Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Grandpa's Soaps Are Coming To Life

This story is based on an unintentionally sexual, unintentionally hilarious skit I saw while in chapel at my Christian elementary school many years ago. I have tried to be as accurate as possible with the dialogue. I'm sure it was longer than this, but this is what I remember, the gist of it:

 A teenage girl (from the high school campus of my school) opened an invisible door onstage and walked into a "room." She started snooping around on invisible coffee tables, etc, looking for something. Eventually she came to what appeared to be an invisible medicine cabinet and started rifling through it. (I assumed she was in a bathroom, though it might have been a kitchen.)
A teenage boy came from the other side of the stage and started watching her (not creepy at all).
The boy leaned on the invisible toilet, chin resting on his fist, grinned and said, "Hi," frightening the girl.
"Looking for something?" he asked.
"No, I was just, um, leaving. I was looking for the way out and got lost."
"Uh-huh. Sure."
I was confused at first, and rather surprised. Though the words "sexual tension" weren't in my vocabulary at the time, I was pretty sure I knew what it was: It was a real-life reenactment of one of my grandfather's soap operas!
I sighed in relief and settled back to enjoy the show. It was nice not having a message I had to take seriously. There was a message in everything, in that school, and even then I was burnt out. (I often wondered things like, "Why can't they just give us candy on holidays without a card explaining what the candy symbolizes?") Nothing was without some kind of lesson they had to hammer home, especially in chapel.
So I let my guard down and decided to enjoy the show while I still could. Sure enough, there was a message.
The girl tried to leave, the boy grabbed her wrist, they struggled, and she slapped him. Another boy casually walked in and saw the last of the action.
"Why did you hit him?" he asked, in astonishment.
"I hit him...because he took something that belonged to me."
"What did he take?"
"He took...your soul."
"What?!"
"You're a Christian, right?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered.
"I'm Jesus," the first boy said.
"And I'm Satan," the girl said.
I was surprised, and started laughing in shock at this point.
The boy with the soul didn't answer, but started to walk past Satan towards Jesus.
"What are you doing?" she demanded.
"I'm going to Jesus."
"Why?"
"Because He's the Son of God, and you're the devil." 
"But I can get you things. Like money! Cars! Women!" She made come-here gestures with her hands, and the kid appeared fascinated and started to follow her.
Jesus interrupted. "But those are just things, materials. Only I can get you into heaven."
"You're right," the Soul agreed. He turned back to Satan. "I choose Jesus."
"No! No! No! It isn't fair!" she screamed, sank to the floor and broke down crying while he and Jesus left, presumably to go grab some dinner or something.
After the play, they all took a bow together, holding hands. A teacher came up, hugging Satan around the shoulders, and explained, "I just want to say, she really is a nice girl, so if you see her around the high-school campus, don't be thinking, 'There goes that...devil-person.'"
I remembered hearing the phrase "devil-woman" to describe the villain of the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians, but I came to the conclusion that that was a phrase that was forbidden, frowned upon. I guessed if you called someone the devil, you couldn't acknowledge that they were female; that would make it worse somehow.
Even then, I knew the joke was on them. The teachers and students who put on that play had inadvertently created something that was part lover's spat, part daytime drama, part unintentional hilarity. I was really surprised that the devil had offered him "women" at the elementary school campus. And though I might expect Satan to offer women as bribes, I didn't expect Christ to call women "just things."
I'm also not sure why Satan was looking for the boy's soul in the bathroom (or kitchen?). With Jesus and Satan being different sexes, it was certainly spicier than the teachers intended. I don't think they knew how very sensuous it was, at least for me. Maybe that's why I still find salvation stories arousing to this day.

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