T.G.I.G.F.

How to tell if you have a carbon monoxide leak:

1. You're not reading this because you're asleep.
2. You've been asleep for three days.
3. When/if you do wake up, you feel like you've been to Hell and back.

How to tell if you're Jesus:

1. You're not reading this because you're dead.
2. You've been dead for three days.
3. When/if you do rise from the dead, you feel like you've been to Hell and back.

Evidence to the contrary, I'm not Jesus. But these days I wonder if we've got a CO leak. Every day is Monday. Getting out of bed in the morning is like trying to extricate myself from quicksand.

When I was a kid, I was terrified of quicksand. I thought pockets of the stuff lurked in unexpected places, waiting to grab my ankles and suck me in. Likewise I was terrified of earthquakes. My cousin told me about a girl who was playing hopscotch and the sidewalk cracked open and the girl fell in and the sidewalk closed up again. I was also terrified of tornadoes and Khrushchev, but who wasn't.

Now one of these childhood fears has come to pass. My bed has become quicksand. My alarm goes off in the morning like a shotgun blast and I duck for cover back into the bunker of oblivion. But the gun goes off again and again until I'm forced to surrender. My blankets pull at me like the primordial ooze as I crawl upward toward consciousness, a diverging lifeform blinking in the hot glare of a new day, wondering what the fuck that sound is and why the fuck doesn't it stop.

That's why God made alarm clocks. And English teachers made mixing metaphors a sin.

Speaking of which.

One of my favorite stories to tell about my daughter is the one where she comes home from school in second grade and asks who Jesus is. Seems 99.44% of her classmates know about the dude, why doesn't she? Another in an endless series of Bad Mom Moments. So I explain that Jesus was a guy who lived a long time ago and walked around saying peaceful loving things and was crucified, dead and buried at an early age, and who'd probably be a hippie vegan and move to California if he were alive today. Then I add that some people believe he was the Son of God, to which my daughter replies, without missing a beat, "Yeah, right."

From the mouths of babes.

Which reminds me of another thing I was terrified of when I was a kid: Jesus. In fact, all three of them. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The whole enchilada. I used to lie in bed at night scared shitless by thoughts of Heaven. Hell didn't concern me, it was the idea of all that foreverness in the land of Big Crabby God and his namby-pamby kid and some poltergeist you couldn't even see but who flew around starting fires in your hair. To make matters worse, these gumbas were watching every single fucking thing you did!, even in the bathroom, even in your bed late at night while listening to Mantovani on your Rocket Radio.

Talk about Big Brother. Give me Casper any day.

OhMyGodIJustRealizedIt'sGoodFriday! (See how insidious it all is? There's God, smack in the middle of my very own sentence.)

In closing, I'd like to remind the listeners not to help themselves to the collection plate as it passes. As all things must. Pass, that is.

As for me, I'll pass on the religion thing. I've already put in my time. I've paid my teeth-gnashing dues, I ain't buying. As a kid I beat myself up trying to swallow that whole Son-of-a-God thing hook, line and sinker. Ouch. Believe me, I gave it the old college try. In church on Sunday, in bed at night, in the rec room on Good Friday where we descended for two hours in the afternoon as per Mother's instructions to sit at the right hand of knotty-pine-woodwork almighty and think about Jesus while listening to every other kid in the neighborhood run wild out in the sunshine on this blessed day off school. Yes, Virginia, I tried to believe. Pretended to believe. Ached to believe. But it never took. Deep in my nasty but truthful little heart, I knew. I was an interloper. An impostor. A pagan in Christian clothing.

And here it is again, after all these years. That little voice deep in my heart of hearts, recalling all those sacred ancient truths. And no, I'm not talking about the Lord. I'm talking about Mr. Peterson, my tenth grade English teacher. Who at this point in the story would be wondering aloud at my ability -- rather, inability -- to extricate myself from this quicksand of verbosity, this Pandora's briefcase of disparate images, and who would, it goes without saying, recognize the CO allusion for what it is, a red herring.

In the beginning was the Word, and Mr. Peterson always had the last one. Like this.