A Time to Laugh

But enough. The amateur is vindicated; let me proceed with my other qualifications.

For the second one, put down that I like food. As a child, I disliked fish, eggs, and oatmeal, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. My tastes are now catholic, if not omnivorous. My children call me the walking garbage pail. (On my own terms, of course, I refuse the epithet: All that I take is stored lovingly in an ample home — it becomes not waste, but waist. On their meaning, however, I let it stand: I am willing to try anything more than once.)

Admittedly, there are some delicacies that give me pause — prairie oysters, for example, or the eye of the calf in a tete de veau. But since I have never tasted them, my apprehension may be only the disenchantment wrought by distance. Even the surf is frightening when you lie in bed and think about it. In any case, it is part of my creed that there are almost no foods which, given the right cook, cannot be found delectable. Just so long as they are not corrupt — no, that is too sweeping: It will cost me pheasant and venison — just so long as they are not gracelessly corrupt, there is, somewhere in the world, an eye that can conceive them in loveliness, and a recipe that can deliver the goods. I am convinced that even shoe tongues, if cooked provencale or a la mode de Caen, would be more than sufferable.

I hated eggs, too, as a child. I hated most breakfast foods, to be honest. I’d eat lunch for breakfast, if I could. And I have done so when pregnant, when you could justify every out-of-the-ordinary choice under the general heading, “craving.”

And meatloaf. I still hate meatloaf.

Grant hates ranch anything, pastrami, and baked chicken. Isaac hates broccoli. Gavin hates . . . I haven’t met anything that Gavin hates yet.

But I’m not a gourmand. I am not an adventurous eater. Yet I have had goat, squirrel, rabbit, venison, pheasant, and dove. I liked the pheasant the best, but I’m told the squirrel is nearly a Missouri delicacy. One I’ll never fully appreciate, I don’t think.

Yes, when it comes to food, I’d rather stay in my yankee-pot-roast or moo-goo-gai-pan suburban provincialism. I know I could never pass the food challenge in Survivor, and I’m perfectly happy in my rut.

But Capon gives us more here than just how to prepare a shoe leather sandwich. He’s relishing that all things are lawful. All things are edible. All things are pure to the pure in heart. It doesn’t matter what the movie means really or what the menu item contains actually. God’s mercy doesn’t depend on what sin we committed technically.

Grace finds beauty in every thing!

Or, conclusively, peel an orange. Do it lovingly–in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.

That, you know, is why the world exists at all. It remains outside the cosmic garbage can of nothingness, not because it is such a solemn necessity that nobody can get rid of it, but because it is the orange peel hung on God’s chandelier, the wishbone in His kitchen closet. He likes it; therefore, it stays. The whole marvelous collection of stones, skins, feathers, and string exists because at least one lover has never quite taken His eye off it, because the Dominus vivificans has his delight with the sons of men.

I just had my hands wrist-deep in chicken grease. The house is smoked up because a stray drumstick wouldn’t behave within its rotisserie prison. The counter top displays my weapons — shears and tongs and forks and even a dismantled coat hanger I thought I could bend into a skewer. I was wrong about that.

I could just throw the whole bird in the oven. But I don’t. My better half despises baked chicken. Hates it. And so I wrestle with the legs, cutting off what is misbehaving, splattering my party shirt with poultry goo, tripping over a licking-the-floor schnauzer, and opening windows upstairs and down. I dream up the broccoli salad he likes. The cole slaw recipe he prefers. The carrots my boys would choose. We’ll see if my efforts are successful in 30 minutes or so.

My kids think I am the best cook in the world. I’m not. . . . Well, I’m okay. I rely on pancake mix and low-fat turkey sausage enough to know that I’m no Martha. But I regularly get, “You make the best sausage in the world, Mommy!”

You have no idea how wonderful that feels. Because I know it’s not the food that they are enjoying. And it’s not just Mommy. It’s both. It’s the combination: the full tummy and the full heart.

