A COUPLE OF RANDOM MUSINGS
So I was ushering in church this past Sunday, and a thought occurred to me. At the end of the service, our priest stood outside the church to greet the congregants individually, as is customary. However, this caused the line out of church to move rather slowly. That could be a major problem once 1 o'clock kickoffs become a factor. So I was thinking that if I wind up ushering during football season, I shall bring a whistle and a stopwatch. Any parishoner who chats more than 15 seconds with the priest gets a sharp blast from the whistle and instructions to move along.
Or what we could do is make a life-size cardboard cutout of our priest. The cutout could have a speaker attached that plays a loop of appropriate clerical greetings: "Peace be with you. Go forth with a joyful heart. Walk with love. Peace be with you." This gets the priest home in time for kickoff, too. Well-heeled churches could commission an artist to create a lifelike sculpture of its pastor or priest. Or if that is too expensive, the church could get an old Frisch's Big Boy with a working two-way speaker. The statue could be done up in vestments, and the priest could converse with the congregants through the two-way speaker from the comfort of his office.
Not a bad idea.
*****
I was thinking the other day of one of the strangest calls that ever came into a newsroom where I was working. About 10 years ago, I was working at a paper in North Carolina. About 25 minutes from deadline on a Friday night, the night metro editor turned to the copy desk and asked what he should tell a caller whom he had just put on hold. The caller had phoned us because he wanted to express his displeasure with the local NBC affiliate. Apparently, the station had interrupted a broadcast of a Reba McIntire concert for a news update. When our caller, a Reba fan for sure, phoned the TV station to complain, he was told that if he ever called the station again, the station would send someone to kill him. That is what he told our night metro editor. What, our night editor asked, should he tell this man? After thinking about it for a second, I said, "Tell him if he ever calls us again, we're killing Reba."
Sorry, Reba.
So I was ushering in church this past Sunday, and a thought occurred to me. At the end of the service, our priest stood outside the church to greet the congregants individually, as is customary. However, this caused the line out of church to move rather slowly. That could be a major problem once 1 o'clock kickoffs become a factor. So I was thinking that if I wind up ushering during football season, I shall bring a whistle and a stopwatch. Any parishoner who chats more than 15 seconds with the priest gets a sharp blast from the whistle and instructions to move along.
Or what we could do is make a life-size cardboard cutout of our priest. The cutout could have a speaker attached that plays a loop of appropriate clerical greetings: "Peace be with you. Go forth with a joyful heart. Walk with love. Peace be with you." This gets the priest home in time for kickoff, too. Well-heeled churches could commission an artist to create a lifelike sculpture of its pastor or priest. Or if that is too expensive, the church could get an old Frisch's Big Boy with a working two-way speaker. The statue could be done up in vestments, and the priest could converse with the congregants through the two-way speaker from the comfort of his office.
Not a bad idea.
*****
I was thinking the other day of one of the strangest calls that ever came into a newsroom where I was working. About 10 years ago, I was working at a paper in North Carolina. About 25 minutes from deadline on a Friday night, the night metro editor turned to the copy desk and asked what he should tell a caller whom he had just put on hold. The caller had phoned us because he wanted to express his displeasure with the local NBC affiliate. Apparently, the station had interrupted a broadcast of a Reba McIntire concert for a news update. When our caller, a Reba fan for sure, phoned the TV station to complain, he was told that if he ever called the station again, the station would send someone to kill him. That is what he told our night metro editor. What, our night editor asked, should he tell this man? After thinking about it for a second, I said, "Tell him if he ever calls us again, we're killing Reba."
Sorry, Reba.
posted by John Parnell at 11:58 AM
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