saturday SATURDAY SATURDAY!

Today I watched a giant mechanical beast devour and destroy an Acura. The massive creature picked up its automotive prey with crushingly strong pincers and tore into it with fierce steel teeth. The wreckage fell from its mouth and clamored to the arena floor, misshapen metal branches laying among the creature's locomotive treads. After witnessing such awesome metallic carnage, I decided my life has reached its apex, and from this point can only get worse.

“Soo... I take it you all had fun at the monster truck show?” K--- asked. She was back in town for the first time in several months and we had made it a point to all see one another after the greatest show we had never seen.

B--- and J--- nodded as I went on to explain. “It was pretty sweet, the announcer kept going,” I held an imaginary microphone and did my best announcer voice. “'Champaign Illinois, would you like to see some MONSTER TRUCK FREESTYLE!??' and before tonight I never even knew such a thing existed, but now that I know it does exist; yes, yes I would like to see that.”

Everyone chuckled a bit and the conversation moved on. “So I hear you're going to be back in town for the summer?” J--- asked K---. “What are you going to be doing?”

“I've got this job lined up at a cancer hospital over in X----. I'll be like the on-site minister there.”

“Wow,” we all seemed to silently exclaim. “That's gotta be pretty fucking intense!” B--- managed to put to words what each of us was thinking.

“So on a daily basis you'll have to deal with basically the most horrible maladies anyone could possibly have?” J----managed to be a little more eloquent than B---.

“Yeah,” K--- answered. “I'm already working for a hospital back at seminary doing similar work. I've got some pretty heavy patients now. There's this one lady in particular. She's from Vietnam and doesn't speak a lick of English. She moved here to escape her abusive husband, started dating this guy, accidentally got pregnant, and then found out she has stage 4 cancer. She can't undergo chemo or radiation because of the baby either. So now she's just waiting for the baby to develop enough so it can be born.” All of us had looks of disbelief on our faces, amazed and aghast at the situation this young woman now found herself in. “But she's the most positive person ever, you know. I'll see her and she say something like 'only a few more weeks left before I get to meet my child!' But the thing is as soon as the baby is born she's pretty much going to die.”

We were speechless. “Wow. That's the most depressing story I've heard in months." I paused for a second in incredulity. "So remember a few minutes ago when I joked about how my life was all downhill after the monster truck show? Yeah, definitely come true.” I awkwardly laughed at my own joke. “I couldn't imagine doing what you do. See, that's how I deal with serious shit. I change the subject to something trite and meaningless.”