ED AND PAT

So last night, I'm sitting on the couch watching the people on "Fear Factor" eat maggotty cheese and I think to myself "Gosh. I'm hungry."

I get up to fix myself some dinner and the phone rings.

It's Ed.

Ed is undoubtedly the oldest person in our church who is not ashamed to tell people how old he is.

He's 82. And he'll tell you this if you spend more than 30 seconds talking to him.

"Hey Ed," you'll say. "How's things going?"

"Not bad, my friend, not bad," he'll say, shaking your hand firmly. "Not bad for an 82 year-old."

"Yeah," you'll say. "Can you believe that hail storm we had last week?"

"I'll tell you what, my friend. In all my 82 years of living on God's great earth, I've never seen such a thing."

"And your penis, Ed? How's your penis?"

"Oh gosh, if I had rings inside it like a tree, there'd be about 81 rings inside it because my penis is 81 years old."

"I thought it was 82, Ed."

"Well...it took a year off in 1941."

So I had to make up my mind quickly ... eat some leftovers or talk to Ed.

I figured what the hell. I'm not that fond of old people, but I've always liked Ed. I picked up the phone.

"Hello?" I said, acting like I didn't have caller ID.

"Uhhhh...hello, Uncle Bob? This is 82 year-old Ed from church!"

"Hey Ed, how are you?"

"Not bad for an 82 year-old," he said. "I was just calling to tell you that we've missed you at church lately."

"Well Ed," I said. "We quit coming to church because I was tired of hearing how old you were all the time."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

No ... but seriously...

As it turns out, after 50 years of being members of the church, Ed and his lovely wife Pat are very close to leaving the church as well because they're "old school" (yes, he actually used that term) and they feel that the church should be led by a male minister and not a female one.

I told him to take no offense at what I had to say, but we were looking to leave to find a church home with a younger demographic...somewhere slightly below death.

His lovely wife Pat came on the phone to talk.

When I say "lovely wife Pat", please don't take me seriously.

The woman has a mustache. She's far from lovely.

I mean...she may have been a looker in her day, but women with thicker mustaches than I could ever grow ... well ... I'm just not into that.

She keeps it well groomed, don't get me wrong. She doesn't look like Einstein or anything with her mustache going every which way.

But hey ... an 80 year-old woman with a well-groomed mustache...well...I use the word "lovely" in a sarcastic tone when I refer to her that way.

So anyway, she gets on the phone and we're jabbering away or rather...she's jabbering away...and I swear to God...she's talking and then her words become slightly jumbled and she's like "My goodness!"

Then Ed comes on the phone and says "She was talking so fast that her dentures came loose, God bless her."

Now THAT'S love, people. Asking God to bless your wife when her incessant desire to control a conversation causes her teeth to fall out.

I don't want to come off as crass here ... but that must be one fine 80 year-old piece of ass to keep Ed around for 60 years.

Then again...dentures come out and maybe ol' Ed isn't into the ass, if you know what I mean and if you don't, I mean he's into blow jobs.

They've started going to another church recently and invited us to go with them. I said we had a list of churches we wanted to visit and would add their church to our list.

It was really nice talking to them and they were honestly the first people to call from church to inquire where we've been in the last 2-3 months.

Which kinda sucks. It's called a "church family", but when a couple of members go MIA for a few months, nobody bothers to call.

Then I remembered...I was the head of evangelism for the church. It was MY job to call people that had been MIA for several months.

No wonder nobody's called.