My dear 86-year-old Dad insists that his mother was the best cook ever. My mom always retorts to me quietly, “She really wasn’t, Camille. She was terrible!” But Dad still goes on and on about the steak that was as tough as shoe-leather and the fried chicken Grandma made after she boiled the bird for its bone-broth value.

I realize that Mom’s right. But Dad’s right too.

Our world is an orange peel hanging on God’s chandelier. It’s good because He loves it and us. Just like boiled-and-then-fried chicken. Just like that dissected rotisserie project smoking up the downstairs. . . . at least, I hope.

First, I am an amateur. If that strikes you as disappointing, consider how much in error you are, and how the error is entirely of your own devising. At its root lies an objection to cookbooks written by non-professionals (an objection, by the way, which I consider perfectly valid, and congratulate you upon). It does not, however, apply here. Amateur and nonprofessional are not synonyms. The world may or may not need another cookbook, but it needs all the lovers–amateurs–it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes, and smells to keep us intrigued for more time than we have. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: It is, far more often than it should be, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral–it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness.

Ah, neutrality. This sounds like something Richard Weaver might have written in mediating the spirit of Plato. But Capon likes the awkwardness. I’m not sure that Weaver or Plato would relish the “clownish graces,” as awkward as those dudes were.

But yes, Capon’s right. Neutrality is boring and unlovely. Being an amateur and doing something just because you love to is clownish but beautiful.

I made V’s day gifts for the ‘rents this week. I overdid it. It took too long. It was too extravagant. It was full of love and sentiment and memory-making. But . . . still too-too.

I love like an amateur. Like Mike pronking out of his crate ready for the day. Like a forgiven prostitute who crashes the church social. Like Elaine Bennis dancing.

Is that a problem?

From The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon.

Let me begin without ceremony.

Lamb For Eight Persons Four Times

In addition to one iron pot, two sharp knives, and four heads of lettuce, you will need the following:

For the Whole

1 leg of lamb (The largest the market will provide. If you are no good with a kitchen saw, have the chops and the shank cut through. Do not, however, let the butcher cut it up. If he does, you will lose eight servings and half the fun.)

For the Parts

I (A)
Olive oil (olive oil)
Garlic (fresh)
Onions, carrots, mushrooms, and parsley
Salt, Pepper (freshly ground), bay leaf, marjoram
Stock (any kind but ham; water only in desperation)
Wine (dry red — domestic or imported — as decent as possible)
Broad noodles (or staetzle, potatoes, rice, or toast)

I (B)
Olive oil (again)
Garlic
Onions
Salt, pepper (keep the mill handy), and thyme (judiciously)
Oregano is also possible, but it is a little too emphatic when you get to III.
Wine (dry white–even French Vermouth–but not Sherry. Save that. Or drink it while you cook.)

II
Spinach (a lot)
Cheese (grated: Parmesan or Cheddar; or perhaps Feta–anything with a little sharpness and snap)
Mayonnaise (not dietetic and not sweet)
Sherry (only a drop, but Spanish)
Bread (homemade; two loaves) and butter (or margarine, if you must)

III
Oil (peanut oil, if you have any; otherwise olive)
3 eggs
Onions
Shredded cabbage (bean sprouts, if you have money to burn)
Sherry (if you have any left)
Stock (as before, but only a little)
Rice (cooked, but not precooked)
Soy sauce (domestic only in desperation)

IV
Onions, carrots, celery, turnip
Oil, fat, or butter
Barley (or chick-peas or dried beans–or all three)
Water
Salt, pepper, and parsley (rosemary?)
(Macaroni and shredded cabbage are all possible. A couple of tomatoes give a nice color.)

Recipes fascinate me. In fact, the book series that started this recipe obsession with Perfection Salad is the series that is republishing Capon’s book. Recipes are a gustatory snapshot into another life. Like driving past homes at dusk and peeking into their yet-to-be-shaded windows. You see quirks, taste (or lack there of), humor. You see humanity.

I can honestly say that part of me likes reading the recipes more than preparing and eating the menus they describe. But I am the one who learned to swim from a book, ectomorph that I am, hidden in this endomorphic-looking costume. I fool no one into thinking that I’m a mesomorph, that’s for sure.

