Fortunately, I didn’t actually fall (or throw up) - I just sort of drifted into the pew & my husband had his arm securely around me … but, yeah, that was pretty embarrassing. Can’t get away with much in a tiny church.
Not at Mass, but flashing back almost half a century . . .
We were at my little brother’s soccer game, and my toddler sister fell off a playground thing and was bleeding below her lip. My brother was afraid she’d bit through.
She called the pediatrician from a pay phone (this was the 70s) and he told her the ER to meet her at.
As it turned out, there was an ER by that name
and a hospital with an ER by that name. He went to one, and she went to the other.
So we get there, our pediatrician isn’t there (and, again, pre cell-phone). She’s a wreck, my father is back at the field coaching the team, and we get to the counter.
They pulled out a flashlight and pulled out her lip, and announced that she had not bitten through (gee,
that was easy, having some idea what you’re doing).
With baby sister sitting on the edge of the counter (really, we hadn’t even made it in yet!), Mom turns to me and says, “Hold the baby.” . . . and promptly slumps onto the floor, fainted . . .
Probably only seconds later, she comes to, and has a crowd around her as she looks up. “Are you comfy down there?”
She’s still embarrassed about that . . . anyway, they
had to admit her at that point, and they
had to roll her back out in a wheelchair.
And given that she’s tiny, and even at 10, I was not, and the baby was sitting, had I had any idea what was happening, I could have caught
her instead of the baby . . . (at least she didn’t hit her head, at least not hard . . .)
As for at Mass . . . and this would be a couple of years later.
One priest, an immigrant, was rather strict, and in charge of altar boys. At our meetings, many things would be stated that if done, “you be no more altar boy.”
And now that I think of it, the timeline is a bit fuzzy. Another priest would later (it must have been later) fully take over the altar boys, but managed to schedule my brother and I with him each week. My father quipped that we were his “Praetorian guard.” We could keep a straight face . . .
Riding home, my parents testily and with menace asked, “what were you laughing about up on the altar?”
Yet another priest, as weekend “rental”, was giving his usual incoherent homily. He drifted to confession, and people objecting to confessing to a man. “But the priest is not a man!” . . . at which point the priest sitting between us mutters, “he’s
suuuperman”.
This time, we don’t quite keep a straight face, and the boys next to us were probably laughing.
Someone complains to strict priest, who confronts our priest demanding to know who was laughing. He replied that he couldn’t tell, as he was laughing to hard himself.
:crazy_face:
