I was talking with Fancypants today and we got on the topic of religion. It turns out he was raised in a strict, Lutheran household.

“Growing up,” he told me, “I was always going to church, taking communion, whatever.

“For several years I even took special bible study classes. At the end of them we had to take a test and I scored higher than all the other kids. I even did better than this dude who was in seminary.”

I told him that was awesome, that he must know a lot about the bible. And then—intrigued by this Mysterious Lutheran Exam that was years in the making—I asked him, what was the test like?

I expected Fancypants to say taking it was incredible—a religious experience in every sense of the word. I thought my friend might confess that the intermingling of intellectual and spiritual scholarship had changed him indelibly. I imagined him imparting wise words about the faith-based teachings that had served him well through the tremulous adult years wherein the sins of the flesh and flask are readily at hand.

Yes, I expected Fancypants to share something truly punctilious, truly profound.

Instead he said the test was, “F*-ing hard.”

And the funny thing is, I heard that’s exactly what the Israelites used to say about the unleavened bread that sustained them for 40 years in the desert—that it was f*-ing hard.

And that all that fiber-rich unleavened bread goodness made going #2 real f*-ing easy.

So that’s why I figure Fancypants might really know his (holy) shit, after all.

Posted in Mixed Bag