By Kim Michael
I am nine years old. It’s Tuesday night. “Bible Study Night” at church. My dad is the teacher. The White Chapel Bible Study is a small, but faithful group of followers who diligently meet downstairs, in the basement every Tuesday night to read the bible—every chapter—every passage-every word–diligently, if not painfully. Like I said I’m nine. I had a hard time sitting still. Our church was small; out in the middle of nowhere, an old farm house on one side and a corn field butted up to the back of the property. There were no bathrooms, just an old outhouse behind the church next to the back fence, with a Sears catalogue hanging inside (not for reading). People joke about it now, but that’s the way it was back then.
Mom knew Tuesday nights were hard on me, sitting quietly for so long. She would often fix something I liked for supper before we went. The night of the “incident” she fixed one of my favorites. “Beans and Weenies”. Now for this part of the story you need to understand I have a sensitive digestive system. Strange things happen when I eat certain foods. Now that I’m an adult, I have come to know which foods bother me and which ones don’t, however at nine, I was still very much in the discovery stage. The food, or culprit in question here—BEANS.
I ate two big, and I mean BIG, helpings that night. Beans and weenies with buttered bread. There is nothing better.
At seven o’clock we were at the church, down in the basement. Just heading into the book of Exodus. Somewhere between the first and second plague that hit Egypt something started rumbling in my stomach. When the angel of death showed up in Egypt, I could feel his presence. Unknown things were happening to me; pressure building. I began sweating. Then I thought about that outhouse in the dark. By myself. In the cold. That scared me even more. I tried to stay calm hoping it would go away, but it didn’t. I was determined to hang in there–I would do anything not to have to go to that outhouse, but it was not to be.
The storm of beens and weenies continued to churn, and by the time we got to the part when Moses said, “Let My People Go”, it was if a voice on some distant shore of rotten eggs and sulfur cried out, “Release The Kraken”.
It started out as a low rumble. Everyone looked up and directly at me. No smiles or laughter. Their eyes wide, in cold disbelief. I tried to clinch, but that only made the pitch go higher. I covered almost three octaves that ended in some kind of whistle that was still going. I could do nothing to stop it.
When it was finally over everyone just stared at me. I was terrified. My dad turned to me red-faced and embarrassed; looked me in the eye and said, “What do you say?”
My face went blank. I had no idea. What do you say after you’ve bombed the Tuesday Night Bible Study group with deadly beans and weenie gas? I was petrified. All I could think to say was…“Thank you?”
My dad just stared at me. Finally, his face eased up. He looked to the others, “Give me a minute, I’ll take him out to the outhouse.”
We walked to the back door and out into the dark. He had his flashlight. By the time we’d gotten there I no longer had to go. I tried, but I couldn’t. Dad said nothing. As we walked back toward the door, I began to cry. I didn’t want to go back inside. I didn’t want to face all those people again. Dad knelt down and hugged me.
“It’s OK,” he said finally. “Go on to the car, turn the heater on and you can listen to the radio until we come out. Those days we had a couple of riders we took home.
It was probably not the best decision on my dad’s part. The beans and weenies would strike again before they all came out and piled in the car. We had to drive home in twenty degree weather, with the windows down…with my dad glancing up at me in the mirror in disbelief.
Sometimes there are just not enough “Thank Yous” to say.
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