But this recipe — Capon’s “Lamb for Eight Persons” — this is a poem. There are no measurements, only instincts. There are no brand names, only small jabs at modern movie-sets-of-flavor like dietetic mayo and oleo. ::shudder:: There are not even any instructions, only a gathering of good things.

This is the way Babette cooks, I think. And Jesus. I really think that Jesus would cook like Capon.

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

Gavin’s been having a rough time lately. I think he’s teething all this incisors and molars at once. He’s crabby. He wakes up at 5:00 am every morning. He whines a LOT. His nose runs. He’s kinda klutzy. He eats two breakfasts every morning.

And well, he reminds me of me. This is a hard time for him. He feels lousy and he’s learning and growing so much. It’s exhausting. And sometimes Daddy has to just take over (because he’s stronger) and hold him tight and say, “Gavin. Stop. Rest.”

God did that with us over the last year. He held us through our developmental disequilibrium. We might have bellowed, “NO!!!” but He just picked us up and firmly carried us through. No power of hell, no scheme of man — not even my own short-sightedness, foolishness, and total inability — can ever pluck me from His hand.

And now that it’s all over, we can assure you that there is life after fundamentalism. That sphere of influence is really very, very small, and we continue to chuckle that Christ is way bigger than a single city block!

At each step, God was there. Each monument reminds me that “the Lord has helped us thus far.” Our daughter’s death stripped away cultural clichés and showed me my Christian colleagues at their very best and God at His most loving. Praying for Isaac proved that God listens and answers prayer. His birth and babymoon taught me how much God loves me. Finding our parenting “sea legs” (despite what I had foolishly concluded as a grad student) further reminded me to listen close to the Holy Spirit and to see through my sons my own total inability and dependence on Christ. Our reading showed us a more robust and more biblical Christianity than we knew in our microculture. Publishing my dissertation was also a thrilling and unexpected (though scary) answer to prayer. Gavin’s birth reminded us that God is faithful so that we can be happy and bold in His love as we approach His throne saying “Abba Father!”

Then there are the monuments built with sharp, heavy stones. The outings, little and big. The meetings. The chapter. The document. The ultimatum. And the resignation. Each incident revealed brokenness of corporate policy, an occluded climate of communication, and a culture steeped in graceless punishment that seems as likely to continue as it ever has. As frightening as these boulder-like Ebenezers were, each was a firm hug that pulled us closer to God and pushed us further along in His plan.

But it’s not really about Grant and me or even a small segment of fundamentalism. It’s about the Church at large and a brewing Awakening, I believe. I’ve heard from so many fellow alumni and friends whom God has gently but dramatically led out of the movement. Jerry Bridges‘ recent theological transformation mirrors ours. And Michael Horton, too, urges a move from the Christless religion of distracting rules to a Christ-centered discipleship that lives out the Gospel. It’s happening.

Writing these Ebenezers have been a therapeutic Lenten exercise for me. I feel unburdened and relieved. The message that has been stuck in my gullet for years is out. It’s done. No need to save it to a CD-ROM either. I’m not moving it.

If I were to describe this argument within the theory I built in my book — the notion of a romantic separatist rhetoric — I’d probably say that I was the friend that dared to talk about the debutante’s beauty treatments. The henna rinses, the tummy tucks, the tattooed eyeliner — things that were not natural but were desperate attempts to prop up a fading beauty.

Take the cover art, for instance. It’s Edwin Long’s Vashti. I know that after Campaign 2000, Bob Jones University felt very much like Vashti did when the King wanted her to traipse before his drunken guests. While her ladies-in-waiting are pleading with her to just buck up and go out there and do her duty, she pulls her shawl tight to her chest and trembles. But she won’t budge.

Vashti was stuck. It was either strip or hide, she thought, and she chose hide. We know that neither was the best option. The best option came from a plucky but God-fearing gate guard and his cousin, an unlikely Jewess princess who saw God in every interaction. With boldness, Esther defied convention and propriety and spoke plainly. She stood up to injustice. When the courtly customs threatened her life if she didn’t hush, she dared to speak.

