Why I like to sit in the back
Jennifer at As Cozy As Spring tells us some tales from Mass and it reminded me of my own funny Mass Stories.
First, you’ll be happy to know that Bip and I have graduated from the crying room and have joined the family right up in the front row. This is my own personal purgatory for a childhood spent of thinking about anything but Mass, because like all good womb to tomb Catholics, I abhor the first row. The second row, maybe, but given my choice I’ll pick a nice row right in the middle. Never the first row.
But Philip lets the children pick where we sit, and they always head for the front where they can see best.
Like Jennifer’s daughter, Pumpkin Girl gets a subscription to Magnifikids so she can follow along with the Mass. When I’m able to, I peek over her shoulder so I can read along, too. I’m one of those people who learn best by reading and I got cut out of the loop when churches stopped providing Missalets. I have a hard time paying attention if my only option is to listen. At least from the front row I can’t count how many women have short hair versus how many have long hair.
Anyway, so Pumpkin gets her Magnifikids as we’re leaving for Mass. She and Boo argue every single time over who is going to get to read Brother Goodventure first. The solution is always the same, she reads it out loud while Boo looks on. We go through this every week. Every week people!!!
Now Bip, who is very busy being 2, has reached the Me Do It stage. Which means that very often he puts his Mickey Crocs on the wrong foot, with the strap facing forward, thus increasing the odds that one of his shoes is going to fall off. Sometimes we can convince him that we can help him and rotate that strap back behind his heel, other times not.
Now it just so happens that his foot, with croc on, is the exact same width as the space between two lowered kneelers. You know what’s coming, don’t you? He kept getting his foot caught between the kneelers and would yell out, “Aah! ‘tuck!” (stuck). And I’d reach down and pull his foot out. Leaving the croc behind of course, prompting him to yell, “Aah! Croc!” So I’d pull the croc out and try to put it on his foot, which caused him to yell, “ME!” Three different times we do this, “Aah! ‘tuck!,” “Aah! Croc!,” “ME!”. From the front row. Finally I leaned down and whispered to him, “Stop getting stuck.” And he looked up at me with those big brown eyes and said, ” tay” (okay). And he stayed unstuck for the rest of the Mass.
It’s a good thing he’s cute.
Hi Lorri, I got such a kick out of this story! I am from a family of ten children. My Mother always had friends that were either priests or nuns. One friend that was a priest, loved to point out to the whole congregation that he had to wait for Isabel and her family to sit down because we inevitably would be running late. Then,the whispers of sit down and be quiet could always be heard from our group,so we generally tried to blend into the backround too. The back row always seemed like a good idea. I can definitely relate!