Do You Recognize This Guy?

No, I am NOT Barbara Bush!

My daughter just posed an exciting and important question to me. If you saw the Quaker Oats Man, out of context would you recognize him on the street? I’ve taken the past few minutes to ponder her query. My daughter is, after all, going to be a doctor, so she must be taken quite seriously. For these past few moments I’ve imagine the Quaker Oat Man dressed in a flannel shirt, old Levis and hiking boots, with his hair pulled back in a low ponytail like any of the other aging hippies in my town. In this scene I’ve decided that I probably wouldn’t recognize him.

My daughter pictures him wearing the thick glasses of a pedophile, wearing brown corduroys and a green button down shirt. I remind her that corduroys might not be the best choice for a pedophile who might want to sneak up on his prey. She reminds me that pedophiles groom their victims, they don’t sneak. She’s really smart. I’d want her as my physician.

Then I pictured the Oat Man in a well-tailored suit, his gray hair in a discreet braid, a briefcase in his hand, standing in front of our town’s courthouse. I’m certain that if I passed him on my way to the Chinese restaurant beside of that courthouse that I would think he was just another lawyer. No recognition.

My daughter then notices Oat Man’s gender flexibility. Would I notice him dressed similar to Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith show? I imagine a house dress peppered with tiny flowers, with the Oat Man’s hair in a neat bun. He/She’s bringing Otis the drunk a perfectly balanced lunch at the town jail. I decide I would recognize him as an Aunt Bea imposter, but that his identity as the Quaker Oats Guy wouldn’t cross my mind. My daughter agrees with me on this one. I take this to mean that I am nearly as smart as a future doctor.

It is times like these that I wish I could afford Photo Shop. Then I could see what Oat Guy would look like in a Speedo, a turban, or a nurse’s uniform from the 1940s. Perhaps if I took the time to create pictures of The Quaker Oats Guy in as many scenarios as possible, then I would be ready for that fateful moment when our paths cross. I could point to him and call him a time traveling imposter. I could warn people of his ruse, potentially saving humanity from an anachronism whose mission is to force oat products on one and all. My daughter points out that, though my intentions are noble, this would be a great waste of my time on a potentially fictional character. She also reminds me of the health benefits of whole grains, including oats. Yep, she’s doctor material.

Day 6: 31 Days of Blogging Honesty

 

 

 

 

Day # 6 Question: Something I want to do in my lifetime but I already know I won’t be able to is…

Be positive, you must!

Well this question is a little bitch, isn’t it? Thanks blogger gods! Way to try to make a normally positive human being think negatively! Well, I’m not going to play your nasty game of pessimism. I have goals; tangible, reachable, fabulous goals and I refuse to shoot any of them down in this insignificant blog! However, apart from my goals of one day publishing the great American novel, of living in a house that is actually larger than 1,100 square feet, and of being Freshly Pressed, I have a few desires that are most likely moot.

1. I will probably never be a guest on the Oprah show, but this is only because her last season is nearly over and the guest roster is already filled.

2. Chances are I’ll never make mad, passionate love to Hugh Jackman, but not because he won’t want to when at last we meet, but because we both value the institution of marriage.

3. The odds are pretty grim that I’ll be chosen as a Real Housewife of Orange County, New York  , Atlanta, or New Jersey, only because I’m not planning on moving to any of those locals anytime soon. (Plus, I don’t think that even on my worst PMS day that I could be as mean as those old slags are!)

4. My silly dream of spending a day as my cat in a sort of Freaky Friday scenario seems pretty hopeless. This doesn’t mean that I won’t try to squeeze a day in here and there where I do nothing but eat, sleep and poop.

5. My bad ankles and asthma are sure to prevent me from unicycling across the United States, but the truth is I don’t really want to unicycle across the United States, I only want to be able to brag to people that I did.

Friend: Hey Sprinkles, did you catch last season of America’s Got Talent?

Me: Oh, that drivel? No, I was WAY too busy unicycling across the United States!

See how cool that sounds?

I’ll also never be able to pee in a coke bottle (unless they make the opening larger), be a crew member aboard a Space Shuttle mission, take down Osama Bin Laden, or claim that I invented the Snuggie. Do all of these could-have-beens get me down? Nope. I like my life just the way it is.

Do You Believe In God?