Although I was stopped at every turn, what I wanted to say to fundamentalists in my book is that their beauty isn’t in them at all or in their products or productions. Their spiritual success isn’t stuck between their own purity and the world’s debauchery. As believers, our beauty is wholly in Christ. And that’s not just a cliché; I’m trying to describe it in the most unclichéd way I know how. It seems to me that everything the Lord has brought my family through — from our time at Indiana University to the birth of our children to our forced resignations from Bob Jones University — has pushed us to saying that very thing. Our whole story proves that God (not us!) can take the ugliest and saddest things and make them beautiful and joyful.

You talk to anyone who has left fundamentalism — and many of you have written me and called me to share your similar experiences — and the transition is very much the same. It’s tough. You lose most of your friends from your previous life. You know that people are concluding the worst about you (and a few are brazen enough to tell you how thoroughly terrible you are). People pass unproven supposition around as fact. You hear about how everything you touched is treated like evidence in a “crime scene.” You get paranoid. You get official letters describing the ongoing punishment that your once-friends are now documenting in their files. And your precious family gets the brunt of the stress those letters cause. You feel the icy chill from those you used to laugh with and cry with and pray with.

And then, after all that, you’re told to keep your mouth shut about it. If you do talk, all sorts of spiritual calamity will fall upon you, they say. You can only bring problems up privately, you’re told, even though you did — to no effect. No examples exist in Scripture of speaking out against injustice, you’re told. . . . what Bible are they reading?

I realize now that those demands for us to “shut up!” are really no different than those who say “Aren’t you over that by now?” to moms of babies in Heaven. There’s a fear of big, sad feelings. There’s a fatigue in hearing the same old thing. And there’s the dread of being jinxed if you hear it too much. But those of us in the middle of hardship need to work through these big feelings. It’s a mourning process, and shutting up guarantees you’d get stuck in crippling denial or embittering anger. No, I needed this expression of sadness to move me to the Acceptance stage.

And I believe the Body needs it too. These sort of injustices hurt the Body of Christ both extrinsically and intrinsically. We enable the abusers by refusing to name their sin for what it is. And refusing to plainly unmask our pain before the Body, we victimize those around us who are hurting too. Is the problem that we shouldn’t talk about it or that we don’t know how?

I’ve since learned that the sort of ultimatum we were given is par for the course at BJU. A seminary faculty member received a similar ultimatum just before ours for speaking positively about the English Standard Version in class. I sat near some other former colleagues in church and remembered that in recent years they, too, had been told to shut up or get out. I wanted to cry. That’s a horrible way to run any business, especially with Christian brothers and sisters. And it’s pure tragedy — desperate attempts to purge unruly elements and reach perfection.

I think about my friends who did these tragic things to me personally, and I must repeat to myself that they are stuck like I was and sometimes still am. They don’t know anything but tragedy, and even their reading of Scripture reifies that Gospel-less view. The reason they insisted I hush is because, whether consciously or not, they believe their veneer is a righteousness that must be preserved at all cost. I know that no matter how they much they insist, strive, lash out, primp, clam up, white-wash, and tantrum, that’s not where their Hope lies. I know who they are because I know Whose they are. The system is bad, but in Christ God’s people are good. I tried in this telling to peel off that veneer in a way that still leaves them and me safe and together in Christ alone.

Although it may look very different than it does in tragedy, comedy still allows for critique. Grant always stops me here and says, “Speak that plain.” In tragedy, we kill off our evil enemies or ourselves in order to purge our own sins and reach an ordered perfection. We silence, punish, expunge — all variations on “killing” — so that we can feel secure in our propped-up purity. Of course that fails (both Kenneth Burke and Romans tell us it will!), and we start it all over again. Comedy is different. It’s not a postmodern, warm-and-fuzzy, “can’t-we-all-just-get-along,” mindless tolerance. Neither is it a “smile-at-all-costs” feigned ignorance. No, in comedy, our enemies are not evil, but mistaken. They need to be taught rather than punished. Their faults reveal our own shortcomings.

