Church Ladies and Ladies of the Church

Ladies of the church are wonderful people who can teach and help us quite a bit – they deserve our respect and kindness, guys. 

Church Ladies (Dianes and Karens) though, are a different story.  Let me illustrate.

Recently, I was finishing up a meal in a church meeting and, having shaken hands with a few people, some of whom generously passed the stickiness of whatever confection they’d been eating from their hands to mine, I decided that it was a good idea to go into the kitchen and rid my hands of the stickiness. 

I brazenly entered into the the Holy of Holies and seat of ecclesiastical gynocracy –  The Church Kitchen.  There was a lady (turns out a Church Lady) there watching me, and as I rinsed my hands of the stickiness, and tore off a piece of paper towel from the roll, and dried off.  She uttered a snort of disgust and decided that it was vitally important for me to know that “Ugh! THAT is not allowed in MY house.” I answered,  “What, drying one’s hands?” “No,” she replied, “paper towels, I hate them, and I don’t allow them in my house.” 

Now, I really did start to say, “Then why are they here, sitting right by the sink?  Good thing we’re not in your house, I mean, would you rather I use the damp and dirty tea towels still hanging from the stove handle, rife with the germs of forty other people ?  Having washed off the sticky hand gunk a few others saw fit to transmit to me, you now think I should get them dirty again with the germs of the whole congregation?  I don’t work here, I am a guest, and you didn’t even return my greeting when I came into your Throne Room, princess.  You know something, your hospitality is about as sweet as clam piss…!!  (Well, that’s what I wanted to say…What I did say was, “Good…uh, well, gotta get back upstairs to the meeting.”)

Lady of the Church: a kind and helpful and cheerful servant of Christ.  Especially one who is NOT named Diane or Karen, and/or is NOT compulsively acting like a control freak.  Someone who is NOT an entitled spoiled maven driven by the need to opine some petty little peccadillo which they have chosen to use as a means to occupy moral high ground.  A woman NOT given to unsolicited opinions aimed at criticizing or controlling their guest who is only trying to rid his hands of the sticky gunk rudely bequeathed to him after politely shaking all the dirty hands in the congregation.  Also, a lady who does NOT refer to HER HOUSE when she is standing in a kitchen which not actually HER HOUSE.

Church lady: a predatory passive aggressive Diane or Karen who thinks it is her divine right to be a petty little harpie who criticizes a man who is just trying to wipe his hands of the sticky remnants of hygienically challenged people.

About paper towels…I know that there is a lot of conventional opinions (not conventional thinking, but conventional repeated and unsupported opinions) full of antipathy and mythological over-blown carbon footprint nonsense directed at paper towels out there.  Consider this:

FACTS:

Washing one’s hands is an essential and useful way to prevent the spread of disease.

It is an inescapable fact that one must use water and soap to properly wash their hands; using alcohol is actually detrimental to disease prevention. 

One must then dry their hands with SOMETHING other than their slacks after washing them.

Choices are : An air dryer, a cloth towel, or paper towels.  Guess what: All of these spread some bacteria – like EVERYTHING does, but paper towels spread the least.

Doctors and dentists who are going to perform surgery overwhelmingly use paper towels, not cloth towels or air dryers.

Dry paper towels have WAAAAAAY I’m talking WAAAAAAY fewer bacteria than cloth towels, and that goes double for to air dryers, which are even worse than cloth towels for spreading bacteria.

Paper towels are made of a renewable resource, things called trees. (And there are more trees in North American today than there were before 1600).

Pass the paper towels please.