Pagans, Again

MC accepts that the high holidays are built on rank commercialism and hyper-caloric intake. In her wee cranky days, Easter was all about a godzilla-sized ham and the white shoes (unscuffed!) that arrived just in time to go with a poofy home-made dress. For C1 and C2, this year's holiday included a Hello Kitty purse (pictured) and newly pierced ears. Not to mention two fabulous arrivals from the USPS Easter Bunny. Pez tastes even better when it comes in the mail.

Try as we might to wallow in sugar and pink froth, weightier events intrude. Walking to school this morning, C2 ran to reach the house whose owner kindly puts out water for neighborhood dogs and reliably places exciting plastic toys to be admired. In her kindergarten career, C2 has played with a duck family, identified animals of the African savannah, and recently gasped over giant bugs in this neighbor's front yard. When she hurried to view the bugs today, she was instead met with a sign: "Someone took the water bowl and the bugs on Easter night." MC and C2 were shocked. Animals would be thirsty. Feelings must have been hurt. Then C2 remembered that she adopted several ducks from this house when their owner offered them with a sign that said "Free!" Surely we could return those to fill up the lonely spaces.

Pondering this vandalism, MC recalled an earlier weekend encounter with urban grittiness. She helped bus the tables at Big University Church, which feeds Saturday breakfast and lunch to about 400 homeless people. In this scrum of unwashed bedrolls, the striking element of its demographic was courtesy. "Coming here in hard times is humbling," one man said. "Please tell the people here thank you for me." When MC hauled a compost bucket out to the alley, she found a knot of men smoking cigarettes around the dumpster. One took her bucket and emptied it for her. "If I hadn't been here, these guys would have mugged you," he said. MC and the guys in the alley laughed.

The smokers in the alley wouldn't have mugged MC; they respect the place that gives them weekly breakfast and lunch. Further evidence of their regard: Big University Church is remarkably graffiti-free, because the homeless men prove security 24/7. Without lapsing into sentiment, MC would like to recognize good manners when she sees them. In contrast, MC watched in frank admiration as a neighbor used Dog the Bounty Hunter techniques to retrieve her front-porch rockers from a fraternity house. Nailing the perps required this neighbor, a woman of a certain age, to attend numerous West Campus theme parties. She wouldn't tell how much beer she consumed, but she got her rockers back, and, after a talk with the house mother, a weekend of yard work from the pledge class. MC's neighborhood seems to attract chair thieves. Across the street, another neighbor recently received a bouquet rather on the large side of tasteful from the counsel of a fraternity that, um, borrowed her Adirondacks. We're good now.

Courtesy, MC observes, is a relative thing. In the alley behind Big University Church, people with no homes will sleep on private property and use the dumpster as a toilet. They might ask you for money, but they won't break into your car. In MC's neighborhood, where property values are stable and kids' test scores are high, pissing on the side of someone's trash can is pretty much beyond the pale. Fraternity boys on their way to law school, however, will steal your rocking chairs. And people with the brains and money to know better will steal cheap plastic bugs just for fun.

In summary, then, the Crankies' spent their high holiday flouncing in pink dresses, smashing a gazillion confetti eggs, repatriating some plastic ducks, and pondering the wisdom of some guys who don't know where there next meal is coming from.
--MC