Life lessons

In other disturbing news (I know that isn't a great way to begin a story in which there hasn't been any other news, disturbing or otherwise, but who cares - I got your attention, right?) Our neighbor, who is only eight, and her mother, who is more than eight but one year less than forty, asked Jack to buy a rooster, which he did. He immediately showed the rooster to Maggie and Maggie immediately loved the rooster. She named him Tom, although Lenny would have been more appropriate.

Maggie woke up the past couple of days and couldn't wait to go feed Tom some grass. She talked about Tom quite a bit and I think she may have even dreamed about him. Then Jack, after witnessing the sweetness of this relationship, got really nervous and confessed to me that he got himself into a jam and didn't know what to do. The jam was that our neighbor and her daughter only wanted Jack to get the rooster so he could kill it and fry it. They thought this would be "fun".

Now this posed  some problems. One was that Maggie had become attached to the rooster, even though Jack only had it for three days. Another was that I began to think my neighbors were sick freaks and I truly don't like thinking things like this (okay, I like it a little).  My thought was that it would have been somewhat simpler, and much less disgusting, to drive the two miles to the local Publix and buy a chicken that had already been properly slaughtered.

Another issue was that whenever my children kill lubbers, the little girl member of this disturbed family tells my children that they are horrible for killing one of God's creatures. So there was a bit of hypocrisy going on. Kate immediately picked up on this, said something about it to the girl, and the reply was, "well, God put us in charge of animals and chickens are for eating," and then Kate said to me, "this is why people can't stand Christians. They make no sense." To which I agreed. It should be noted that there are many people I can't stand. I don't stop at Christians.

Anyway, we went off to church on Sunday (that's what good Christians do)and while we were there, the other Christians stayed home, killed the chicken, and then hid all remnants of it so that Maggie wouldn't know what had happened. When we got home Maggie ran over to see Tom and they all lied and told her that they brought Tom back to the farm because he missed his mommy. Maggie cried for several minutes.

Things were getting ridiculous and the humor in all of this had reached a level that was crossing over into the insane. I wanted to say, "Oh so while I was receiving the body of Christ, you were all butchering an innocent chicken," but I have found that sometimes people really don't appreciate my sense of humor, especially when it concerns religious matters, so I let that one go, but I did say, "well, you wouldn't have to lie if you believed in what you did." And they all looked down shamefully and my mission was accomplished.

Then I decided to turn the whole thing into a life lesson, because if there is one thing I know for sure it is that my children love when I turn everything into a life lesson. Trust me - they adore me for this. Go ahead and try it on your own kids and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway - Life lesson? My life is somewhat boring and I'm glad I have sick freaks for neighbors or I would have nothing to write about. Maybe if I'm lucky one of them will want some fresh beef real soon.