On Sainthood: This Seems Like A Good Time
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
You missed Valentine’s Day again didn’t you, you dolt. How could you? The jewellery stores have been sending out flyers for weeks, the TV channels have been pushing Lindt Praline Classiques non-stop since New Year’s Day. How could you miss all that along with your beloved’s little hints? She even picked your underwear off the floor with no – well, very few snide remarks about your laziness; but you did it after all that, you forgot Valentine’s Day.
Of course, your missus or sleep-over lady-friend just smiled sadly and sighed. She will forgive you eventually, but you might want to employ a food-taster for a week or two, especially if you notice the bride has heaped a whole whack of home-made broccoli casserole on your plate and taken none for herself. Trusting is one thing, but there is no sense being stupid about it.
It’s February 18 and I’m afraid it’s a bit too late for you to go shopping, the damage is done. A card is not enough to get you back in her good graces, unless the card is a prepaid credit card and not one from Horton’s so chintzy it will be declined when she tries to get a doughnut along with a medium black in a paper cup even if she takes her own cream and sugar. You might try taking her out to dinner to a real sit-down restaurant, that might work, but not like last year when she had to shout her order into a drive-through microphone and was asked ‘Does youse want fries with that?’
Plus you forgot your wallet and she had to use her grocery money. Not only that, it was snowing and the paper bag was soaked. The fries, the vinegar and ketchup packets and her coffee fell under the car and she started to cry. And now you’ve done it again.
I hope you have your lawyer on speed-dial.
Valentines Day is a strange celebration when you think about it. It isn’t that Val was a great lover, a 3rd century Keanu Reeves, Leonardo Cappuccino, or an online columnist. He was a Roman priest and physician. Neither profession is known for their expertise in bed. Valentine was arrested, condemned to death, beaten with clubs, and finally beheaded on February 14th, 270 AD, which suggests to me that he wasn’t well-liked by the powers that be at the time. The fact he was made a saint I have no problem with, but the patron saint of lovers seems an odd choice.
Incidentally he is also the patron saint of epileptics and beekeepers which of course makes no sense at all. Nowhere is it mentioned in the scrolls that he fell into a beehive during a seizure.
I realize I am hardly a candidate for sainthood, not being Catholic for one thing, somewhat of a heathen for another, and only this morning took the Lord’s name in vain after stubbing my toe on a kitchen chair. Actually I went even further than that, by including Zeus, Thor, Beelzebub, Odin, Loki and the late Pat Robertson in my tirade. I also mentioned Frigg, the Norse Goddess of Fertility, not by name but by something close to it.
The rumour that I had become a bit of a heretic seems to have become common knowledge, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons have stopped dropping by. Nevertheless the next time Rome is reviewing the qualifications of the current candidates my name will likely be at the top of the list. I have no doubt I will be canonized or at least shot out of one, but St. Jimmy will be the Patron Saint of what?
Most of the major diseases have been spoken for except for Chlamydia and no one wants that. Most of the skilled trades already have their own saint. Plus I have no skills to speak of other than an uncanny ability to remember dirty limericks.
St. Cecilia is in charge of music, but I wouldn’t qualify for that one either. I took Hawaiian guitar lessons when I was 11, but I only learned to play Tea for Two and there is not much call for that in 2024. Come to think of it there wasn’t any call for it in 1949.
What I might qualify for is St. Francis de Sales job, the Patron Saint of Writers and Journalists. I can tell you right now, most of the journalists I know are scoundrels and scalawags so Francis has let a few things slide. If anyone needs divine help it’s them.
(Image Supplied)
