Catholics in the House!

For the past two years my five year old daughter has attended a Catholic school. I'm not Catholic, my wife is not Catholic, in fact before sending our daughter to that school, we didn't even know one Catholic person. We had heard they were around and had even seen evidence of it via buildings a/k/a churches. For all practical purposes we were completely Cathologically challenged. We chose to send our daughter there because:

1. It was close to our home
2. We like the uniforms
3. The Priest speaks with a lovely Irish accent
4. Thought the steeple on the church was a nice touch
5. Spanish style architecture reminded daughter of Dora the Explorer
6. It was close to our home

After the decision was made, we had to some way figure out how to navigate through this new world. As coincidence would have it, all of my daughters new found friends had parents too. It's strange how your social circle increases exponentially in direct relationship to the number of friends your child has. These parents befriended us and helped us understand to some degree how the whole thing works. We'd get a note in my daughters backpack stating that "Crowning Day" was happening, so take the appropriate action. Crowning Day? What the.... I'd tell the wife "we better call Sally's parents to see what we need to do". There have been so many phone calls made the itemized monthly phone bill is now delivered by Fedex Freight Solutions. I don't think they ever identified what caused Tom Hanks plane in the movie Castaway to go down, but it very well could have been our phone bill. From the Our Fathers to the beads and statues it's all very foreign. But I like it. You learn something new almost every day. As an example, heretofore for me a hail mary has always been a football play ala 1984 Doug Flutie playing for Boston College against Miami. That my friends was a Hail Mary. At my daughters school it has something to do with like saying hello to Mary. I'm not sure what it means there, but I know they're not talking about football.

As part of our initiation into the system, my wife and some other mothers from my daughters school started a monthly dinner club type thing. The first one was a bit weird and awkward, second one better, third one there was beer so it's been all gravy since then. The host couple decides what to have, cooks the meal and basically is just a good host. The first meal we hosted was awesome. Good chatter about this that and the other. It was Halloween time so we had a little Jack O' Lantern carving contest. It was golden. Man we were riding high after the party saying to ourselves how all of our guests enjoyed themselves. The challenge is... how do you sustain that positive energy and interaction the next time we hosted. Now here is where my genius kicks in. We strategically manipulated the next hosting time to coincide with St. Patty's day. Now we had a theme with so many good food options it was ridiculous. I got to work preparing a gorgeous corn beef and cabbage, an Irish Stout Stew (this is the gold standard of stews) and for the kids a home made macaroni and cheese. I was ready and looking forward to the evening. Guests started showing up. From the start something seemed awry with the facial expressions and off kilter glances between the visiting moms and dads. One of the Moms actually showed up just to tell us that their entire family had suddenly become ill. Then the final couple shows up carrying a cheese pizza. I asked them "what's up with the pizza"? These people are so nice they were trying to be as diplomatic as possible.... Charlie's Mom says it's Friday night and it's Lent. I said "I didn't lend anything to anybody"... I didn't get it.... then the light bulb went off, somebody had lent her the pizza and she couldn't say no. Needless to say, my family ate stew and several variations of corn beef for the next week. Sometimes it's unwise to stray too far out of your knowledge zone.

All joking aside, our experience with the Catholic church has been completely positive. We've met some unbelievably nice people who we now consider dear friends. I'm still not Catholic and almost surely never will be. From now on when one of these friends comes over for dinner I'm going to announce their arrival by proclaiming "Catholics in the house!" After that dinner stunt I'm not sure I want to know how they would proclaim my arrival.