In the history of the church services I have attended in California, the number of times I have deemed them "excrutiating" is, shall we say, numerous. Sermons that last 50 minutes. Sermons that last 45 minutes and then communion prayers that last half an hour. Youth services that involve a lot of sitting and standing that my mother dislikes greatly.
But today takes the cake.
The fact that the first half an hour was a drone of songs from the youth camp that only the popular kids at the church knew, which featured little if no melody and the out-of-tune stylings of our church's It Girl who I'll call LAM (for Look At Me, which comes from how Julia Stiles describes Larissa Olenik in Ten Things I Hate About You), was bad enough. But I tuned it out like a bad school concert (since I, along with over 60% of the church, wasn't singing anyway), and for the most part was able to ignore LAM's unsupported voice with unnecessary glissandos and theatrically closed eyes.
Then came the dedication of LAM and her father to their Africa mission trip which featured touching prayers from LAM's friends which commended her for being such an "awesome person" and "someone we should all be like."
Shoot me.
After this 40 minutes of the LAM show I thought it would be back to our regularly scheduled programming. But no.
Instead, the deacon (father of one of the girls who gave such an insightful prayer about LAM) got up to encourage people to share about the church camping retreat weekend they had last week or the week before. This entailed some people getting up and reminding the other people who had gone how neat it was to go to a retreat together, and "remember how the speaker said this and this and this?" to which those of us who didn't go got to sit still, look polite, and refrain from rolling our eyes and muttering loudly "Well bully for you!"
At this point it was time to leave. Visions of stalking angrily from the church helped me maintain the slight, polite smile that is my standard for horribly boring social situations in which it would not do to reveal one's true feelings.
But of course, in the true style of our church, the assistant pastor then proceeded to give his half hour sermon.
He's not too bad a speaker and any other week I would have paid attention. But after the crap we'd already had to sit through I just wasn't interested.
At long last (and half an hour after the time to leave) he closed in prayer (the words "Now let's pray" being ones my family instinctively responds to, along with our names, "Fire!", and "Food!").
And then LAM got onstage again.
Holy freaking crap.
There was a small amount of hope when her accompanist, a pleasant teenager from one of the Egyptian families, said they only had time for one song--even though in my mind they only had time for negative six, but in any case, it's better than more than one song.
And they proceeded to sing another almost tuneless song which featured approximately four repeats through the same two verses, which then bridged into another verse which was repeated twice, followed by another two repetitions of the first few. Exxxxcellent.
After this song, LAM gave the closing prayer, and then, and then, we were free! Perfunctory good-byes to the grandparents and we were the first ones to our car.
Once safetly inside, my dad said, "You know, I have something next Sunday morning, so I don't think we'll be able to go to church next week," to which my mom and I heartily agreed.