I wrote that book trying to expand and document Kenneth Burke’s notion of comedy. I always sensed that only Christ could bring a lost and dying world to a comic mindset, but I didn’t know how to say it all. That’s the chief argument in the unpublished chapter. Every one of these Ebenezers accentuated that point. Every one has tested, expanded, and nuanced that expression of comedy. When Elise died, I heard other parents of stillborns talk about how their children were “too good for this world, so God took them.” And I knew that was wrong. That was Burkean tragedy. Unwittingly, of course, those parents were describing their children’s deaths as a vicarious and purgative sacrifice for our messed-up selves and our miserable world. I kept wrestling in prayer: “God, how do I make this into a comedy. . . . giving birth to a child I’ll never see smile in this lifetime?”

When we studied how to parent our sons, I was struck again with how many of these conservative Evangelical gurus were actually arguing that spanking purges sin from our children! Pearl says it, Ezzo says it, and even Tedd Tripp (who really should know better) says it. I knew that couldn’t be. That was enacting tragedy in the home. That was a Gospel-less, works-based, man-centered focus. Christ was the ultimate sacrifice and the end of sacrifices. Christ is the Hero, the Ultimate Comedian! And while Burke imagines the shadows of the idea, his agnosticism prevents him from really running with it.

And you’ve seen many blog posts about that very thing. My daughter didn’t die to cleanse me of my guilt. Christ’s grace transforms tragedy into victory. Just like God took dirt and made it a living soul. . . . just like He takes a sinner dead in trespasses and sins and makes her a joint-heir with Christ. . . . just like Christ conquered death and sin in the resurrection, God took Elise’s death and transformed it into something beautiful. That’s what I prayed for way back when. That’s what this whole story is — the beautiful thing that God made in the midst of some very difficult times.

Throughout this last year, however, I would actually laugh out loud at these Ebenezers and pray, “Okay, God. You’re really making me run with this, aren’t you? Okay. . . . how do you act like a comedian when you’re the counter-agent (a.k.a. scapegoat or villain) in someone else’s tragedy?” In other words, when you’re being abused, where’s the Gospel then? It’s most certainly not in rolling over and sacrificing yourself because that’s another kind of tragedy! I’ve talked about it a little bit, and there’ll be more to come. More that couldn’t have been said without saying all this first.

That is why I had to say it all. Because I know that the living out the Gospel changes every interaction — even when someone is scapegoating you.

These posts are not passive or cynical. I’m working very hard to be a comic critic in these Ebenezers. I’ve discussed only those interactions that reveal official policy and formal organizational communication. The interpersonal, private stuff is not here. I’ve tried to be true to the Holy Spirit, to myself, and to those fellow Christians who, even though they hurt me, are deeply wounded too. They don’t see it. I didn’t either when I was where they are. And I know what the reaction will be from those in my previous life. I’ve already been called “petty,” “silly,” and clearly “unsaved.” Interestingly enough, the comments to my “The Ezz and I” post reflect the response on a small scale: misreading the texts involved, misunderstanding my point, denial, blaming, and top-down put-downs. Neither group can see themselves as separate from the system, and that’s tragic.

These posts, too, should put to rest those accusations that we didn’t go to the people involved. We did. At every turn. Often. And it didn’t change a thing. The message from the system was still the same — “Shut up!” Where do you go to confront a bad system? So many people are hurt and even driven from God by the abuse that passes for spirituality. And those who stay are driven to silence. No more. It’s not that we should stop talking about the problem; it’s that we should talk in order to stop the problem. And we must talk in a way that foregrounds the Gospel — in truth, in love, and with a clear understanding that we are dependent on Christ’s completed redemptive work.

I’m still wrestling with how to describe the Gospel as Comedy within a rhetorical idiom. I’m not saying that I always did it right, and I am sorry for the tragedy I participated in. I was wrong . . . often. But by telling this story completely and publicly, by reflecting the feelings that tragedy induces, by remembering that even the agent of tragedy is himself mired and mistaken, by seeing myself in other’s tragic actions, by critiquing with hope for change, I believe that imagining a rhetorical theory of the Gospel is possible.

