Dancing-with-Baptists-Createspace-Final--A4

DANCING WITH BAPTISTS
Bible?”
“Who is prepared to recite the books of the
In his excitement to raise his hand, Greg’s Baptist Hymnal fell off his lap and onto
the floor with a thud. An embarrassing gale of laughter erupted and while Greg bent to
retrieve his song book he heard the worst sound he had ever heard in his young life, “Ruth?
Is that your hand up?” “Yeth, Ma’am,” Ruth said.
Mrs. Dehartman was delighted. Ruth Morrison was an Orphan Annie-haired brain
with eyeglasses. She stood there before the entire class with the confidence of a bull fighter
and the lisp of a threeyear-old.
“Methyou, Mark, Luke, John,”
All right, Greg thought, She doesn’t know the Old Testament.
“Wait. Thaw-wee,” Ruth corrected. “Genethith, Exoduth…”
Greg was devastated.
“Wonderful. Wasn’t that wonderful class?” Mrs. DeHartman said as she encouraged
the children to applaud. Then she walked over to the upright piano, stepped behind it and
pulled out a brown sack with something in it too big to be a tin offering box.
“I don’t know why, but I thought a boy would be the first to say the books,” Mrs.
DeHartman apologized, “but you can return it for a Dale Evans one.”
Ruth’s smile broadened so wide the corners of her mouth almost reached her
Spoolied curls.
Roy Rogerths and Twigger!”
“Oh, thank you, Mithus DeThartman. I just love
Greg never did get up and say the books of the Bible. Ruth Morrison later married
one of the guys who invented the Hacky Sack. Greg always figured she wooed him with his
rightfully due Roy Rogers lunch box with the “Twigger” thermos.
Because of his earlier divorce, Jack the Baptist
could not be a deacon. At Trinity Street Baptist the deacons ran everything. If a
preacher’s belief about anything ever differed from that of the deacons, the preacher’s
parsonage had new inhabitants before one could say the twenty-third psalm.
Greg was often friends with the preacher’s kids while they were there. Greg liked
them because, somehow, the fact that they had to be good made them the most
mischievous. The older P.K. boys usually took one of two paths: going into the ministry like
their father, or going wild.
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