Apparently there are quite a few people looking for it. It must be pretty
important. And as I’m watching this show I’m thinking, if it’s so holy
and
important, how did they lose it in the first place? Shouldn’t somebody
have been keeping an eye on something like that?
I mean, I can see losing a set of keys or a comb or something like that.
But come on: This is the Holy Freekin’ Grail.
But then it occurred to me. Perhaps I ought not to criticize. I’m not all
that well put together myself. I’m always late, I’ve lost every sock I’ve
ever owned, and living and working in New York City on 9/11 has left me
so jittery that I recently tied my bed slats to the bed frame because I
was afraid the bed would collapse from the vibrations of the trains going
by a mile away.
I’m not kidding. I spent an hour-and-a-half on Sunday afternoon marking
the slats, then pounding two nails in on either side of each, then criss-crossing
each slat to the bed frame 10-15 times with heavy-duty twine.
Incredible. But true. If my therapist is reading this: Call me to set up
an appointment.
So you see my point that I don’t have much room to criticize whoever
lost the Holy Grail.
All this, of course, gave Charity, who was witness to my bed-frame
modifications on Sunday, an idea how we could improve our lives:
Find the Holy Grail.
Yeah, yeah, I know. They’ve been looking for it for, like, 50 years.
But obviously they just didn’t want to find it bad enough.
But we are motivated. I mean, this is meaning of life stuff we’re talking
about here. And we’re a little short on that in my family. My mother gave
me three pieces of advice in my entire life: Always eat the green vegetabes,
Never go anywhere you have to wear a bra, and Only ask questions you
already know the answers to; that way you can impress people at parties.
Not a lot to go on. And about all I’ve figured out so far on my own is
Never make any sudden movements and Never pick up anything heavy.
Incredible. But true.
And as for religious guidance growing up, that was also sketchy.
I was baptized Catholic and sent to church for a little while. I had to
memorize the books of the Bible once. I won goldfish. But then one day
the priest set his vestments on fire while leaning over the candles and
I
decided church was too dangerous and stopped going. As far as my
sister’s Catholic upbringing, if you say Friday to her, she’ll say fish.
That’s about it. So you can see how the Holy Grail might be really
helpful to us.
So Charity and I started asking ourselves the standard questions you ask
when you’ve lost something. Where did they see the Holy Grail last?
(Or, if you’re like my father: “Who stole my Holy Grail?”) Where’s the
last
place you’d expect the Holy Grail to be?
So we looked in Charity’s room. My sister is a busy teenager, so her room
is quite naturally a mess, and we thought, Why not? (Hey, you don’t know.
It could’ve been in there.)
Okay, so we didn’t find the Holy Grail in my sister’s room. (Although we
did find seven plates, my sister’s favorite hairbrush, half of several
pairs of
my missing socks, and one of the cats.)
So I went to the greatest resource of our modern times.I went on the Internet.
(Thank you, Al Gore.)
I looked on EBay. They found 170 items for my search ‘The Holy Grail’,
but
none of them was the Holy Grail itself. (But if anybody is looking for
a Monty Python
and The Holy Grail CD Clock, you can get one on E-Bay for $7.99.)
But then I thought about it and decided what I’d really lost was the
meaning of life. So I did a search for that. Well, they found 45 items
for
my search ‘The Meaning of Life,’ but unfortunately all of those were Monty
Python, too. (We were going backwards instead of forwards; they didn’t
even have a Meaning of Life CD Clock.)
Then I had a really frightening thought. Is E-Bay trying to intimate that
the meaning of life is actually Monty Python? Could it be that a bunch
of foppish British goofballs wearing dresses and talking in womens’ voices
could be what it’s all about?
This made me think of something, and I ran to my bedroom closet and
pulled out a graphic t-shirt I bought at WalMart a while back.
I took out the t-shirt and read the slogan pasted across it: What if
the hokey pokey IS what it’s all about?
That’s when I panicked.
I don’t know what upset me more, that I’d actually bought a shirt at WalMart
or that the meaning of life might actually be what was printed on this
t-shirt.
I mean, think about it. What if the hokey pokey IS what it’s all about?
Which brought me back to my mother.
I once asked her if she believed in God.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” she said. “Of course I
believe in God. Don’t you?”
I said I didn’t know.
“If there’s a God,” I said, “then why do all these terrible things happen?
Car accidents, earthquakes, floods?”
“There’s a plan,” my mother said.
“What plan?” I said. “What plan is there where old ladies get mugged
and kids go hungry and people strap bombs to themselves and walk into
shopping malls?”
My mother frowned at me for a moment, stumped.
“Look,” she said finally. “There’s a plan. That doesn’t mean you have
to know what it is.”
“Yes, but what if there isn’t?” I persisted. “What if people just die
and that’s the end of them. What if all these terrible things happen and
it
means nothing at all?”
My mother blinked at me.
“It’s that what you just said right there,” she said, “that drove me to drink.”
That obviously did not get added to the list of advice my mother has given
me. So I’ve decided to stop thinking about the meaning of life. It’s too
confusing.
But while we’re on the subject of things I’m looking for, I seem to have
also lost my youthful idealism, my virginity, and quite possibly my marbles.
If anybody’s seen any of these, please let me know.