First Catholicism

In preparation for Elijah’s Christening, we had to attend a class at our future Catholic church. So we loaded him up into the car, post nap, and drove the four minutes to old St. Nicks.

Time Out. Before I go any further, I keep forgetting to mention that Eli hates to have anything on his feet. If we can keep footwear on his feet for more than three minutes, it’s considered a success.

Time In. So we made it to Church, put Eli’s shoes back on and entered the ancient brick structure. As a born and raised Lutheran, I’m always excited to enter a Catholic church. I feel like a minor league ballplayer getting called up to the bigs. Yeah, Lutherans are just as important as Catholics, but there’s just something about all that Latin.

Anyhoo, we went into a small room with three couples whose children ranged from age 3 months to 3 ½ months. Di and I felt instantly like we were bad parents. Guilt. Now I was feeling Catholic.

I’d say we got roughly through fifteen seconds of Christening class before Eli started acting like a goofball. He started grabbing everyone’s Catholic pamphlets. He attacked the nice lesbian couple next to us (What, did you think we’d actually join a Catholic church that wasn’t liberal?). He started loudly chirping his monkey chirp. The 3 ½ month old parents began to twitch. Their panicked eyes seemed to say, “Is this how it’s going to be at 1 year?” In answer, Eli started banging the table. Di gave me the high sign and I walked out of the tiny room with crazed boy in tow.

The rest of the class went off without a hitch. And without me and my son. It dawned on me that I should have been the one learning about Catholic Christenings considering I was the non-Catholic. But we all play for the same team. It should be fine, right? Right?

p.s. Our church submerges babies during the proceedings. Knowing how nuts Eli gets in the tub, I’m fairly sure attendees in the first three rows are gonna get wet.