Practical Joke Sunday

I had a wide range of emotions in church yesterday--I screamed, I cried, I laughed. The crying was due to the reading of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree in the children's sermon. I know it's supposed to be sweet, and the tree is "happy, very happy" in the end, but I find it to be the saddest story ever. The screaming and the laughing, however, were due to a couple practical jokes before and during the service--one at my expense, the other perpetrated by Matt and I.

As Matt and I drove into the church's gravel parking lot, Matt noticed a snake stretched across the drive, and he thought he ran over it, which made me happy (I don't condone killing any living thing, except snakes--even bugs I usually let live) but after we parked, we took a look--me from a greater distance than Matt--and it had apparently coiled up really quickly and avoided being killed. Matt expressed curiosity at what kind of snake it might be--two inches in diameter, light brown--but I just got inside as quickly as I could.

A minute or two later, I've settled in at the Sunday school table with my coffee and fruit (and small piece of coffee cake). My back was to the door of the room, and suddenly I feel pressure on the back of my neck, and a high school boy whose voice I recognize says "Jessica, do you know what kind of snake this is?" I screamed bloody murder, of course, smacking at the back of my neck. The boy, his buddy, and the dear, righteous pastor--who of course had put them up to it--got a good laugh out of it, though most of the women in the room totally sympathized with me. Though it was just the kid's hand, not the actual snake (I would hope that goes without saying, since that would be FAR beyond a joke) I was nearly in tears from the shock. The two boys now tease me whenever they see me. Fabulous.

After worship started and after I dried up from the Giving Tree incident, I had my own joke to play. Matt has been teasing one young adult girl in the congregation about her frequent text-messaging during worship, obviously enough that he can see it from the pulpit, and finally we decided we should send her a message--literally. On Matt's phone, before the service, we typed "I can see you." and kept it ready to send until the proper time. I had the phone with me in the pew, and about five minutes into Matt's sermon--after I'd noticed the girl's head bent downward a few times--I pressed send. I tried to contain my giggles, revealing only a smirk that would have made Matt start laughing if we'd made eye contact at that point.

A couple minutes later, I received a message back, asking "Is this Jesus?"

OMG. We'll see next week if her habits change, now that Jesus--or at least the pastor and his wife--are watching her.