One night last week as we were saying the rosary we were all very giggly. We even stopped the rosary a few times to tell stories or ask very long and involved questions. I'll try to recapture it for you in the following three very uber short stories...
Very and uber short rosary story #1
Frankie's 5th mystery
Irregardless of the set of mysteries we pray, every time we get to the 5th and last mystery of the rosary Frankie raises her hand and "oooo!!! Oooo!!! Oooooo!!!!", begs to announce it. I call on her and she proudly announces "Jesus dies on the cross". And sometimes she is right. But other times I'll say "does that sound joyful to you?" Or "glorious"- depending on the day. And she'll get all dejected, mercurial Frankie. So on that giggly rosary day I decided to tell the kids the story about how Uncle-Father Joseph learned the fifth sorrowful mystery.
This is a retelling and I'm sorry to tell you that I'm not nearly as good a "storier" as my brother, Father Kevin.
Father Joseph had a hard time remembering the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery. Every time he was called on by dad to announce it (and you totally had to announce it correctly too: like this and in these exact words: "the fifth sorrowful mystery of the most holy rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary is Jesus dies on the holy and true cross") - ok so every time he was called upon he would make these big eyes and look into the middle distance and hope that the words would come to him. But nope. They didn't come to him. Every single time.
"Joseph Michael, what is the fifth sorrowful mystery?"
"The fifth sorrowful mystery is Joseph forgets for the hundred and eleventh time."
So one night after a forgetting, dad, with his steely blue eyes, grabs pre-Father Joseph- when he was just Joe and lays him on the red carpet- it's the very same carpet that *still* is in the piano room- and he lays him down on his back and he puts his hands out cruciform-like. And he starts banging the palms of Joe with an imaginary mallet. Like he's hammering nails in. And with each "blow" he announces a word from the mystery title.
"The" hammer.
"Fifth" hammer.
"Sorrowful" hammer.
"Mystery" hammer.
"Is" hammer.
"The" hammer.
"Crucifixion" hammer.
"Of" hammer.
"Jesus" hammer.
Suffice it to say Joe never forgot that mystery again. I wonder if it rises to memory when he's got his beads and is sitting in his chair on Friday nights.
Very and uber short rosary story #2
Decade man
Earlier that day, The Day of the Giggly Rosary, I took the four youngest for a walk/bike ride. Alice and I walked. The other three rode bikes. And since our favorite flat road was taken up by construction trucks and utility vehicles and cones and such we had to hunt down a new surface in another part of our neighborhood. We found a nice wide opening cul-de-sac just up the hill and around the corner. It was perfect as it had a just a bit of an incline.
The kids stayed biking there for awhile circling around and it must have been sunny because they were playing shadow tag, using shadows of trees as "base".
After a good while I decided it was time to move on and so I gathered the kids up to one side of the mouth of the cul-de-sac so we could move as a group down the street.
As I'm making sure we have everything a man comes out of his house and gets into a car on the Main Street. He was the sort of man you'd see at a motor cross competition. Or walking into the liquor store at noon on a Monday. Or at the mall spending his money on yet another pair of flashy boxers instead of a nice sturdy belt.
The kids were fidgeting- waiting for me to give the word to proceed.
"Can we go now?"
"Not yet."
I wanted to wait for him to drive on so we could navigate the street in uninterrupted peace.
"Now can we go?"
"No- not yet"
So we stood there. Waiting. And waiting. The brake lights were on. But nothing else.
Finally Frankie asks "what are we waiting for?"
"We are waiting for this guy who is taking a decade to pull away from house"
"Oh. He's just saying the rosary in his car let's go around him. It'll take him awhile."
Those are just a couple of the stories from last Tuesday.
And since that giggly rosary last week we've also incorporated a "3rd mystery wiggle". It's kind of like baseball's 7th inning stretch but instead everyone wiggles and dances and makes loud noises for 20 seconds. And then we spend 10 seconds laughing at Alice's reaction.
It's like a wiggle/laugh tabata.
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