chewable jesus, action moses, and the love of my life

i didn't realize that religious icons made such excellent snacks.

i didn't think much of it when shopping for a baby shower gift for some friends recently, and stumbled onto a cute easter book section featuring an eight-page chewable bible. i was mostly impressed that they could condense the word of god into such a brief and delicious format.

but over the weekend i heard a story from bike-m. and his wife that put the whole chewable-religion into a new perspective: bike-m. was looking for an appropriate but sarcastic thank-you gift for a mentor at work who happens to be a self-described right-wing religious crazy surrounded by a workplace of leftist communist hippies (something like that- can all those things go together?). bike-m. ordered online an action-figure moses for said mentor's desk, and it arrived by mail. unfortunately (or fortunately), little-bike-m. found action-figure moses before her father was able to deliver the gift, and she managed to unwrap moses and shove the toy into her mouth. bike-m. was, i think, disappointed that his well-thought-out gift was being eaten, but guessed that perhaps his work mentor would just as much appreciate a photo of his daughter eating a plastic action-figure moses.

now, i have a bad habit of writing vaguely sacrilegious blog posts during lent (though it's been 2 years since writing about my fear of a zit-cross on ash wednesday). but are chewable religious objects such a bad thing? mrs. bike-m, who told me the story about action-figure moses, also tells me that when she and her daughter were the only white people shopping at the biglots in harvey over the weekend (a little bit of a long story about why that happened), she thought that perhaps her daughter's mouthing of action-figure moses might have actually been looked on with approval by the local on-lookers -- making mrs. bike-m. look a little more pious than her actual humanist-agnostic-unitarian-wife-of-mennonite reality. to paraphrase, "i can look religious in harvey, or ironic in wicker park, whichever suits my purposes."

i think that sentiment points out the real issue - i'm sure the babies in this story would have been equally happy to chew on a fabric bible or "our bodies, ourselves," action-figure moses or tickle-me elmo. (as mb and i proceed with wedding planning, i'm now kind of wishing our entire wedding ceremony would be attended by toddlers, because it would make the whole communion issue easier. forget the whole catholic/lutheran thing: little-bike-m., affectionately called "the hoover" by her parents, would eat the communion host right off the ground with no internal debate at all.) this is about our perceptions. anything we think about chewable bibles, pose-able prophets, or breaking bread with people of a vaguely different religious background reflects our own cynicism, one way or the other.

this does not mean that the minister will be officiating our wedding with a chew-bible. but to the bike-m. family, action-figure moses will be formally invited.

what would you do?

on my usual route home from work there are a few spots where generally i pass men or women in the street asking for spare change or peddling various goods. i've never really found a use for men's tube socks, bears superbowl champion t-shirts (doh), or water bottles, although i appreciate the attempts. i keep a little container of change near the driver's seat in the car that i use for meters, the sunday sun-times on occasion, and sometimes the people on these corners. i don't have any particular well-defined rule on who gets spare change (soft spot for women and children).

so last week i was paused at an off ramp, and a gentleman with a trach was asking for change. i imagined it wasn't super easy to manage the cup and the sign with the bag of possessions plus having to put his finger on his neck any time he wanted to vocalize, so rolled down my window to offer him some change, and he thanked me without any difficulty whatsoever. i didn't recognize that anything was weird until i was driving away, when it occurred to me that there was no scar, no skin opening, no cap over the trach, no little buzz to his voice ---

who on earth begs for change by using a fake trach?!? i've seen dolls wrapped in slings as fake babies, legs pinned behind to look like they're amputated, but never this one. points for creativity, my friend, but that's just obscure.