Don't look now, but the guy walking down the sidewalk is dragging a life-sized wooden cross, hooked over his shoulder.
(Well, big enough to crucify a large child on, anyway.)
I think of H. L. Mencken's famous definition of Puritanism: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be having fun.”
We are. It's the first Sunday in May, which means that here in the pagan neighborhood it's the annual May Day Parade down Bloomington Avenue. Thousands of people, as we do every year, have gathered to dance down the street in collective joy that Winter is finally over.
As the guy gets closer, I notice that his cross has a caster on the bottom. Hmph. Jesus should have had it so easy.
A satirist by nature, I can't help myself. I start to sing:
The wheels on the cross go round and round,
round and round, round and round;
the wheels on the cross go round and round,
all through the town.
People around me laugh. The guy looks irritated. Not quite the reaction that he'd expected, maybe.
A while later he comes back, headed back to wherever he came from. This time people around me join in.