Friday, March 3, 2017

Reaching New Heights

Here at the Redwood City Catholic Worker House, usually on Monday mornings, we host a gathering of Catholic Workers from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Before we celebrate Mass here in the house together, we sit at the kitchen table enjoying the fellowship and community, and update each other on our lives.  We relate rewarding experiences from the last week.  We tell each other about challenges we've been facing.  We explain how our guests and our former guests have been doing, as we've extended hospitality to them.  We share with each other our foibles and mishaps.  

While we were meeting on Monday of this week, I was informing my peers of exciting events coming up in my life.  I also described an errand that my fellow Catholic Worker, Susan, and I recently ran.  I explained that as she and I were returning in our van from picking up some food which had been donated to us, I told her a joke.  

Right after I told her the joke, I thought of the four year old girl in the family who most recently moved out of this Catholic Worker House.  Right after one of us would tell a joke, then this little girl would attempt to tell jokes, which usually devolved and descended into incomprehensible babbling.  

After I told my joke in the van to Susan, I admitted to her, "You know, that sounds like a joke that she would tell."  

Days later, as we sat at the kitchen table for our weekly gathering, I said to everyone at the table that once I realized that I had told a joke resembling one that a four year old would tell, I thought, "I've started telling jokes like ones that four year olds tell.  I'm sinking to new lows."  Then, I described to them how I imagined some of them thinking about my immature sense of humor and dryly replying, "No, Doug.  You're reaching new heights."  

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