So Purim — that celebration that remembers God’s working through Esther to save her people caught in a corrupt, abusive system — has just begun here on March 20, 2008 at 7:41 pm. Esther is a favorite among rhetoricians (believing and otherwise), and our best reminder that God acts in often unobtrusive ways — but He does always act! We’ll be making Hamantaschen to celebrate today and maybe you’ll join us. And while we’re folding those pastries to look like Haman’s hat, I’ll be telling Isaac and Gavin (and myself) about Esther’s brave and outspoken confidence in God. What would happen if we all acted like Esther — resisting tragedy and living out the Gospel? How would God use our words that were true, full-of-grace, bold, and comic? I’m eager to see how God can transform our aching, forced, stuck, trembling, Spirit-ignoring silences into something that robustly and truthfully praises Him. Stay tuned. . . .

Glory to God, whose sovereign grace
Hath animated senseless stones;
Called us to stand before His face,
And raised us into Abraham’s sons!

The people that in darkness lay,
In sin and error’s deadly shade,
Have seen a glorious gospel day,
In Jesus’ lovely face displayed.

Thou only, Lord, the work hast done,
And bared Thine arm in all our sight;
Hast made the reprobates Thine own,
And claimed the outcasts as Thy right.

Thy single arm, almighty Lord,
To us the great salvation brought,
Thy Word, Thy all-creating Word,
That spake at first the world from naught.

For this the saints lift up their voice,
And ceaseless praise to Thee is giv’n;
For this the hosts above rejoice,
We raise the happiness of Heav’n.

For this, no longer sons of night,
To Thee our thankful hearts we give;
To Thee, who called us into light,
To Thee we die, to Thee we live.

Suffice that for the season past
Hell’s horrid language filled our tongues,
We all Thy words behind us cast,
And lewdly sang the drunkard’s songs.

But, O the power of grace divine!
In hymns we now our voices raise,
Loudly in strange hosannas join,
And blasphemies are turned to praise!

If you wanna talk food and history, come on over to Mona Faye’s Kitchen. Lots of good memories and some recipes for the festivities.

Today was just wonderful.

• I tried a friend’s recipe for Cider-Roasted Pork Loin. It. was. wonderful. You have to try it! I’ve never had better.
• While cleaning up from the wonderful dinner, my sweet hubby reintroduced me to an old friend — the little-bit-crazy-but-wholly-genius Glenn Gould playing The Well-Tempered Clavier. Of course, I never played that prelude that fast. But . . . wow — it was so long ago that I was a piano nerd. Grant said he’d never seen me stop and listen to music like that. Usually I multi-task. Someday when we get a piano, that is what I’d spend my idle moments playing. I still have all my piano music.
• Gavin danced while we listened to the rest of The Well-Tempered Clavier. There’s nothing quite like watching a newly-19-month-old “interpret” baroque piano music.
• At the same time, Isaac hunted down all the “A” magnets on the fridge and spelled out his name over and over. Learning is so fun.
• And I started reading a book that is oh-so-controversial. But it seems pretty reasonable so far.

Shammah son of Agee the Hararite was the third of the Three. The Philistines had mustered for battle at Lehi, where there was a field full of lentils. Israel fled before the Philistines, but Shammah took his stand at the center of the field, successfully defended it, and routed the Philistines. Another great victory for God!

2 Samuel 23:11-12

She does it again!

We tackled “M” on this rainy, sweaty day. Our feeble attempts at wearing out the terrierist and the tot were creative at least. We made tie-dye beads. We did pasta art and made stickers out of lime jello and magazine “M” pictures (Milk, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mailbox, Mop, Mixer, Mower, Mouse, and Muffin). We made milk-free muffins, too. We ended the afternoon making our own music with the maestro.

Isaac just called himself a “sticker boy” because even in the A/C he is peeling his back from the leather couch. October’s only a few months away.