What I Was Writing About

Olive Way

I was writing about the musty Datsun Honey Bee my parents had when I was a kid. (My sister claims that the bee decals that decorated either side of the car were mismatched, but I don’t remember that.) Writing about that car transitioned into a list of the things I remembered about the time that a friend cornered me into going to a service at the Pentecostal Church where his father was the pastor. (Maybe his family was trying to convert me. I don’t know.) I was 13 or 14 years old at the time.

About two-thirds of the service was spent singing. The lyrics for most of the songs, as much like camp songs as they were like hymns, were projected onto a screen using an overhead projector. The mechanic who had worked on the Honey Bee during it’s declining years, was a member of the church, and he was present. Late in the service, the pastor – my friend’s dad – asked if anyone felt that they didn’t truly know Jesus and the mechanic stumbled up to the pulpit, weeping. The pastor and the mechanic prayed up there for a couple of minutes and then the service was ended.

Afterward, my friend went over to his mother – who was my seventh grade homeroom teacher – to ask her about something, and he backed off when he realized that she was speaking in tongues. But I think that going over to talk with his mother was really just a pretense for showing me that she was speaking in tongues. Afterwards we probably went over to his house, which was next-door to the church, and played Super Mario Brothers.