The Giggle Loop
Keeping up the religious theme.
I like Coupling. It's funny. But I never even remotely believed the abstruse Situations Jeff likes to describe, could be true. Enter: the Giggle Loop.
My girlfriend's grandmother died on Saturday. She was well over 80 and had suffered a stroke a couple of weeks before and hadn't really recovered, so it was only a question of time. The family took it quite well, my girlfriend's grandfather was struck hardest. My girfriend's grandparents were the last real catholics in the family, from her parents down they don't care much for the church at all or are as atheistic as I am. But a catholic funeral is tradition, and you don't mess with tradition in a small village where religion equals catholicism.
I understand the point of funerals, of wakes. Say goodbye to the departed, come to terms with the loss. Perfectly understandable, perfectly ok. But, here in the catholic heartland, we have something called "Beten". Simply translates to "praying", and that's basically it. People close to the departed come together a day or so before the funeral and pray for his or her admission to heaven. Sounds silly? You don't know half of it.
The community prays a "painful rosary" (and painful it is), which consists of 50 Hail Marys and 5 "Our Father ...", intersped with begging saints to tell god to let the departed into heaven. Some rather obscure things are asked to "pray for her", for example ivory towers, heavenly gates and immaculately concepting virgins.
Now, during this litany I look at my girlfriend, she looks back, and suddenly the silliness of the whole situation gets to us and ... the Giggle Loop strikes. We both try to surpress our sudden amusement by looking somewhere else. I focus on the wooden floor paneling, she digs her nails into her hands to keep from laughing. And everytime we think we have it under control, a casual glance at the other is enough to bring back the urge to giggle - only stronger than before. The prayers don't help much, because the described things become more and more abstruse. I made it through, but barely. Another two minutes of this and it would have been too late. Even so I drew some strange glances from other attendees on the way out, because my amusement was quite visible on my face.
With that and the anti-catholic rant below, I've collected my share of Hell-Points for the month, thank you.
I like Coupling. It's funny. But I never even remotely believed the abstruse Situations Jeff likes to describe, could be true. Enter: the Giggle Loop.
My girlfriend's grandmother died on Saturday. She was well over 80 and had suffered a stroke a couple of weeks before and hadn't really recovered, so it was only a question of time. The family took it quite well, my girlfriend's grandfather was struck hardest. My girfriend's grandparents were the last real catholics in the family, from her parents down they don't care much for the church at all or are as atheistic as I am. But a catholic funeral is tradition, and you don't mess with tradition in a small village where religion equals catholicism.
I understand the point of funerals, of wakes. Say goodbye to the departed, come to terms with the loss. Perfectly understandable, perfectly ok. But, here in the catholic heartland, we have something called "Beten". Simply translates to "praying", and that's basically it. People close to the departed come together a day or so before the funeral and pray for his or her admission to heaven. Sounds silly? You don't know half of it.
The community prays a "painful rosary" (and painful it is), which consists of 50 Hail Marys and 5 "Our Father ...", intersped with begging saints to tell god to let the departed into heaven. Some rather obscure things are asked to "pray for her", for example ivory towers, heavenly gates and immaculately concepting virgins.
Now, during this litany I look at my girlfriend, she looks back, and suddenly the silliness of the whole situation gets to us and ... the Giggle Loop strikes. We both try to surpress our sudden amusement by looking somewhere else. I focus on the wooden floor paneling, she digs her nails into her hands to keep from laughing. And everytime we think we have it under control, a casual glance at the other is enough to bring back the urge to giggle - only stronger than before. The prayers don't help much, because the described things become more and more abstruse. I made it through, but barely. Another two minutes of this and it would have been too late. Even so I drew some strange glances from other attendees on the way out, because my amusement was quite visible on my face.
With that and the anti-catholic rant below, I've collected my share of Hell-Points for the month, thank you.
posted by montag at 9:02 AM
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