Alimentary, my dear Caiaphas

I was reading the wonderful Melissa today, and she said "annals."

Ha!

And this reminded me of a story I've been meaning to tell you. It's childish, it's embarrassing, and it contains a butt-joke. But I still remember it.

When I was in high school, our Youth Group was doing a skit on the time surrounding the death of Jesus to be performed in front of the whole church. I have no idea what part I played, but I do remember two brothers Mark and Jonathan were playing the high priests Annas and Caiaphas respectively.

They were a few years younger than me and strong Christian kids, but their reading of the script was not as fluent and practised as it perhaps needed to be when managing unfamiliar names.

Being a linguistic sort of person and being a forward-planner, I inwardly cringed. Pronouncing weird names was always a hazard when up in front of a church, but making a donkey's breakfast of a name was only terribly bad if there was a chance you could accidentally substitute the name with an embarrassingly intimate body part.

And 'Annas' was in danger if morphing into the exit point of the alimentary canal, if one wasn't careful.

I saw it coming.

In the practises, I held my breath each time Jonathan came up to the part when he had to pronounce the name of his brother's character. "Please, please," I'd think, "Say 'Annas!' Don't say ... you-know-what."

And each time, Jonathan would say "Annas" and disaster was averted.

"Perhaps I'm being silly," I'd think. "In each practice, he's hesitated before the name, but he's never actually made the mistake. Anyway, 'Annas' is a lot easier to pronounce than 'Caiaphas'. He'll be fine."

So on the day of the actual performance in front of the church, I let my guard down. I stopped worrying and I stopped silently willing Jonathan to pronounce the name correctly as I listened from the side. Mark and Jonathan went through their lines a little more nervously than when they were in rehearsals.

Then of course, for otherwise I would not be writing this post, it happened. As clear as a bell, Jonathan said in front of a packed church, "Come along ... uh, Anus. We must be off."

Wh-WHA-?

Did he just say Anus?

Someone tell me - are we recording this? Did he just say Anus?

In front of a church full of BAPTISTS?

(I'm not sure that Baptists know about anuses. None of them has ever mentioned the topic to me, anyway.)

It turns out, he did say exactly that. And to this day, I believe it was my fault for letting my guard down and trusting him enough not to require my helpful Willing-Away From Freudian Slips from my position on the sidelines.

This is what happens when I relax, people.