This damn virus has a lot to answer for...!
Actually a government/entire Western world giving in to scaremongering has a lot to answer for. I'm supposedly in a high-risk age bracket and honestly don't give a damn. And I'm convinced that within a week or so the ordinary people will demand a return to normality and get on with life. Shutting down the entire world because a few unfortunate old people are dying of the flu is overkill on a grand scale. And yes, young people can die of it too- years ago a good friend's girlfriend died of pneumonia, and that was really sad, but unfortunately these things do happen. No-one's immortal.
Anyway, so as not to hijack the thread (even though there are no nylons involved in this particular reminiscence) in the very early 2000s while standing in a in a post office queue in England, I got talking to a fairly pretty, quite presentable brunette named Julie who had long big hair, and we walked a street or so over to a nearby park in the East End, where I lived. We sat and chatted and eventually she kicked off her sandals to be a bit more comfortable. Her pink nail varnish was a bit chipped, and her feet were somewhat flat, but that was OK.
I then steered the conversation around to reflexology (as one does) and when she said she was a Christian and didn't like the idea of 'Alternative Medicine', which she decried as 'Satanic', I, only momentarily fazed, said that I was one too, and scraped up a half forgotten Biblical passage about 'making a joyful noise unto the Lord'.
We both agreed after about a five minute discussion that laughter at the right time could be construed as a prayer, as justified by this sacred passage. (I only briefly discussed biblical footwashing as I doubted that the suggestion of tea 'round my place to try it would be welcome, although it was a way to draw attention to her own feet.)
But building on my persona as the Rev. Libertine, BD, we discussed how God was very near among his sylvan works, those lovely trees and flowers such as surrounded us, and that praising Him could take many forms. We further discussed how prayer was sometimes a difficult thing to do if one was distracted, and I somehow recalled a passage in which "David danced before the Lord with all his might" though my time in Sunday School was mainly spent looking out of the window. Therefore we agreed, moving while praying was divinely mandated!
She shyly admitted to being ticklish. So, drawing together all the threads of our theological conversation, she decided that being tickled during prayer would simply refine the spiritual experience.
God, some people are easily led.
She lay back on the grass, with an expression reminiscent of the Blessed Virgin just having chatted to the Archangel Gabriel about her upcoming Blessed Event, head pillowed on my bunched-up jacket and her hair spilling either side of her. ‘When the Christian martyrs suffered tortures for our faith’, I intoned, ‘our Lord diminished their pain. Therefore if you try to draw away, without allowing yourself to feel completely, you are negating the sacrifice made for you and the entire world.’ She nodded in solemn agreement.
With an internal amazed shake of my head, I drew my fingertips up and down her offered soles, parts of which could certainly have used a good filing/scrub, and she began to tremble, giggle, and murmur hymns. But she certainly wasn’t drawing her feet back! And for about ten minutes her laughter, ranging from chuckles to guffaws to deep belly laughs and back again, interspersed with various gabbled bits from the New Testament would certainly have interested the Almighty if that was really His thing.
I then decided to try her armpits, which were even more susceptible even fully clothed as she was, but after proving the effect by laughing even harder at a far higher pitch, she rolled away. The she sat up and glared at me, saying I was responsible for her having ‘bad thoughts’. I then had to sit there pretending to be repentant while she babbled on for a while about ‘the Devil citing scripture for his purposes’, etc. etc., ad nauseum.
Then she put on her sandals, rose to her feet, flicked a few bits of dried leaves from her hair while harrumphing like an elderly Victorian maiden concealing the sight of a pair of copulating dogs from the tender eyes of her great-niece, and stalked away.
I still find this funny twenty years down the line.
Ay-MEN!
