Religious party games

After the debacle with the eye glasses, the next night we had to attend a “parents Confirmation” meeting for our 13 year old. As if I haven’t been traumatized enough, I had to endure a meeting about Confirmation. Now anyone that knows me, knows that I hate meetings of any kind. I just don’t have the attention span for a “meeting”. The minute I walk through the door to any meeting, I’m immediately off in my own world. So here we are, my wife, Alessandra’s father and myself walking into the basement of the church. I was waiting for the gates of hell to open and swallow up my wife and I. No such luck, we were stuck at the meeting. I could imagine how it looked when the three of us walked in kinda like this:

There we are all sitting at our own table. The woman in charge of CCD starts talking about how it’s very important that their community service and Sponsor paperwork gets submitted by the end of this month. She starts talking about how everything that happens in our lives gets recorded onto the back of our birth certificates. I immediately thought “what a bunch of stalkers”, then I was like “well I wonder if they documented when I came out”. At that point, I got an elbow in the rib cage from my wife. This is how she explained it to us and how it’s being explained to the kids:

"Everything you do in life is recorded with the church. The day you're born gets documented, then your Baptism, your first Penance,your first Holy Communion, your Confirmation, your Marriage and then ultimately your death!"
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​I was all good up until the “ultimately your death” part… that shit had me like:

I could only imagine how many kids are going to be leaving their Confirmation saying, “well, up next is marriage and then my friggen death!”

From that she went on to talk about the Confirmation retreat that they had to attend. Apparently the retreat is to teach them how to respond when asked if they’re Catholic. Why someone would come right out and ask if they are Catholic is beyond my capabilities of comprehending but hey, at least she’ll be ready for the question! This woman said that the Catholic religion has a bad reputation so the retreat teaches them to educate people on how God loves us all. This is when she looked the three of us sitting in the back. Bitch please, I know Jesus loves me, he’s my homeboy we go way back! Now the woman doesn’t mention anything about Sponsors not going, so we assumed based off of the nun that teaches Alessandra that sponsors had to go. In any event, the retreat was scheduled for 8:30 am to 1:30 pm on a Saturday but they have to be there at 8:15. First off, this interferes with my sleeping in, secondly it interferes with my sleep, which had me like:

Saturday morning comes along and here I am waking up at the ass crack of dawn on my day off to take Alessandra and Bianca, who’s Alessandra’s sponsor to a religious retreat! I walk up stairs and say “good morning, rise and shine, time to get up!” The girls simultaneously respond, “Ughhhhhh, why is this thing so early?” My response is simple, “because Jesus is a morning person, so lets get moving!” Off we go to Church. On the way there, Alessandra said to Bianca, “thanks for coming, I’m glad you’re going to be with me in case I forget any information.” I said, “what the hell are you talking about, what information could you possibly forget, you’ve been in CCD since the first grade!” She said, “I dunno any kind of Jesus information”.

I dropped them off and went home and went right back to sleep! About 45 minutes to an hour into my peaceful sleep the phone rings and its our daughter Bianca. She tells us that she escaped and that she was standing outside the church. At first I’m thinking how the hell did she escape an army of Nuns, then I pictured this happening:

Bianca proceeded to tell us that she was the only sponsor there and the one Nun kept making her set everything up and had her running back and forth to the Nun’s car. As if that wasn’t bad enough, all the kids thought she was 13 and making her confirmation. Bianca told us that once the kids started to come in, the Nun had her start taping single words written on paper to the backs of the kids. She said she escaped at the point where they all sat in a circle holding hands playing charades.  Now I’m not exactly sure what that has to do with religion, I mean what was next, duck duck Jesus? This is what I paid for? If I’m paying for our kid to get confirmed, then she better have the bible memorized by the end of the retreat!
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Alessandra decides that in the middle of the retreat that it was so important to text Bianca and tell her that she held hands with a “really cute boy”. I’m sure Jesus loved that one!

I picked up Alessandra and she shows me a “party bag” they all got after the retreat, which had rubber rosary beads so they don’t break, a crucifix, a journal and holy water. Alessandra said, “what do I do with the holy water”? I suggested dousing the cats in it. Anyway,  she then tells me that her group won a book because they won at… ready for this….. SCRABBLE! Our kid is at a religious retreat supposedly learning about Jesus and Catholicism and the importance of being Confirmed and she’s making fucking words for a game of fucking scrabble!

Jesus better have been the winning word or I want my money back!