Eve’s Leg Hair

June 12, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

“I can only find three leg hairs” observed my youngest from the back seat. The chemotherapy killing her tumors also attacks any fast-moving cells – thus the hair loss, fingernail lines, and white blood cell reduction. She is twelve and had kind of fuzzy, blond legs a couple of months ago. Her smooth legs weren’t troubling to her, just something she noticed.

“Well, that would come in handy if you cared about that stuff yet,” I said, glad she didn’t.

“Why do girls shave their legs anyway?” she wondered. “I mean, who started that whole thing?”

A very interesting question. Who did start that? I assume Eve had leg hair when Adam popped the question. Do you think when they ate from the tree, not only did they figure out they were naked, but Adam also noticed her furry legs for the first time? Did he made a snide remark about Eve being only a slight step up from his former companion, the chimpanzee? Every guy knows the remorse of SCS – Stupid Comment Syndrome. The moment you say something to your wife and immediately wish you could turn back time to retract it. Adam’s comment sent Eve into a tizzy trying to scrape the hair off with a stick while stitching together the fig leaf bikini we see in all the pictures. If God created enmity between woman and serpent, imagine the enmity Adam created with his wisecrack.

Ah, here is where I began a quest for knowledge. I had no interest in important knowledge, anyone can get that. The learning I sought is practically irrelevant outside of bar bets, board games, and trivia competitions. When did women first start shaving their legs?

Any thoughts?

Where do I turn? My best friends and cohorts in the immaterial: Google and Wikipedia, of course. Google brought me facts that I have to believe. It seems that women were so covered before the turn of the 20^th century that it wasn’t necessary for them to shave – their body hair was kind of a honeymoon surprise. But as hemlines raised in the early 1900’s, razor sales increased. I can buy that.

The more compelling facts I found were about why women began shaving their underarm hair. They involve motion pictures, flappers, and old western women of ill repute. I would explain, but everyone likes a cliffhanger. My true audience is only twelve and wanted to know about leg hair anyway.

Besides, while on my search, I found a website called Mental Floss. It is like a Mythbusters of the inane. My evening was shot. I learned why bacon smells so good, 15 reasons we love Mr. Rogers, and why baby names have become increasingly female-sounding. Forget Wikipedia, some of that might actually be true. I have a new homepage!

After about three hours of copious research into absolutely nothing worthwhile, my daughter asked me why women started shaving their legs and I had to admit that I could tell her all why cows moo with accents, but had crammed so much useless knowledge into my finite brain, I had forgotten why women shaved their legs.

She left disappointed. Back to Wikipedia to start over…

But wait – an article titled, Do Racehorses Really Pee All That Much simply has to be read!

Church For Rent

May 22, 2014.Reading time 5 minutes.

I saw an odd sign today and had to investigate. It simply said:

Church for Rent

Because I have been told all my life that The Church isn’t a building, it is the body of believers, I found the rental concept intriguing. Remember the little folded hand thing little old ladies taught you in Vacation Bible School when you were six?

Here is the church

Here is the steeple

Open it up

And see all the people

How do you rent that? Are you renting people? Because that is clearly illegal and otherwise immoral. Hopefully, no kind of church (collection of believers) would do that.

Are you renting beliefs? Seems plausible, but slightly ridiculous since one church down the road is giving them away and on the other side on town there is one forcing them on any poor soul wandering past.

Maybe you are renting the building. Interesting…what do you do with a church building? This led to a whole other set of questions that forced me to survey the property. My initial investigation told me that this had been a Pentecostal church, most likely a Primitive Baptist church. I narrowed it down because of the booths that I found on the side, I think they are for potluck dinners and that is certainly a Baptist thing. I wiped a window and peeked inside to find a strange box next to the pulpit that I can only believe housed snakes in its day – thus the primitive. One other note, I live in the Deep South where you can’t swing a cat without hitting a Baptist church, so that is always the go-to denomination. (Yes, in this day and age, cat-swinging is discouraged, but only on Sundays with the blue laws and all.)

So if you are a Primitive Baptist Church and someone comes to rent your building (We will take the rental of members off the table because no one is going to pay for a bunch of staunchy guys yelling hellfire & brimstone at you, anyway), do you have a list of belief clauses the perspective renter has to adhere to before they can take over? I mean, you can’t let the building become a pool hall, bingo parlor, or a YMCA – which is just two towels short of a brothel. And what if a gaggle of Presbyterians comes along with their slick predestination/sovereignty of God talk and fermented drink? Do you even let them into the building? How about a flock of Methodists who debate the stickiness of salvation? Or God forbid, a cloister of Catholics? They would be crossing themselves, kneeling, and serving real wine in the very aisles that you used to charge up and down under the influence of the Spirit (not the alcoholic kind, the Holy kind). It flutters the mind to think of the radical change these denominations could bring to this sacred place.

The real question is, why does the church need to rent the space anyway? Tough times, I assume. But who holds the deed? The preacher, chairman of the deacons, or the head of the finance committee? If the church is caput, where does the rent money go? To the three guys probably responsible for its caputness?

You see the dilemma I’d fallen upon. You also know what all of these questions meant! I simply had to call the number. It rang four times and then to my disappointment, a nasally clerk named Eunice answered the phone with a boring explanation. It seems the church has been vacant for years and the city owns the property.

What seemed like a huge let-down led to one more question – where do they keep the charred remains of the poor slob who foreclosed on God?