never mentioned. Not even once, but plenty of other names got more than one check mark. Finally, at the end of the service, it was time to give away the world's largest candy bar. Some adults began walking into the sanctuary with a long garland of taped together hard candy. The bad kind of candy you get at Halloween. The sort of candy in your trick-or-treat bag that gets eaten last, or not at all. Peppermint disks, butterscotch buttons, root beer barrels, and gummy fruit gels. It was not a candy bar at all. It was simply a long-ass rope of candy that someone had painstakingly clipped together with scotch tape. The lady announced another name, the winner of this not-really-a-candy-bar at all revival/fiasco. It went to a boy we did not know. On the way out of the church, they let us each pick one piece of the same candy mix from a bucket. I took a root beer barrel, but it didn't taste quite the same as the other root beer barrels I had once devoured. When we went home and told our mother about this woman's shameful disregard for the truth, it was the first time I remember her ever saying, "I told you so." |
AuthorKaren Schwabenland--Keeper of a daily blog of written matter, reporter of events large and small, and charlatan extraordinaire Archives
September 2022
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