Miracles

It took forever for three o’clock to arrive. I asked God why he made time go by so slow when somebody was waiting for something special and he said that it was not the time that changed but the person. I guess he was right; I was now eight. Maybe time went slower when you were older. He then went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal.

God loved Fruit Loops. He said it was the right combination of fruit, sugar and cereal. God wished that he had thought about it back in the days of the Israelites. He would have rained Fruit Loops down on his chosen people and they would have never doubted his love. Unfortunately, all he could think of was manna and since then the Jewish people have always considered their God a harsh, malevolent being that thrives on guilt and persecution.

Three o’clock came on slowly and then passed. The doorbell didn’t ring. I sat on the couch that offered the best view of the front yard and watched each car that traveled down our street waiting for one to stop. The cars seemed to crawl for the first half of the block and then accelerate just as they came close to our house as if they could not pass quick enough. Jesus kept running into the room and laughing at me. “Leave me alone,” I yelled and Mom made him go outside to help God finish setting up the yard for the party.

God had spent all day hanging decorations in the back yard. He was supposed to have the yard complete three hours before the party’s beginning but he kept trying to make the decorations more elaborate. At one point he stopped hanging the bull piñata and spent two hours installing a speaker into its head so that he could make it talk and roar.

“You could separate the sky from the earth in one day when you were God but now that you’re my husband it takes you all day just to hang a few favors for your daughter’s birthday party.” Mom shouted out the backdoor while holding Little Mary in her arms. They both looked on disapprovingly.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” God spoke into the microphone and his voice boomed out of the bull’s head. “Not bad for someone who’s a couple billion years old,” God said looking at the bull with pride.

“Just get them done,” Mom said and went back into the house.

The doorbell rang and I was back in the house excitedly ushering each of my friends into the living room. Most of the games had been set up outside but God said we couldn’t go out there until the last finishing touches had been completed. “A moment of patience may brighten a lifetime,” he remarked to our disappointed expressions.

We stayed in the living room while God went back outside. Once God was out of earshot Jimmy looked at me and said, “Your Dad sure is weird.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, “He thinks he’s God.”

"So does mine," Jimmy said.

Mom finally sent us out back after she caught us fishing in the tropical aquarium using thread, a staple and bologna as bait. It was too bad because Sara almost caught the puffer fish. Mom said that we needed to go outside before she broke something in the house. I couldn’t figure out why we being in the house might make her break something but by the look of the veins on her forehead, I thought it was better not to ask.

When we all wandered into the yard God was nowhere to be seen, just like in the OT. The games had been set up, purposely scattered all around. There were canvas sacks lying beyond a line of tape that marked the start of a future race at one end of the yard. There was a metal tub, full of water and apples, over on the edge of the brick patio that led out of the family room of our house. What caught our eye most, however, was the multi-colored piñata that dangled from the tree in the center of the yard.

The piñata hung from a thick limb of our family’s Chinese elm tree. Covered in small scales of colored paper it shone like a rainbow in the afternoon sun. It was in the shape of a pudgy bull. As the day held a slight breeze, the bull slowly swung in the sky. A wooden, Louisville Slugger bat leaned up against the tree’s trunk inviting an assault.

Well we didn’t wait for God to return. John ran directly to the piñata and all the children gathered around to watch him hit it. We had transformed into an angry, fake-paper-mashie-bovine hating mob. John grabbed hold of the bat and swung it back over his shoulder. “Hit it John,” I yelled and that started a chant that all the other kids picked up.

“Hit it John. Hit it John. Hit it John.” We all sang and danced.

John choked up on the bat, encouraged by our chant and started his swing when a booming voice came from the head of the paper mashie beast. “John, please don’t hit me,” the bull pleaded.

The slugger froze at the apex of its arc. It was as if an invisible hand reached out and grasped the bat holding it high in the air.

