My wife and I have thirteen grandchildren, aged two to twenty-one. Three of our grandchildren are ages 16, 15, and 14. All three are intelligent kids, straight-A students. I have found it interesting and enjoyable to watch them grow up. They are now at that age where they are not adults, but neither are they children; conversant in the things of the world, yet without much real-world experience. All three of them read my blog. They peruse my bookshelves, trying to size up the man they call Grandpa. My grandchildren don’t know much about Bruce Gerencser, the preacher. I had left the ministry by the time they were born. The Grandpa they know is disabled, unable to drive, a man who is a curmudgeon who loves to talk about politics, religion, sports, and make snarky, sarcastic jokes. My oldest grandson, the fourteen-year-old, and I were in the garage looking for my Hitachi corded power drill the other day. I need it for a project we were working on in the house. The drill was nowhere to be found. In the space of a few seconds, I said, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. 🙂 Evidently, one of my children “borrowed” the drill and hadn’t returned it (I’ve threatened to put RFID tags on my tools so I will know where they are.) That meant I had to use “the beast,” a 1/2 inch drive Black and Decker drill I have owned for twenty-five years. As we came into the house, my grandson said with a smile on his face to his father, “Grandpa said the “F” word five times in two seconds!” We all laughed . . . and then I said fuck again. 🙂
Yesterday, my oldest son was over with his family for dinner. Polly and I made: fried catfish, fried shrimp, hushpuppies, asparagus (from our garden), and coleslaw, complete with beer, pop, or unsweet iced tea. After dinner, I noticed my son was trying to straighten up the sign I recently put up over our liquor cabinet. I said, “what are you doing?” I then told him that I meant for it to be crooked on purpose.
My sixteen-year-old granddaughter and fourteen-year-old grandson were perplexed. The grandfather they knew NEVER hung up ANYTHING crooked. EVER! Their father grew up in a home where a tape measure, shims, plumb-bob, and a level were never far away. He and his siblings have “fond” memories of helping me perfectly align the pulpit in the church’s front and center. I mean, perfectly align. Welcome to Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.
By the way, this is the first time I have ever deliberately hung something crooked. I doubt I will continue down this decadent path. 🙂
Why the crooked sign? I love its take on the Bible verse: as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. 🙂 The crooked sign also reminds me of how Polly walks when she has drunk too much wine. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Nice! And I’m glad you had a nice family meal. I find it’s possible to get along with those of differing religions and politics if we have things in common. We are watching Babylon 5 and other shows with our oldest son one night a week. We all also like to talk about different science things together.
Cool sign! 😉
Oh, and I’m jealous of all your grandkids, but there is still a possibility we will have some in the not-too-distant future. But it is nice you have so many loved ones.
Is the Book of Happy Hour available in a modern English version, with the words of our Soused-er in Burgundy? I want to do a careful and extended hermeneutical study of this text as soon as possible. 🍷 🍷 🍷
I like your sign! I can’t accept the crooked nature of the sign though, sorry! While I have not been diagnosed with OCD, I do have issues with symmetry.
That must be fun hanging out with the older grandkids! What do they think of your blog?
I prefer asymmetry . . . but that sign is not just crooked. It’s way crooked. Or is it me and my vertigo? 😉
I couldn’t make anything—or anybody—straight if I wanted to!😉
I love this crooked signage… and this crooked blog! It’s so, ummmm, level, you know? Seeing this sign, I begin to feel there is a chance for ol’ Gerencser… he just might make it! Way to go, Almighty! You finally see that straightening out is getting crooked!
And MJ, Under ‘magnification’, it seems to me that there is no physical evidence of ‘straight’. There’s partly straight, straight enough or not, straight as a crooked gate straight, kinda too straight to believe, just plain crooked straight and all kinds of straight that are not straight. Takes all kinds to make straight the way, I guess. 😉
Zoe, you are leaning! A bit hard left on the lean! Stand up straight, my father used to say to the teen, as I carried the weight of the world….
Bruce, I think it’s time for RF to get banned. He’s making assumptions about the spiritual life of YOUR GRANDCHILDREN, even though you’ve previously mentioned that you have religious kids. It’s pretty damn sickening that RF is such a complete fucking asshole. Don’t worry dude, no one here respects you enough but threatening kids? Take a real horrible person to do that.
No one goes to hell, you razzafracking idiot. That’s just a wild-ass story that preachers made up so that you come to church and throw money in the collection plate.
If there was such a place as hell, any deity that had created it would be certifiably barking mad, eternally just one whim against throwing everyone into the pressure cooker and slamming the lid. You will never be safer than us. Ever. Your beliefs are no defence whatsoever against an insane god, and its promises are worthless.
Revival Fires, you seem to revel in the notion of people dying and burning in a physically torturous and conscious hell. Oh, I figure you’ll probably say you’re just trying to be a Good Christian and warn people about eternal torment in hell if they don’t submit to The Right Doctrine, but it comes across to the rest of us as the height of hubris with a generous dose of gloating. I have yet to read anything remotely compassionate from you
It’s faux compassion, occasionally with a cute little weeping emoji, and it ain’t foolin’ anyone. It comes across as “I’m going to heaven and you aren’t, neener neener neener!”
Someone who actually cared about people burning in hell wouldn’t be wasting time jerking off on the Internet – they’d devote their entire lives to silent, desperate prayer, begging their evil little god-thing to have mercy on, well, everyone.