by Thomas M. Pender
Landing smack in the middle of the Bible Belt in 1999, I learned right away that the area got that name because the citizens literally carried Bibles around in their belts. At my first job in Georgia, we got one 10-minute break in the morning, a lunch hour, and a 15-minute break in the afternoon. By this, I mean everyone in the small company went on break at the same set times. It was no shock to me on my first day that all the smokers immediately stood up and scurried outside like a herd of antsy buffalo. The shock came when the remaining non-smokers brought out the scriptures!
Now, for the record, I am a Christian, and a good one. God and Jesus and I get along just fine. I even go to see them in church. Forgive me, however, if I got the absolute willies when I looked around a place of business and saw person after person after person reading the Bible. I wasn’t sure which would be less uncomfortable: going outside to watch people smoke, or sitting neck-deep in the dogma. One person on my first day even took the time – in my first five minutes on the job, mind you – to invite me to the daily lunchtime Bible study in the conference room.
That’s okay. You go right along and tell Moses and the gang I said “hi.” (Shudder)
It took a month or so to really settle into this new atmosphere, but settle I did. I worked next to two young ladies who were avid Jesus-break-takers. As long as they didn’t try to coax or sell their Stepfordness to me, I didn’t curse or tell off-color jokes, and we got along just fine. Both ladies were African-American, as was the woman in the small picture frame on my computer monitor, so I got lots of questions about how we met and if we were getting married and having babies. This, too, was fine.
That December, after I’d been at the job for seven months, we were all lazing about in the last ten minutes of the last workday before the long Christmas weekend. The ladies got into a conversation of all the baking they’d be doing, and bragging on their secret family recipes. Out of nowhere, one of the hyper-Christian ladies next to me segues from a chocolate-infused recipe into referencing my personal life by saying, “That’s not all Tom likes that’s chocolate!” The ladies giggled . . . for a second.
Not expecting anything near the unchurchlike comment which was thrown out, yet unshaken, I very simply raised one eyebrow, looked the Bible-thumper straight in the eye and replied, “Yep. Chocolate tastes better.” After the chuckling shut off to pin-drop silence, I shrugged and said, “Hey, you brought it up.”
Lessons: If you’re going to be a pious Christian, be a pious Christian. If you’re going to try to embarrass someone with rather non-Jesus topics, expect some sort of reaction. Lastly, and most importantly, one should never try to embarrass me. I embarrass back.
