So at the newspaper that I work at, I have to collect the mail for Editorial and sort it to the various editors and reporters. I think nothing of it, most days.
Except that today there was an envelope addressed specifically to me, care of my newspaper.
I finished what I was doing and looked at the address. Some church in Texas. I live in Nevada, so that was a little weird, but I figured, hey, maybe they wanted a community brief for an exchange program or something. I open the envelope.
It’s a cheap ass plastic glow-in-the-dark Rosary and a packet of information on how to say a Rosary.
I’m not Catholic, but I’m still seeing the humor in this. Or maybe that’s why I see the humor. But seriously, this thing was bad. If there were Catholic quarter machines, this thing’d come out of it. It’s bad.
I just can’t figure out how they found me! My full name, place of employment, and the address! Not even the PO Box, but the physical address! Because I’m not a reporter or an editor, my name is never put into the paper, online edition, and the print edition only has a teeeeny thing in the staff box saying “Call this number for newsroom information.” I’m so confused! Has anyone else gotten anything like this?
I never thought my first thread at the SDMB would be in MPSIMS. And I never thought it’d be about a plastic Rosary.
I think a cheap rosary is the way to go, actually. I once shelled out 27 dollars for a really nice one and as I was leaving the church, this HUGE black dog ran up out of nowhere and ate it.
…
Yeah, that’s right. He ATE it. Damn.
To this day, I still hate dogs because of that. I can’t even be around the big ones, either. Ugh.
That was no mortal black dog! That was Satan! Isn’t that obvious?
Gee, this thread reminded me about a glow-in-the-dark rosary I had when I was in first grade. I used to love to drape it over the top of the lampshade on the hall lamp, let it get good and “charged,” then take it into the hall closet and shut the door. Coooool!
Then one sad day I forgot I put it there, and Jesus melted. I was seriously bummed.
I was talking to a friend about it. His response was “What if you lose Jesus in the night - oh, wait…”
I dunno, I just find it really odd. I’m not Catholic. I purposely stay away from Christian Web sites because I don’t feel like starting anything. My name and WORK ADDRESS are not published ANYWHERE.
And I can’t find a phone number for this Church, either. Maybe it’s someone who actually knows me and is trying to give me a message. I dunno. The creep factor is going off the scale, but I kind of want to keep the Rosary because…well, honestly, glow-in-the-dark Jesus, man! I’m not even Christian and I see the cool-factor in that.
When my mother passed away and we were cleaning out the house, we found about 537 rosaries. Some had the beads made out of rose petals. What the heck do you do wth Roasaries? You can’t throw them out. So you put some in the mail to other dopers and wait.
Actually we took most of them to the church, with about a ton of other religious relics and donated them. I kept a glow in the dark rosary on my bed post for a long time. At least till I invented jerking off. You can’t do that with with a rosary on the bed post.
$27 bucks? That’s nothing. I bought Mom one for Christmas last year–I can’t remember the exact price but it was closer to $200 than $100. Think the most expensive one in the store was $240 (Canadian, but still). That was gorgeous, black onyx in silver. I almost wanted it for myself, if I had any want for a rosary. The one I did buy was mother of pearl, also in silver.
There were also some really garish ones in the $70 area, faceted glass in gold. Yuck.
One day when I was home from college for the weekend, I noticed my mother had changed my bedroom around. There was an extra little table in the corner. When I went to bed and turned off the lights, I was unnerved to see a glow-in-the-dark Mary looking right at me from the table. I hid it under a blanket unti l the light of day.
There was this kid at my high school named Domenico. He was Vietnamese, really tall, with a bowl cut, and he was a couple years older than all the other kids in his class because he came to the US and started kindergarten when he was 7 or something. He was also deeply religious and totally weird. He campaigned for class president and promised to pray for everyone who voted for him. He wrote songs about Jesus and America and sang them at talent shows and over the intercom once when he had the chance to read the morning announcements. He’d ask the teacher questions about what was on the test…as he was taking the test. He tried out for American Idol (or claimed to).
He also wore a glow-in-the-dark rosary as a necklace every day. I’m not sure because I’m not Catholic, but isn’t that taboo? Wear a rosary as a necklace, I mean, not having a glow-in-the-dark rosary.
I used to have a rosary ring: it was just a silver ring with ten thin strips and one cross. My Physics teacher in college ate it, I think: I sometimes took the ring off and left it on my table when it bothered me because the heat in the classroom had made my hands bigger; the teacher would walk up and down the central aisle and distractedly pick stuff from our tables and later put them in his pockets.
I also have a “5 continents rosary”: glass beads, each a different color for each continent (white for Europe, red for America, green for Africa, blue for Oceania, yellow for Asia). A couple times when I was in some sort of religious meet with my parents, Mom would bring it along and pass it to me when it was time to say it; later I’d just use it as a bracelet rather than pass it back in the throng.
But of course, the most convenient portable rosary is using your fingers.
