The Trouble With Coach...

...is sitting next to other coach passengers.

On my flight to New York, I was seated next to a loud middle-aged guy on a cell phone. The first thing out of his mouth when he hung up was, "Oh thank god you're not *hand motion indicating fatter than fuck*" Just so happened my simultaneous thought was, "Fuck, he's *hand gesture that indicates chatty*" And then Dick - because of course that was his name - told me all about his kids and his life and his rules for dating women (nobody in diapers, nobody into Jesus, nobody *hand motion indicating fatter than fuck*). Then he told me about the lady he formerly dated who did not allow him to use the word "awesome" to describe anything other than jesus christ himself, so he now uses "awesome' IN PLACE of jesus' name, and frankly the whole thing was almost too much for me to take without a cocktail, so the first thing I did when I got to the Milwaukee airport was get a cocktail. And hide from Dick.

Then on my flight home from New York, I sat next to this cute kid (christ, did I just refer to a early-twenty-something as a "kid"? Hand me my Metamucil!!) who seemed very interested in striking up a conversation with me, which was confusing because A) hadn't showered that morning and B) hadn't even pretended to shower that morning, so I was wondering what the hell he was all whipped up about, but then again I had grown accustomed to men buying me drinks in NYC and somehow convinced myself it was my dazzling good looks winning all the free booze (was I hotter in NY?!), so I answered all his questions about where I had been (in NYC bars) and what I was doing there (drinking and helping my girls get laid) and what my blog was about (poop and getting laid and making fun of jesus), and because I was still in Pitch My Blog mode from the conference and was talking a million miles an hour, I didn't even notice what must have been a visceral reaction from the kid.

When I finally shut the fuck up and asked him what HE does, he said something like, "I run a Christian outreach program for youth in the Ames, Iowa community" and then something about how he came to be "saved" in high school and grew more passionate about his faith when he reached college, and something about how he wants god to use him to change other people's lives, and that's when I realized what he was thinking...

This kid was thinking that Jesus sat his ass next to mine with the sole purpose of saving my heathen soul. Because that's why everything happens when you're an evangelical Christian, including (somehow) your youth pastor's impure thoughts about Ryan Seacrest. To save souls.

While I thought our seating situation was funny and ironic, this kid definitely interpreted it as divine intervention, and he spent the next forty minutes asking me questions about my relationship with jesus and listening to my answers about that Jew people seem to like so much, and when I found myself more exhausted than amused by the debate, I said, "Well, I'm going to take a nap now..." And then I took a nap.

Oddly, that's how church used to end, too.