The Skirt People Stole My Dog!

Here in Oklahoma, we have a group of right-wing Christian fundamentalists I refer to as Skirt People. The women wear skirts only (no pants allowed!) and do not cut their hair. They also wear no makeup. In their church services, they often "speak in tongues", wail, testify, and fall to the floor in a faint. They believe that they are overcome by the "Holy Spirit".

The Skirt People were among the first to welcome me into the neighborhood. "Hi, my name is ___. Do you have a church here yet?" Anyone who knows me understands that this is NOT the proper way to gain my trust or friendship. To an unsuspecting outsider, I suppose that my blue eyes and pale skin shield my inner being, and make me appear to be more similar than dissimilar from the typical Bible Belt resident.

On Valentine's Day, my dog disappeared. Gravy always comes home in the evening, even if he succeeds in climbing over, burrowing under, or chewing through the fence, chain, or other restraint to which he is bound. On this day, the coldest of the year, I called until my throat was as scratchy and dry as sandpaper, and Gravy never came. We live way out in the country, several miles from town. I assumed that my poor little dog had become a coyote's dinner or had frozen during the night.

Driving into town to take my daughter to her troop meeting (I am the Brownie Scout Leader), on a whim, I drove the couple of blocks off Green Avenue to the animal shelter. There, in the dark and the cold, 8 miles from home, was my dog! I frantically called the police and told them to stop the dogcatcher from his weekly death march until I could come and pick up Gravy. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how the dog ended up at the pound so far from home!

It was several days later at the grocery store where a Skirt Person who lives close to my house asked, "Did you ever pick up your dog from the pound?"

"WHAT?" I must have turned pale as a ghost.

"Some friends of ours picked up your dog and brought him to our house. I told them he was your dog, but he ran away before we could catch him to bring him back. Then, I saw him in the pound, so I wondered if you ever went to get him," explained the Skirt Person.

So, the Skirt People stole, pilfered, lifted, kidnapped my dog! Ah....religious fanaticism. Go to church every Sunday (and Wednesday), dress so that you symbolize so-called religious purity, wail, scream and cry, speak in tongues, and then break the Commandment; THOU SHALT NOT STEAL!!! It would have been nice if the Skirt People had let me know what happened to my dog. It was a fluke, an unlikely chance, that I drove by the pound. If I had not driven by, my dog would have been euthanized and I never would have known what happened to him.

What church/temple/synagogue/mosque/meeting do I attend? One that teaches the adherants to the faith not to steal/prosletyze/publicly make a spectacle of oneself in the name of religion. Does God listen to me, even though dogs run amuck in my house? Yes. Why? Because I don't steal...