… on a new irreverent thing. again.

November 30, 2014

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Through the Front Window. Dunstable, Massachusetts.

Beautiful right?

Until you realize that First Born Mac and Number One Son Sam refer to that super tall evergreen tree as Isengard.

Which Mac said was the place where Sauron’s eye watched from, but if you remember that was really Mordor (Lord of the Rings trilogy geek info).  Either way, it does not give you that ‘beautiful’ feeling.

Instead, you tend to gaze out of the front window of the Disposable Shack and see fear and terror and a big giant eye looking at you from the top of the tower that is the tree, which I think makes the barn Mount Doom.

Kind of like this:

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My Cherub’s View through my Front Window

 A little less tranquil, no?

Anyway, that isn’t what I came to tell you.

What I came to tell you is that, well, remember the other day when I told you about staying up all night as Sam’s and Roommate Curry’s flight was delayed and delayed and delayed?

Well at about 3 in that morning, I decided to check e-mail. And my friend Katherine – whom my other friend and I call, “Sister Katherine” (it has to do with her general demeanor and devotion to her strand of pearls… long story).

So Sister Katherine sent me an e-mail at 9:08 that morning and I decided to read it. And this was the last paragraph:

“I laughed out loud when I saw your chewy center sculpture and thought I’d send along a picture of our chewy center nativity set to perhaps inspire John.  Of course, he would have to be about 8 in a Sunday school class.  No one can remember how it was that Colin got to take the entire set home; but sparkly baby Jesus and all make their annual appearance and never fail to make us smile.”

Nice right? Because, yes, my friend Sister Katherine has a chewy center nativity set, firstly (Totally true. A nativity set made of toilet paper rolls. You can’t make things like this up.)But also, it is nice because here is how I read it, at 3:00 a.m., having had no sleep whatsoever:

“I laughed out loud when I saw your chewy center sculpture and thought I’d send along a picture of our chewy center nativity set to perhaps inspire John.  Of course, he would have to be about 8 in a Sunday school class.  No one can remember how it was that Colin got to take the entire set home; but spanky baby Jesus and all make their annual appearance and never fail to make us smile.”

Did you catch that?

Spanky.

Baby.

Jesus.

And my brain read it, and stopped, and read it again – the same way – and stopped.

And I thought, ‘Huh. With a name like Sister Katherine, I would think irreverence is beyond her…’

So I read it again.

The same way!

And then my brain started to make the connections that brains do, at 3:00 a.m.

‘Well, some people say ‘Jesus H. Christ’… where does the ‘h’ come from anyway?… I should google that…. ‘Harold’? Because of the Our Father and ‘Harold be thy name’? Naw. I know that was ‘Hallowed be thy name’… funny though.  ‘Haploid?!’ BAHAHAHA! (my brain laughs like that) because Jesus had only one parent really… total bio geek joke. But funny. Then there is all this latin stuff and entomology stuff. Wait. Isn’t ‘entomology’ is the study of bugs…. what’s the study of language? Epidemiology? No.  Etymology? Etimology…. etyMOLogy… ETimology.  What a funny word…”And then I remembered that what I was trying to find a place for was the phrase ‘Spanky Baby Jesus’ (caps because it could be a proper noun). And I was thinking that some people say “Jesus H. Christ” and others add “… tap dancing on a cracker” and some say “Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick”.  So maybe my friend, Sister Katherine was using this new, but related, phrase and what the heck did it mean?So I read it again, to get – you know – the context of it based on the surrounding words.And that’s when I read it as “sparkly baby Jesus”.  And was disappointed.  Totally bummed.

Like, profoundly.

Because, c’mon, would the world not be better with a phrase like ‘Spanky Baby Jesus’

Uh, ya.

It would.

So I e-mailed her right back and here is what I wrote:

“I read the last bit as Spanky Baby Jesus.”

And then I sent that, but followed it right up with:

“I think Spanky Baby Jesus is about to become a thing.”

And it so totally is!

Because on Thanksgiving, when the lights came on, the Nearly Perfect Husband was so excited and I was in the kitchen and he was all, “YES!” and I was all, “SPANKY BABY JESUS!”

Because this is how these things get started, and I wanted you to be in on the ground floor of this new phraseology that will totally be in the Wikipedia’s of the future when someone looks up ‘Etymology of Spanky Baby Jesus’.

And Etymology is still a very strange-sounding word, isn’t it? But I’m growing so fond of it. It’s kind of an exciting word, actually…

Wait.

SPANKY BABY JESUS, I LOVE THAT WORD!

See.

Totally works.

Thanks for readin’.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAs always, you can come on over to Just Ponderin’s Facebook page to comment or just hang out.