The Day I Fired God
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Nothing dropped out of the sky.
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A day in the life. God and I have issues. It all came to a head yesterday morning when I leisurely double-checked my 1 PM lunch appointment only to discover it was for 12 noon. I had to leave now, right now. Now as in NOW!
Shit!
It was all God’s fault, of course. Was it too much trouble on His part to actually equip me with a brain that worked? Or at least a non-working brain that came with technical support? Ever try getting through to God? I’ve been on hold all my life. Never mind. Just grab my wallet and I’m outta here. Wallet? Wallet!
My New Book!
Purchase now.
One minute ... no wallet. Two minutes ... no wallet.
Now I was really mad at God.
Three minutes, four minutes ...
I’m late! Or rather late for being a half-hour early. I had to give myself time for getting lost, stuck in traffic, or a comet randomly landing on my head. And the way things were going with my day, there was clearly a high probability of things falling out of the sky, totally exclusive to me.
There’s a passage in Homer’s Iliad that best describes how I was feeling. This is when the Greek’s mighty warrior, Achilles, discovers that the god Apollo has played a trick on him (sort of equivalent to hiding my wallet on me). As Homer describes it: “Achilles of the nimble feet was furious.”
“You have made a fool of me!” Achilles lashes out at Apollo. To add a bit of context to the conversation, our mere mortal only minutes before had had a run-in with the river god Xanthus, who “towered up and rushed upon Achilles with an angry surge, seething with foam and blood and corpses.”
First the river god, and now Apollo. “Much as I should like to pay you out,” Achilles rages at the son of Zeus, “if I only had the power.”
Being a mere mortal totally sucks.
At least Achilles got to vent his anger on Troy’s best warrior, Hector, whom he confronted “looking like the god of War, in his flashing helmet, girt for battle,” brandishing “the formidable ashen spear of Pelion.”
Me, I had the option of punching the crap out of my throw pillow-laden love seat.
I looked up at the ceiling instead. “God, you’re fired!” I said in a voice that would have caused all the plants in the house to shrivel and die had I been a god, myself. The plants paid no attention.
Minutes later, I found my wallet, or rather God surreptitiously returned it to where I had left it in the first place. At least, where I think I may have left it. How the hell would I know where I left it, me with my factory-reject brain with no tech support.
I looked back up at the ceiling. Let this be a lesson to you, God, said the look on my face.
Nothing dropped out of the sky on me on the way to my lunch appointment. Lunch was great.
First published as a blog, April 22, 2011, republished as an article June 16, 2011
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