A Whole Crate of Irish Spring for Ya!

I skipped history class to go and relax with a friend of mine this afternoon. We enjoyed each other’s company and visited nicely, and very soon an hour had flown by. The two of us were chuckling amiably at some mutual joke, as we are prone to do when hanging out in this fashion, when he suddenly looked up at the clock with a look of mild disappointment and said, “Aw, shit. I gotta go to class, man.”
I glanced up, “Twelve thirty?” I asked. He nodded, and we were at his place so I gathered my backpack and sunglasses to walk out with him. We bantered a little more as he went around gathering things for his class. “Oh, shit!” he said, spitting a little this time. “I forgot her book back at the theater. Damn it, I hope it’s still there…” Clearly distressed, he began gathering his things more frantically.
I recalled that she had loaned him her psychology textbook, a hefty tome that was probably worth upwards of one hundred dollars. As she handed it over to him, I saw her say with blatant affection but mocking reproach how much it cost and not to lose it or damage it; it was a joke, of course. The irony is that normally, she is always forgetting her things, leaving her purse or makeup or keys scattered all across town, for which he ceaselessly mocks her. “You’ve got to stop forgetting your shit!” he would say condescendingly, with a joking grin on his face.
I kept the humor of the situation to myself because he was clearly upset, and instead voiced my sympathy and concern for the value of the book. It was left at the campus theater not one hour before, a short walk from there, where he had set it in plain view of the ticket booth attendant. Most likely it was either untouched or taken into lost and found by the man behind the glass. I could only hope.
We left his apartment complex together and were walking down a grassy slope towards the student union and the theater. Just ahead of us on the sidewalk was a black gentleman fully dressed in a suit on a hot Cruces day, with a toddler over his left shoulder and his right hand preparing to drag along a small rolling suitcase.
“Oh, no,” he muttered, “I think that’s that preacher guy that’s been walking around.”
I gave the man a second look, thinking of the irate Bible thumping rednecks that usually came to set up their soapboxes and bully pulpits and shout at college students. “Nah,” I say, “It’s cool. I don’t think that’s him.” We continue walking down along behind the well dressed fellow and I find myself staring into the eyes of his little girl, who is leaning over his shoulder and examining me intently, her mouth slightly gaping with the awe of an infant.
I smile at her as pleasantly as I can; I don’t really have any experience with children that young, at least not since I was that young myself. She follows the basic human instinct and beams right back at me, thrilled to see a smile. Just adorable.
My friend is in a hurry, needing to both find her book and get to his class, so he is taking long, quick strides, as am I to keep up. We are both long-legged fellows, and the gentleman barely cleared my friend’s shoulders, so the thirty feet between us closed quickly. We were conversing as we normally would have, perhaps in lower tones than usual, but still audible to the other fellow when we got near enough.
He must have heard something else in our tones, because as we caught up and were passing him, he looked at us critically over the back of his daughter and said, “You young men need to obey Jesus. These things you’re doing, they aren’t right and you will go to hell.”
My friend and I both rolled our eyes internally; it was the preacher. Some students, particularly the offended and disagreeable ones, would often be baited into talking to these proselytizers and trying to argue with them. I’ll admit to giving it a shot once or twice myself, and had eventually resigned to simply tell them not to take themselves so seriously whenever I saw them. There’s no sense arguing with men who fight without reason. Faith transcends logic, they sneer, and deny the Theory of Evolution, insisting the Creation and Adam and Eve and all of Genesis to be literal. We point to Neanderthals, and chimpanzees, citing the development of their skeletal structures and genetic codes, and they wave their hands and counter with “Jesus says this about science” and “God hates this” and “You’ll go to hell” that.
So, the both of us being thoroughly experienced in the matter, my friend and I turned slightly away, quickened our step and kept walking past the preacher. The preacher would not be so easily dismissed, and began matching our pace. “Is that a Led Zeppelin t-shirt?” he asked me disdainfully, “Oh, no, rock and roll is a path of sin, and you’ll have to do away with that or you’ll go to hell. The drugs, the alcohol, the fornication, it all goes against what Jesus wants for you, you must obey Jesus.”
He saw me respond slightly to the Zeppelin comment earlier, and revisited that, “You don’t wanna burn in hell like John Bonham, do you? He was a miserable man, and all those things sent him to hell. Drinking, partying—“
We were getting clear of him now, walking faster and faster and suppressing smiles. The preacher could not be deterred, and began shouting after us over the shoulder of his baby daughter, “Masturbation! Illicit sex! Hip Hop music, pornography, and filthy literature! Abortion and homosexuality! Lies and Hellfire! Damnation! You can’t be out every weekend, trying to get laid and smoking your marijuana!”
Twenty feet were between him and us when we lost control and burst out laughing. I realized how rude this was and put my hand to my mouth, but then I realized that this preacher was shouting after me in a public place about smoking pot and jerking off. I didn’t feel so guilty about laughing then.
My friend stopped laughing long enough to say, “Alright, later bro,” and hold out his hand, turning towards the theater.
I am bound for the student union and, grin on my face, pound his hand and say, “See you, man. Good luck finding her textbook.”
“Thanks,” he said, and walked away, shaking his head and chuckling.
The preacher was still behind me and wasn’t about to let me get away without putting in the last word, or last million words. He continued defaming me from behind, yelling, “Smoking will send you to hell!” and “You must obey Jesus!”
Just as I was far enough away not to hear him, I saw a whole troupe had come with my clown. A whole crowd of students was gathered around, sneering into the circle. There was another gentleman, in a bright yellow blazer, like the ones elementary school crossing guards would wear, only this one said “THANK JESUS” across the back in huge letters. He seemed to be the shouting ringmaster, with a few other blazer-wearers nodding their assent off to the side. Maybe they were saving their acts for later; they wouldn’t want to have to close up the circus too soon after getting into town.
I grinned dryly and shook my head, swinging open the door to the student union and swiping off my sunglasses. I got a few steps further inside when I heard a friendly female voice call, “You’re going to hell, Soren!”
I turned and recognized her immediately with a friendly smile, “Yeah, so I heard. About a hundred times I heard.”
She laughed amusedly at the joke and went along her way. I walked into the campus branch post office, mailed my letters, and did the same.