Death and the Lost Monkey

We are sitting in Church. It was my son’s time to serve as altar boy. It is great to see him so dedicated to his faith. I wish he was dedicated to his school work too. Again, I was going thru my usual doubts and questions about me being in a catholic mass and not being catholic. It was sometimes after the Eucharistic celebration that my wife leans over and whispers to me, “I want to be buried in a catholic cemetery”. For a second there, I think what does this have to do with this service. I must have spaced out as I always do at mass. Here is a little background information…I am not catholic. My wife is catholic and has been all her life. My kids assist a catholic school. I have no problem with my kids attending catholic religion classes and being taught in the catholic faith. The important part is they are learning about God. This is really important. I know you are all asking, “Well…what religions are you, man?” I am evangelical. I believe in Christ and have accepted him as my savior. This is pretty much all you really need to know about this faith. We try to win souls for God thru bringing the good news to those that do not know that God loves them. This being said lets join our regularly scheduled program. My wife continues, “How are we going to do this?” I panic thinking maybe she has some heads up about my life. Death is like taxes it is inevitable. So…I wonder what I am going to do after I die. I tell her, “Well…I won’t have to worry about it because I will be dead.” I then tell her that I do not really care where I am buried. It can be a catholic cemetery. She was worried that I would not want to be buried in a catholic cemetery. I really do not care. We have talked about dying and what I want done. I would like to have a small funeral. I just want a regular pine casket or box, nothing fancy. I would like for people to come up to my casket and write what they want. I would even like for them to just cremate me in the back yard. It does not really matter what they do with my body. I will be where ever the Lord sends me. I want to be in Heaven, but let’s face it. I am not a saint.

In other news, we went to the mall for a walk. It was nice. We just kind of walked around. Here comes the part where I am not a saint. There are all these hot women walking around. I know my wife has caught me looking. I am almost sure. I tell you guys, I do not know how I am still married. I believe it is thru the grace of God. Anyway, the kids, the wife, and I visit K-B Toys. We are not there to really buy anything. We just want to look around and just walk. After looking around, we proceed to go look at other stores. My daughter stops in mid-sentence and says, “Where is Abu?” I thought you had him. Wait…he is in the car. So…we begin to argue about where Abu is. Abu is the little pet monkey of Aladdin. You remember the Disney movie with the Genie. You ‘member, ‘member!! At some point, we remember we must have left him at K-B Toys. So…the whole family makes a dash over to K-B. I kid you not…we are all running thru the mall to go and look for Abu. I know some of you are laughing, but this is a serious issue for us. Do you remember Woody from Toy Story? Well…when my son was little we took him to the mall and we lost him. We all cried when we lost Woody. Never mind the fact that it was almost similar to the actual movie except that the doll never found its way home. We looked thru the entire mall and nothing. We were not about to let it happen again. So…we get to the KB Store and we start to look around. After about 2-3 minutes of looking, I approach one of the associates of K-B and ask the following question, “Have you seen a pet monkey around here?” I chuckled in my head. Never in my 29 years of life had I thought I would utter such a statement. Fortunately, he had and had placed it behind the cash register. It indeed was a happy ending. We went to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream after the little incident to celebrate the saving of Abu. It was quite funny in retrospect. My wife could not believe I had asked that question. I also thing I heard one of the sales associate say something about they caught him monkey-ing around.

Oh yeah...do you guys like the background. I took this picture from a plane on the way back from Florida last September. Well…thanks for sticking around. Have a happy Monday.