helper, Sister Durrel, had to scour the whole basement to come up with enough Bibles for us. Then, when she was passing them out, she smiled and gave the only illustrated one to me. I about died! Sister Durrel is so beautiful compared to everything else at Sabbath School it’s like my eyeballs turn into compass needles, and she’s North. One time up in church I stared at her so long that Everett got embarrassed and gouged me in the ribs, telling me to knock it off, but I gouged him right back and said, “Why should I?” He gouged me again and whispered, “Because Sister Durrel is at least eight years older than you, and engaged to Brother Beal, and if she was your age she wouldn’t have breasts and her thick brown hair would be in scraggly pigtails and she’d be as knobbly-kneed and snot-nosed as every other girl you know!” I’ll admit I hadn’t thought of some of that. But I gouged him right back again and said that if she was my age I’d ask her to marry me anyhow: I’d just set the wedding date for the age she is now.
It was by accident that I discovered how much nicer it is getting sent to The Corner than it is sticking with the Sabbath School class. The main trouble with the class isn’t Brother Beal’s lectures, which are only boring. It’s these cockeyed study groups they break us up into. After a hard week of
real
school, the last thing a person needs first thing Saturday morning is some goody-goody mom or dad grilling them on this Sabbath’s lesson in
Pathfinder Magazine
or My
Little Friend
. The Corner is supposedly a punishment: you sit with your back to the class, and youcan’t talk. But what good is freedom of speech if all you can use it for is answering goody-goody study group questions? To me it makes more sense to get thrown in The Corner, where the freedom of not-speaking allows you to sit back and rest. Resting is what Sabbath is all about anyway. It’s what God Himself does with His Saturdays. It’s right there in the Bible, Everett says: “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but on the Seventh Day God rested, so human beings should do the same. And getting all gussied up and going to church is
not
resting.” All Mama ever says to that, though, is, “Pipe down and get your tie on.”
Everett and Peter are in an older class that hasn’t got a Corner, and the twins are in a kiddie class that’s actually just a bunch of brats fidgeting and crying. But Irwin is in my class, and I’ve tried to share the good news: I’ve told him how nice it is here in The Corner. But he refuses to take advantage of it due to this Memory Verse Streak he’s got going …
For 160-some Sabbaths in a row now Irwin has nailed his Memory Verse dead—and the way Brother Beal treats him, you’d think it was DiMaggio’s hitting streak. “Iron Man Irwin” he calls him. It’s kind of embarrassing. Still it’s a nice thing for Winnie, since he’s a bit of a dodo at real school. He feels he’s keeping the streak going for Jesus. He even told his study group how his memory didn’t work worth a hoot till he asked the Lord to come into his life and make some repairs on it. Of course Beal and the other Sabbath School teachers could eat that kind of crap for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I think Irwin really meant it. He seems genuinely fond of Jesus. Peter does too, come to think of it, though he gives his Sabbath School teachers ulcers of the brain by being just as fond of Buddha and Krishna and Finn MacCool and Odin One-Eye and King Rama and I don’t remember who all, thanks to his ongoing adventures with heathen reading material. Everett on the other hand thinks of Jesus as just one more of these out-of-this-world Nice Guys who, as Leo Durocher predicted, finished dead last. It’s right there in the Bible, Everett says: “Christ admits it Himself.
‘I
am the Alpha and the Omega. The First—and the Last.’”
It’s strange the way everybody has their own pet notion about Jesus, and
It was by accident that I discovered how much nicer it is getting sent to The Corner than it is sticking with the Sabbath School class. The main trouble with the class isn’t Brother Beal’s lectures, which are only boring. It’s these cockeyed study groups they break us up into. After a hard week of
real
school, the last thing a person needs first thing Saturday morning is some goody-goody mom or dad grilling them on this Sabbath’s lesson in
Pathfinder Magazine
or My
Little Friend
. The Corner is supposedly a punishment: you sit with your back to the class, and youcan’t talk. But what good is freedom of speech if all you can use it for is answering goody-goody study group questions? To me it makes more sense to get thrown in The Corner, where the freedom of not-speaking allows you to sit back and rest. Resting is what Sabbath is all about anyway. It’s what God Himself does with His Saturdays. It’s right there in the Bible, Everett says: “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but on the Seventh Day God rested, so human beings should do the same. And getting all gussied up and going to church is
not
resting.” All Mama ever says to that, though, is, “Pipe down and get your tie on.”
Everett and Peter are in an older class that hasn’t got a Corner, and the twins are in a kiddie class that’s actually just a bunch of brats fidgeting and crying. But Irwin is in my class, and I’ve tried to share the good news: I’ve told him how nice it is here in The Corner. But he refuses to take advantage of it due to this Memory Verse Streak he’s got going …
For 160-some Sabbaths in a row now Irwin has nailed his Memory Verse dead—and the way Brother Beal treats him, you’d think it was DiMaggio’s hitting streak. “Iron Man Irwin” he calls him. It’s kind of embarrassing. Still it’s a nice thing for Winnie, since he’s a bit of a dodo at real school. He feels he’s keeping the streak going for Jesus. He even told his study group how his memory didn’t work worth a hoot till he asked the Lord to come into his life and make some repairs on it. Of course Beal and the other Sabbath School teachers could eat that kind of crap for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I think Irwin really meant it. He seems genuinely fond of Jesus. Peter does too, come to think of it, though he gives his Sabbath School teachers ulcers of the brain by being just as fond of Buddha and Krishna and Finn MacCool and Odin One-Eye and King Rama and I don’t remember who all, thanks to his ongoing adventures with heathen reading material. Everett on the other hand thinks of Jesus as just one more of these out-of-this-world Nice Guys who, as Leo Durocher predicted, finished dead last. It’s right there in the Bible, Everett says: “Christ admits it Himself.
‘I
am the Alpha and the Omega. The First—and the Last.’”
It’s strange the way everybody has their own pet notion about Jesus, and
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