On the Merits (Or Lack Thereof) of Lent

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every Friday as a sort-of exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Topic: LENT

Ah, Lent.

To quote a friend, “Catholics really got the short end of the stick on that one.”

I can say that, because I was raised in a fully Catholic household, and can say unequivocally that Catholics really do get the short end of whatever stick we’re talking about when it comes to Lent.

I will back up.  Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (which is today) and continues for approximately 40 days until Easter Sunday.  The point of Lent is to, a) remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice for 40 days and nights in the desert and b) to have each of us learn self-sacrifice.  I’m over-simplifying, but I think that gives the gist of what Lent is about.  The self-sacrifice bit is primarily accomplished through a combination of fasting, (I know everyone has heard, “No meat on Fridays!”) and giving up something important to you, something that is difficult to give up. 

I was an active participant in the whole Lenten observation thing for all of my childhood and part of my adolesence.  One year, around the age of ten, I gave up chocolate for Lent.  That’s hard for a little kid.  Do you have any idea how many cookies and candies and cakes and drinks involve chocolate?  A lot.  Especially when you’re ten.  That was a glorious Easter morning – I probably ate three Cadbury Creme Eggs before breakfast.  My parents, especially my mom, always made a point of encouraging the whole giving-something-up-for-Lent extravaganza.  But when I hit the middle of high school and started thinking a bit more for myself about religion and religious customs, I began to feel like Lent was a bit… dumb.

I still feel that way.  So I don’t do Lent.  To be honest, I don’t buy into organized religion in general, which is probably a separate blog, but I especially don’t buy into Lent.  To me, there is no reason given in the Bible for giving things like meat and chocolate up.  That is something the Church imposed on us, probably for economic reasons, a thousand years ago.  And I never once felt anything remotely spiritual as a result of sacrificing for Lent.  I felt exactly the opposite.  The teachers and priests and my parents could explain it all they wanted, but I always felt like it was just mean and… well, dumb.  The short end of the stick, if you will.

The only value I see in the season of Lent is that it gives people a reason to celebrate Mardi Gras, and it makes McDonald’s drop the price on Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.   So while Lent is not for me, I do hope the people who feel there is value to Lenten sacrifice continue to do what they are doing.  I am always looking for a good reason to pig out on spicy foods, or on delicious greasy fried fish.

Whitney wrote a blog about her take on Lent.  You can check it out here.

My Most Humiliating Moment

Welcome to the fourth installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every Friday as a sort-of exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

This week’s topic: Worst Public Humiliation Moment

I have to say it took a great deal of soul-searching to come up with my worst moment of public humiliation. I feel quite certain that this was not a problem of a lack of humiliating experiences; rather, a lack of resounding memories about them. Because I was such a geek growing up (see last week’s blog for full details) I developed a pretty thick skin about certain things and it now takes a lot to embarrass me to the point where I would remember it forever.

But that was not always the case, and there is one event in particular that I believe was not only my worst moment of public humiliation, but also shaped a big chunk of my personality in social situations.

The year: circa 1985. I was about 4 years old, and we were having a bunch of people over to our house. It was a family gathering – it might have been my brother’s second birthday, or it might have been Easter. I was in a cute little dress, complete with matching tights and hair barrettes. My hair was curled, and I was wearing white patent leather shoes. I was always a bit anal about everything matching and looking “just-so,” and this occasion was no exception. I remember prancing around like I owned the joint at that party because I knew I looked fantastic. My grandmother (my dad’s mom) arrived with her usual odd assortment of gifts for her grandchildren. Sometimes she brought us bags upon bags of sour cream and onion Lays potato chips. This day, though, she brought hideously ugly, brightly-colored plastic sunglasses. They were much too big for any child to wear, and the lenses were a bizarre grey color and popped out of the sunglasses if you so much as touched them.

Being the princess I was at the age of 4, I was less than thrilled when I was presented with my pair of bright red plastic sunglasses with lenses in the shape of hearts. They were awful. I hated them. – - – - As a side note, I do see the irony in my attitude towards these ugly sunglasses at the tender age of 4, knowing as I do now that I was destined to work as an optician for 9 years and develop a true disdain for cheap sunglasses. – - – - Despite my loathing of the heart-shaped horrors, I had some sense of propriety at age 4, and I knew that if my grandma was giving me a present I better use it in front of her. So I put them on and put on a grand show of prancing around in my fancy dress with my fancy shoes and my new sunglasses.

And that is when my whole family started laughing at me.

To be clear, a family gathering in my family at this time did not mean my parents, my brother, and my grandparents. They were there, but they were not the only people there. My aunts and uncles and cousins were there. So were my parents’ second cousins and their kids. So were our next door neighbors and their kids. And not to be left out, my mom’s best friends from college and their spouses and kids were there, too. And they were all laughing at me.

For the life of me I could not figure out WHY they were laughing. I was just dancing around the steps to the basement, singing and wearing my sunglasses. It wasn’t THAT funny. But people were laughing. Laughing hard. That’s when I reached up and felt the sunglasses on my face. The sunglasses I had put on upside down.

That’s right, perfectly put-together 4-year-old me had put her ugly humongous plastic sunglasses on her face upside down, and didn’t realize it, and proceeded to prance around like the queen of everything. My family found this quite humorous, hence the loud and long laughter. They were still laughing when I took off the sunglasses, turned around, and ran up the stairs crying. I was more embarrassed in that moment than I have ever been in my life. I went in my room, closed the door, and would not come out until my mom came in and told me it was OK and no one was going to remember that I had put them on upside down. But I remembered, and from that moment on I refused to be outgoing or silly or anything that would draw attention to myself in groups – because I never wanted to be the center of attention and therefore subject to ridicule ever again.

If you want to read about Whitney’s most humiliating moment, you can read about it on her blog here.