It’s an easy enough question to ask, and a resounding number of individuals will quickly answer, “Of course I do!” as if the asker is accusing them of something unthinkable.  According to a 2009 study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, only 5% of Americans classify themselves as not believing in God or a universal spirit, and of those 5%, 24% call themselves atheists, while 15% commit to being agnostic . For the past 25 years or more I’ve hopped in and out of those statistics.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m at a dangling point in my life; a place where I feel the need to discover, or perhaps rediscover, who I am, what I believe in, and what I plan on doing with the rest of my life.  Religion, or the lack there of is one of the facets of my life that needs clarification.

I was raised in a religious home, or at least in a home where I was, from birth to college-age, taken to church every single Sunday.  I was a member of the children’s choir and at 13 moved on as a second soprano in the adult choir.  I attended confirmation classes at which the end of I became a full-fledged, card carrying Methodist.  I never missed Sunday school and was involved in every extra-curricular activity that my church offered; youth groups, church camps, lock-in’s—I was there for all of them.  So why now, at the ripe old age of 46 does my religious training seem to offer me nothing more than an advantage against my kids and husband when there is a Jeopardy category entitled “Books of the Bible,” or “Things Job Said?”    

My doubting began around the age of 13.  For an institution that is supposed to provide answers to its followers, religion seems to have a plethora of questions that the only answer for is “You’ll find out when you meet Jesus in Heaven.”  I quickly found out that my response of, “Well, I want to know now in case I don’t make it to Heaven,” usually yielded a tight lipped glare from my ancient Sunday school teacher, and a collection of self-righteous glances from the rest of the class.  I soon learned to stick with the status quo and keep my questions to myself, harboring the dark secret of my doubts. 

I went through the next 15 years of my life enduring the illness and death of my mother, the births of my children, and a divorce.  I floundered between reaching out to God and rejecting Him.  Then I met Ryan (not his real name, of course).  He was the exact opposite of my ex-husband.  He was calm; he never drank or fought with me for the sake of fighting.  His only drawback, in my opinion, was that he was religious.  After enduring the loneliness of being a young, divorced mother for the past two years, I was more than happy to compromise and date him.  Our first trip to church together was a shocker.  Ryan wasn’t just a Christian; he was a born again, Pentecostal Christian.  After spending the first half of my life sitting through very traditional, rather boring religious services, I found the services at his church at least entertaining.  It was the dead of winter and a woman stood next to me in a house dress and flip flops with her hands raised to heaven speaking in tongues.  Everyone seemed to be consumed by the “fire of the Holy Spirit.”  Week after week I tried to fit into their frenzy.  I wanted to feel the euphoria that they were experiencing, yet no matter how hard I tried, my prayers and actions felt false.   After time, I also began to see another side of Ryan that wasn’t so Pentecostal.  At the beginning of our relationship he attempted to make it clear that he didn’t believe in having sex outside of marriage.  At first, this meant to me that he was marriage-minded, but I soon found out that just because he didn’t believe in sex before marriage, that it didn’t mean that he didn’t want to have it.  He constantly talked to me about his “temptations of the flesh.”  I was thirty, in the best shape of my life, and I didn’t find sex before marriage a sin, so when things would go a bit too far between us I was not the one fighting to stop his advances.  He was insatiable, and we would spend hours in bed.  Afterwards, he would gently chastise me for tempting him.   The relationship ended when I discovered that it wasn’t just me who was enticing him.  His job had him traveling to several cities where he had women waiting to “tempt” him there, and when none of us were available he had a ginormous collection of porn hidden in his basement!  His hypocrisy also included cheating on his taxes and a few rather unchristian-like business deals that I witnessed him making.

Now I’m married to a very normal Buddhist who was raised Catholic!  I sleep in on Sunday mornings, and am relieved that I’m not saddled with the guilt and obligations that go along with belonging to a church.  I basically believe that religion was created by man to serve the purpose of answering the unanswerable questions of life like, “Where did we come from?” and “Where are we going?”  The rules associated with organized religion also serve to control the population.  The threat of Hell is very real to many people. I sometimes envy the people that can chalk up suffering or injustice to being “God’s will,” or who are able to seek comfort in prayer.  Yet, I still wonder what it is about me that won’t let me conform to a concept that 95% of the people in the United States confess to believing in.  I also wonder how many of that 95% didn’t answer truthfully.  What are your thoughts on religion?