The Weekly Sabbath Day War

Sunday is our sabbath-day. The sabbath day is supposed to be a Holy, spiritual day of rest...and for the most part it is except for the weekly four-hour-war: Church and getting ready for church.

I imagine everyone understands the challenge of getting young balls of kinetic energy motivated enough to get dressed in uncomfortable clothes in anticipation of sitting through long meetings of people talking about abstract things that are hard to understand. For that matter, maybe that's exactly how you feel getting up every morning to go to work or school. Unfortunately my wife has to fight that battle alone because I'm at church early preparing for the next battle.

The next battle, for me, starts out calm and sweet and peaceful as I see five bright, shiny boys in white shirts, smiling wide as they open the glass doors of the Church to greet me. This is part of their strategy...start off disguised as sweet and reverent so the gullible parents will be thrown off guard later. (As a parent, I sadly confess, it works every time--'surely they will behave this time.')

As a precaution, we usually start out in one of the sound-wired side rooms apart from the main chapel to minimize disruption. With difficulty, they maintain their reverent disguise through the sacrament ordinance/ceremony, but once the talks start, they unleash their attack.

Its not so much an attack against us as parents, but against each other and the social laws of public places. My two oldest usually start touching each other for no apparent reason and start giggling louder and louder until one of us parents fires a counter attack, "Shhhhh!," to quiet them down. Meanwhile, another trooper quietly starts doing loops around the rows of chairs until another one starts pressing keys on the piano. This technique successfully lures at least one of us parents away from the front lines so two more kids can fight over which crayons or books to use. The kids are brilliant, there's a new battle strategy, planned or unplanned, each week.

The well-trained sniper among them is my seven year-old, middle son. Today, my wife ran into one of our friends coming out of the men's bathroom with a mop. He explained there was a river of hand soap streaming across the floor of the bathroom. My wife wondered to herself who would do such a thing, only to realize the answer before she finished the question: #3! Fortunately, our boys are generally very honest. When ask about it, #3 was stunned and speechless that such detailed knowledge came from one who wasn't there and wasn't told. The wide eyes of shock and the guilty complexion revealed the truth and #3 succumbed to the only logical response--he confessed to the crime. So we engaged in a unique father-son activity of cleaning the bathroom during the chapel meeting...or was it playing in the water, I'm confused about which event it was.

After the main chapel meeting, the boys have the opportunity to go to a class designed for their age level. Most of the troopers behave relatively well during this part of church...I'm not sure if they tired themselves out from the first hour's battle or if they have adapted to the culture of sitting through their classes and trying to follow along. In any case, I'm hopeful that they get something out of their classes and, on a more serious note, their teachers do a great job working with them.

However, our little church sniper stays active during this time. Usually, he just does his covert wiggly nervous body technique sliding back and forth across empty chairs in his row, or crawling on the floor underneath the chairs. Today, after a 15 minute attempt to get him to go to class, I saw him scoot backwards on his bum across the bench until he bumped into his class mate, then playfully pretended to bop him on the head repeatedly. This action triggered a teacher to come sit by him to minimize the damage.

He remained calm for the next half-hour or so, until the last ten minutes of church when he executed his last strategy for the Sabbath Day War. He got impatient and fled the building. You always know there is something up when a teacher from the children's classes pulls you out of your class. I've learned to expect it--I even know who its about most of the time. As I quietly walked out of my class, the teacher explained to me that #3 ran outside. I walked down the hall to see another adult staring out the glass doors, quickly glancing my direction and said somewhat passively, 'He's long gone.'

Unsurprised, I walked outside watching and listening for any signs of him. I've learned that chasing him, makes him run away faster, so my strategy is to take advantage of his tendency not wander too far from places he knows are safe. Knowing he likes to check back to verify someone is watching out for him, I applied some stealth of my own minimizing his vision of my location.

In the end we walked back to the church together and he sat the last few minutes with me in my class.

"How long 'till it's over?" he asked.

"About thirty seconds." I responded.

A few seconds later, and frustrated that the instructor was still talking, "I counted to thirty!"

"Keep counting," I said.

"Its been a minute!..."

The instructor ended, and in the middle of the closing prayer: "It's been two and a half minutes!"

"Amen." And the war was over...