Uncharted Territory

“Please tell me the story again, papaw!” the girl begged as her grandfather settled into his chair. “Oh, why do you want to hear that old thing again, you just heard it the last time you were here.” He said in return as he pulled his youngest granddaughter to his lap.

“Because I love the way you tell it, please won’t you tell it to me again?” He could tell she was using every trick she knew to get him to soften up. She puckered her bottom lip out a bit and puppy-dogged her eyes up as big and they could go. He was a true sucker for those eyes.

“Fine,” he finally said after smiling for a minute at her innocent attempts to get him to speak. “I will tell you the story just once, but this is the last time and then you’re off to bed.” He could see a grin of satisfaction come across her face and could not help but smile himself. She knew how to get exactly what she wanted from her teddy bear of a grandfather.

“It all started just about fifty-three years ago, when I was still young if you can believe that.” She giggled at the thought of her papaw young. “I was out from all of my classes and work for the day; just roaming around campus with nothing better to do when I saw Brother Micah. He was an interesting fellow to say the least. Brother Micah was an open air preacher of doom, gloom, fire, and brimstone and he had the crowd especially riled up today. He was one of those types that liked to sing, dance, and scream his version of The Word to anyone who would take two minutes to listen. Being the rather easily amused fellow I was, I wasn’t about to miss a bit of it.”

“Now I could tell there was definitely something different about today, just not something I could put my finger on at the time. It was the usual hodgepodge of characters coming to see him speak, though mostly there to heckle. Some were disgruntled at his words, others were joking at what he was saying, and some were just there to make a spectacle of their own.”

“I can remember one such character, a slightly rotund young man, who came out dressed as Jesus himself, here to turn water into Kool-Aid! I remember very distinctly that every time Brother Micah would scream something about the Bible says this, or Jesus said that, this young man would interject that he did no such thing! That would sure get the crowd laughing.”

“But of course he wasn’t the only one. There were plenty of jokers, protestors, cross dressers, and even a midget! But most interesting of all, was the crazy couple that decided they wanted this soapbox preacher to marry them. God only knows why, but they did.”

“Now don’t take these people all too seriously, they were all there to have fun, and he wasn’t about to let them show him up in front of his own audience. He was there to make a good show of his own and his favorite thing to do, of course, was”

“Sing!” the little girl cried out before her grandfather could get there. “Yes he did,” he said with a chuckle. “And do you remember any of the crazy songs he would sing?”

“Hmm…” she said, displaying an expression of deep thought. “About how it’s not okay to be gay and how all sorority girls are prostitutes?”

“Right!” her grandfather said as he messed her hair a bit. “You seem to remember this part a little better than I do.” She giggled in response. “Well, later on that afternoon as things started to calm down, a group of maybe 40 of us stayed to actually have a halfway decent conversation with the crazy preacher. All was going well, a good back and forth was forming and under my breath I remember saying a joke. Now to this day I can’t remember even what that joke was, nor how good it actually was, but somehow this young woman in front of me laughs at it as I myself was laughing at my own humor.”

“Upon realization of this fact her eyes turned toward me as mine gazed into hers and time seemed to slow on its tracks. One of those moments you never really think actually exists, but is something I assure you does. With that one look, that single moment in which our eyes connected, it clicked. I knew that this was the woman I was going to ma-“

His words trail off as mid sentence he gets smacked upside the head by the grandmother. “Don’t lie to her; you didn’t know anything at that point. I had to hammer it into your thick skull what actually happened there.”

“Yeah, but this sounds better!” he protested to a stern, knowing look. “Well whatever, the point of the story is, of course, that is how I met the love of my life and your grandmother.”

“Now go the f**k to sleep.”