delicious food and not just a cardboard box full of canned beans and peas with dust on the top because people had them in the back of their cupboard for ten years before they donated them to the food bank. Or if he saw that crazy lady who sits outside the library with all her stuff in a bag, he would go over and give her a hundred dollars and say a prayer for her and hug her even if she stinks a little bit. And he wouldn’t tell anybody he did that stuff. He would justdo it nice and quiet. And he would adopt a little orphan from some poor country. Not a movie-star-looking orphan, neither, but a real ugly kid that nobody would want, and he would bring the ugly kid home and feed it good and raise it up right and send it to college so it could be a doctor or a teacher or a judge someday.
And if he saw a gay teenager that nobody liked who always hung out by himself, he wouldn’t wish that kid was dead or think about killing him or tell him he is going to burn in hell forever. Even if that gay kid was the preacher’s own kid, he wouldn’t say he wished the kid had never been born so he would feel like killing himself. He would be nice to that gay kid and he would love that kid even if the kid was against his religion.
I don’t know why people have to fight so much about religion and God. You should just be allowed to think what you want and it’s nobody’s business. Some days I believe in God but some days I don’t. Primo says you should pretend you believe in God even if you aren’t sure because if you believe in God and you die and there isn’t one, then you were just stupid when you were alive. But if you don’t believe in God and then you die and there he is, you’re in big trouble. I don’t think it would do you any good to just pretend to believe in God because if God is so smart he would know you were just faking it. But if you said you were sorry, then he would have to forgive you for faking it because that’s not a Ten Commandment. But Primo says no way. If God catches you faking it, he’ll get real pissed and you’ll be sorry.
Now I know why
mi abuelita
won’t let people talk about religion when we’re eating except to say a prayer at the beginning because everybody would get indigestion from yelling at each other. Everybody has an opinion about God but nobody can go look it up in the encyclopedia to win the bet and make the other people pay their ten dollars for being so stupid like
mi primo
Enrique always does.
CHAPTER 14
STICK TO THE DEAD DOG
A COUPLE WEEKS AGO , M R. M C E LROY WROTE THE WORDS
ARGUMENT and
fight
on the board and then he drew a line through
fight
and said an argument isn’t a fight with a winner and a loser, it’s just people exchanging ideas—which is exactly the kind of thing that teachers say and you wonder if they can hear how stupid they sound and do they really believe all that crap. I never heard anybody have an argument where they exchange ideas like old baseball cards. If it’s my uncles, they start out trading jokes and then insults and then punches. If it’s me and Papi, we skip the jokes and the insults.
McElroy made us read this whole article about how to argue the right way, like you have to stick to the topic of your argument the whole way. You can’t bring in all the stuffyou’ve been saving up to nuke the other guy with. So, if some dickhead got drunk and ran over your dog, you had to just say how sad you were to lose your pup and not bring up the fact that the same guy borrowed your lawn mower and brought it back with a broken starter or came over your house to watch the Super Bowl and drank seventeen beers and then never even invited you over his house to watch his new plasma TV.
You have to just stick to that dead dog. And you can’t do all the normal argument stuff like call the other person names, or break some dishes, or scream your guts out, or take off and don’t come back until tomorrow, or turn up the stereo so loud you can’t hear the other
And if he saw a gay teenager that nobody liked who always hung out by himself, he wouldn’t wish that kid was dead or think about killing him or tell him he is going to burn in hell forever. Even if that gay kid was the preacher’s own kid, he wouldn’t say he wished the kid had never been born so he would feel like killing himself. He would be nice to that gay kid and he would love that kid even if the kid was against his religion.
I don’t know why people have to fight so much about religion and God. You should just be allowed to think what you want and it’s nobody’s business. Some days I believe in God but some days I don’t. Primo says you should pretend you believe in God even if you aren’t sure because if you believe in God and you die and there isn’t one, then you were just stupid when you were alive. But if you don’t believe in God and then you die and there he is, you’re in big trouble. I don’t think it would do you any good to just pretend to believe in God because if God is so smart he would know you were just faking it. But if you said you were sorry, then he would have to forgive you for faking it because that’s not a Ten Commandment. But Primo says no way. If God catches you faking it, he’ll get real pissed and you’ll be sorry.
Now I know why
mi abuelita
won’t let people talk about religion when we’re eating except to say a prayer at the beginning because everybody would get indigestion from yelling at each other. Everybody has an opinion about God but nobody can go look it up in the encyclopedia to win the bet and make the other people pay their ten dollars for being so stupid like
mi primo
Enrique always does.
CHAPTER 14
STICK TO THE DEAD DOG
A COUPLE WEEKS AGO , M R. M C E LROY WROTE THE WORDS
ARGUMENT and
fight
on the board and then he drew a line through
fight
and said an argument isn’t a fight with a winner and a loser, it’s just people exchanging ideas—which is exactly the kind of thing that teachers say and you wonder if they can hear how stupid they sound and do they really believe all that crap. I never heard anybody have an argument where they exchange ideas like old baseball cards. If it’s my uncles, they start out trading jokes and then insults and then punches. If it’s me and Papi, we skip the jokes and the insults.
McElroy made us read this whole article about how to argue the right way, like you have to stick to the topic of your argument the whole way. You can’t bring in all the stuffyou’ve been saving up to nuke the other guy with. So, if some dickhead got drunk and ran over your dog, you had to just say how sad you were to lose your pup and not bring up the fact that the same guy borrowed your lawn mower and brought it back with a broken starter or came over your house to watch the Super Bowl and drank seventeen beers and then never even invited you over his house to watch his new plasma TV.
You have to just stick to that dead dog. And you can’t do all the normal argument stuff like call the other person names, or break some dishes, or scream your guts out, or take off and don’t come back until tomorrow, or turn up the stereo so loud you can’t hear the other
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