“Help. Help,” the bull started calling to us. “Somebody, anybody, I’m tied to a tree and a bunch of kids are trying to beat the candy out of me.” The soft wind appeared to give the bull life. As it rotated, its face came to look directly upon John’s. The bull's eyes held John's. The bull pleaded for amnesty. “John, please, listen to reason. I’ll give you the candy. I’ll figure a way to get it out. Trust me; all you have to do is ask. Just don’t hit me with that stick,” the bull begged and wined.

The wind blew the bull away from us and its head tilted up towards the sky. “Oh, life can be so cruel,” it began to lament. “Especially when you are a kaleidoscopic bull with paper horns and a belly full of candy.”

John screamed and dropped the bat. He ran across the yard, in through the back door and out through the front. I was pretty sure he didn’t stop until he reached home because less than five minutes later the phone rang and it was John’s mother, Mrs. Dubold, calling up to scream at mom for letting “that crazy husband of hers scare the hell out of my little John.” Mom said that it was probably a good thing that the boy no longer had any hell in him and hung up the phone.

Jimmy was next and expecting the bull to scream he didn’t even pause before hammering it a couple of real good ones in the head. The bull shouted, “Look out behind you” but Jimmy swung anyway. He followed with “I see a bright white light in the distance, think I’ll just go over and see what it is” and “after that shot I think they can safely call me a cow,” but it did nothing to deter our enthusiasm.

Next, Suzie took the bat and started to strike at the bull. The booming voice made fun of her for swinging like a girl and after that she really socked the bull a good one in the head. The bull swung back and forth, dropping the first few pieces of candy. Suzie had drawn blood. The bull kept speaking, but stopped making any sense. I figured it might have a concussion from all the blows to the head.

The bull said, “Mary, what are you doing here?”

“It’s my birthday,” I answered.

And next rather than the loud voice of my father we heard my mother’s voice coming from the piñata’s head. The bull had become upset and she was yelling at God. The bull said, “Now listen here God, I don’t know what you were thinking scaring that little boy like that?”

“Nothing really, I was just playing a little joke on the kids,” God's voice reappeared from the piñata’s rear as it turned on its string and faced away from us. Suzie stopped swinging the bat and just looked at the bull confused along with the rest of us.

"Maybe the bull has schizophrenia," Jimmy whispered.

The bull continued speaking. “A joke. Really God, when are you going to figure out that you have an absurd sense of humor that nobody understands but yourself.”

“The koala bears think I’m funny.”

“That’s because they’re stoned all the time.”

“Stoned,” Jimmy repeated somewhat surprised and I shook my head in confirmation. “I thought they were just mellow,” he added.

“Notice how they’re always eating those leaves,” I said. Jimmy nodded yes.

The bull had completely lost it and was no longer making any sense. “People like my jokes,” the bull defended. “How can anyone take a look at the universe and not think that God has a sense of humor? Did you know that the katydid hibernates for seven years, emerges from its cocoon and dies within twenty-four hours? Now, that is funny. What about putting two foot long arms on a forty-five foot dinosaur. Maybe my humor is a little dark, but still you have to admit, it is funny."

"I blame the Biblical writers, you know,” the bull huffed. “They edited out all my good jokes. Oh yeah they wrote volumes about the plague of locusts, but what about the plague of bounteous flatulence that I unleashed on the Egyptian people. Of course, that did turn out to be worse on the Hebrews than the Egyptians. Kind of backfired if you know what I mean.”

“Hit it Suzie,” I whispered and she popped it in the side. It was a tentative jab filled with some uncertainty and the piñata only barely reacted. It slowly swung back and forth under the tree, continuing to speak as if her hit had not even occurred and Suzie’s second swing was definitely harder.

“Oh yeah, well tell that to Abraham,” the bull once again adopted my mother’s voice as Suzie struck it in the side.

“I never gave Abraham flatulence,” the bull defended in my father’s voice.

“I’m talking about your jokes.”

“How was I supposed to know he would take me seriously?” the bull asked defensively. “I figured it had taken Abraham so long to get a son that he’d think it was funny if I told him to take him into the hills and slaughter him like common livestock.”

