My breakfast at Denny's in Minot

The Column: 10.04.24

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I walked into an AT&T shop the other day and bought a new iPhone to replace my antique model and a bright young man waited on me who spoke what I’m fairly sure was English but which may as well have been Czech or Sanskrit. He asked dozens of questions to which I had no answers so he answered them himself and sold me a fine new phone that can do thousands of things, only four of which I need: to call people on the phone, to text, to read the paper, and locate the nearest drugstore. Or café. Or ATM. Or hospice, when it comes time for that.

I was once a bright young person myself. I was born because my parents couldn’t keep their hands off each other even as war was raging in Europe and they should’ve been focused on foreign policy and doing what they could for the war effort but no, they jumped into bed and made love, and out I came. I was doted on by my aunts who felt my timidity hid some profound talent. Autism hadn’t been discovered yet so I was labeled “gifted” instead.

I grew up in Minnesota where I saw my uncle Jim milk cows by hand, which cured me of any interest I had in farming or any other sort of hard work. And after breakfast he read aloud from Isaiah about the heart being corrupt and we knelt on a hard floor and prayed and it made me want to find a different church where the heart is kind and we’d kneel on cushions. Because I was no good in math or physics, I was put into shop class in high school where my carelessness around power tools terrified my teacher Mr. Buehler and he sent me to Miss Person’s speech class where, standing up and speaking, I felt Special. Very. If I wasn’t, then why were all these kids looking up at me and listening? This led to my present career as a stand-up comic and Episcopalian.

I had breakfast at Denny’s in Minot with a preacher named Barry who tried to tell me that God has a plan for my life. It was fun to be preached at over eggs and sausage and be able to talk back, which I cannot do in my Episcopal church in New York where the rector speaks from a high pulpit and I’d need to shout, which Episcos do not do in church. That is for the charismatics. We are attractive but not charismatic.

Barry was full of hope for our world and believed that each of us has an assignment from the Father to advance righteousness on Earth. This, in North Dakota, a state that will vote for a 78-year-old lunatic felon for President. But I listened to the man, impressed by his good humor, his faith in the future, though I’m not eager to know God’s plan for me. I assume it involves poverty. It usually does.

I was poor in the late Sixties and had to live rent-free in my in-laws’ basement and I don’t wish to do it again. They were sympathetic about it but it was painful coming upstairs and waiting my turn to use the bathroom. I don’t relish being pitied; I’d sort of prefer to be resented, if you want to know the truth.

I live with my wife in a two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood of Manhattan from which we can look at God’s sunsets over New Jersey. Sometimes the sky darkens over there and strokes of lightning strike to show the fraudulent that God is aware of their doings. I pay for my good view by having a very nice job. I have no interest in cellar dwelling. I have other people in mind for that. Felons, for example.

God has ways of getting a person’s attention and recently I was frightened by the disappearance of my novel-in-progress from my computer hard drive but then a friend found it in a cloud where I suppose the Almighty stuck it. Since then I have been backing up religiously but you can’t outmaneuver the Lord.

Barry made an impression on me. I bathe, I floss, I do squats and sit-ups and lunges, I pray for my country that it not buy the truckloads of horse manure being peddled by dishonest felons, but there is more to be done. Meanwhile, I wait for enlightenment and drink coffee.

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