Meeting Persephone

Disclaimer: even as a Christian I never observed Lent. I wasn't Catholic and it wasn't a huge part of our buffet style worship. I was raised around a lot of Old World German reform - decidedly not the Catholic Germans. And so, like so much of this blog, here's another tale from my grandparents...

My grandfather was in a bowling league for the last 15 years of his life. One must do something while retired and bowling, darts, and beer were his activities of choice. The most convenient thing about beer drinking is that it's an activity that can be combined with all of the others thus making it an adaptable all-purpose activity.

It so happens that our hero had bowling on Wednesdays. Always the early bird, my grandfather arrived first and got to the bar immediately. The members of his team began arriving and getting ready to bowl a few rounds on a particular Wednesday and the beer was flowing at the onset as always. The final member of the geritol crew arrived to bowl with his teammates. He took off his jacket, removed his ball from its bag, and turned to place it in line with the other balls while smiling to himself at the chatter of his teammates. Finally all set to bowl he walked over to the seats where his team members were visiting. One teammate, a loud Congregational Christian, walked right up to our newly arrived friend, licked his finger and started scrubbing a dark smudge on the man's forehead!

My grandfather teetered between embarrassment that two of his teammates had this awkward interaction before the bowling began for the day and hysterical laughter at what he'd witnessed between these two men. I mean, honestly, how often do you see a man lick his finger to groom another man? Don't answer that...ok, answer if you must!