“This is the strangest piñata I have ever seen,” Suzie said. I took the bat from her and whacked the bull in the middle. Three pieces of candy plopped out.

The bull, unfazed by the blow, continued speaking. “That is exactly what I am talking about. Why would anyone think it was funny that you ask Abraham to kill his own child?”

“Because it took so long for his wife, what was her name, I tell you I am awful with names. Did I ever tell you that I kept calling Adam, Jack, the whole time he was in the Garden? When I asked him why he ate the apple he said that it wasn’t him but Jack who did it. Anyway. Can’t you see the irony? It took that woman close to three hundred years to get pregnant. They even gave me credit for her eventual fertility. I mean come on, who could ever think that a loving God would demand that a man kill his own son. That is just plain cruelty. It’s not my fault Abraham didn’t have a sense of humor. He has a good one now. Just before I came to Earth he told me this great joke about these three nuns standing in line to get into Heaven...but obviously now is not the time. Thankfully, that lamb wondered on over.”

I handed the bat to Little Mary and she started swinging at the bull.

The bull asked, “You mean you didn’t even send that lamb over?” and then answered itself, “No, I guess I just got lucky.” And that was the last thing the bull said because with the very next swing of the bat, Little Mary crushed a hole in the belly of the beast and all of the candy, as well as small circular speaker sprayed out over the lawn. My friends rushed to grab the treats as they rained down all around Little Mary. Only she never stopped swinging and Jimmy caught one on the side of the head.

After a three-legged race we went into the house to have cake, ice cream and milk. And that was when the unthinkable happened. We ran out of milk. God had eaten five bowls of Fruit Loops earlier and finished the entire gallon.

“Honey,” mom yelled as she held the empty container in her hand.

“What?” God asked, hiding behind the video camera. The red light was flashing and I think God held hopes that the public record might temper mom’s words.

“We are out of milk, dear, and what do you suppose we do about that?” Mom's voice remained calmed.

“Well, I can see if the bull will give us any,” God laughed and continued laughing for a time much longer than his little joke warranted.

Mom just shook her head. “Jesus,” Mom called and I could see that my brother had a nervous look like he already knew what mom was going to ask. He walked up close to Mom. “Look son. This is your sister’s birthday party and it is really important to me that everything goes right.”

“Yes,” his eyes shifted over to me and then back to mom.

“Well, do you think you could make us some milk?”

“Mom, you know I’m only supposed to use my powers for good and to combat evil,” Jesus put out his arms and pretended to fly around the room.

Mom didn’t appreciate the joke. “Don’t give me any of that superhero stuff,” she said. “This is not the Justice League. First, this is a good thing. And second, it is carved in stone…”

“Don’t you chisel stone, Mom,” I interrupted.

“Yes, you are right Mary, one does chisel stone,” Mom looked directly into the video camera and smiled. Dad was capturing every moment on tape. Mom tried to control her voice but the strain of the party was beginning to get to her. The veins in her temples began to pulsate. Mom turned back to Jesus, “and second, it is chiseled in stone that you are to honor your father and mother. Now, please make us some milk.”

Jesus instructed us to fill two old milk jugs with tap water. All the kids looked on wondering what would happen next. It was obvious that something big was about to occur. We waited in absolute silence for about a minute and then Jesus said, “What are you guys waiting for? There is not going to be any bolts of lighting or flashes of smoke. This isn’t Vegas. There are no showgirls. It is already done.”

Mom poured the water into our glasses. Only it wasn’t water but the thickest, creamiest milk that any of us had ever tasted. Everyone in the room gave Jesus a standing ovation.

“Jesus,” God later said after sampling the milk, “if I knew you could do this I don’t think I would have ever gone to the grocery store. Can you make Fruit Loops?”

After the cake and ice cream we went back out into the yard and Jesus did some more magic tricks for us. He made coins come out of people’s bodily orifices, even a Susan B Anthony out of my left ear. He made a rabbit disappear and for his grand finale he sawed Mom in half. It turned out to be the greatest birthday party ever.