That's Mr. Christ to You

There's nothing like an attack of bursitis in the hip to make a fella feel like pinching strange gals and dancing the night away to a frantic disco beat. That Foxy Grandpa cane-shuffle, that bent-over Quasimodo posture with hand supporting the small of the back, that ascending the stairs leading only with the uninjured leg -- it all leads to a suffusion of youthful vigor and a devil-may-care attitude that snaps its fingers at mortality and whistles Dixie in the face of decrepitude.

I betook myself to Medical Science this afternoon, who shot the offending joint full of anapraxyzone, or perhaps it was calmodisodone, or -- memory begins to fail too these days -- hamsammicholol, bungalonozyl, or maybe rum and Coke.

Med. Sci. also handed me a prescription for bananaloil, which I agonizingly shuffled over to the pharmacy to fill. Having been handed the package containing the pills, plus a database printout about what to do if my vomit looked like coffee grounds (don't put it in the Melitta, basically, and prepare for a painful death in an ambulance) I did a little more grocery shopping.

It wasn't until I was in the main checkout line that I glanced at the receipt stapled to my pharmacy package. What I saw immediately filled me with a feeling of warmth, joy and Infinite Love, and I felt my bursitic hip miraculously heal itself in an instant. I fell to my knees and began to speak in tongues (Plattdeutsch, they later informed me, but with a terrible, Chico-Marx-level Italian accent). Snakes crawled in the grocery door demanding to be handled. Angelic choirs sang.

Here, then, is the Holy Miracle that instantly cured my afflicted hip and suffused my soul with hope and love for my fellow man. This photograph is guaranteed unretouched in any way whatsoever. I am happy to send a notarized photocopy to any scoffer or debunker that requests one:



Now, folks, this isn't some amorphous Virgin Mary in a toasted cheese sandwich. This isn't Jesus in an oil-stain on some basement floor. This is as black and white as it gets.

Hi, my name is Christ.

There's something just so marvelously direct about the language. So matter-of-fact. So guileless. It's just how I'd imagine the Son o' God would talk were he to return today, in a Men's Warehouse suit with an American-flag lapel pin, a Salesman of Everlasting Life:

Hi, my name is Christ. Jesus Christ, but my pals call me Jimmy. So how the hell you doin'? Damned glad to meetcha. Boy, it's sure a scorcher today, ain't it? Fry an egg on the sidewalk, ha-ha! How're the wife-n-kids? Doing OK? Great, great.... So lemme ask ya -- how's your insurance situation? You covered against plague, fire, flood, famine? 'Cos I gotta tell ya, I read in Reader's Digest, so you gotta know it's true. It's coming. You betcher ass, pardon my French...

So I'm pondering my next move. Plainly an eBay auction is in the offing, and I'm dusting the old homestead in preparation for the Vatican contingent who will no doubt be descending on the joint in the next day or two, when word of this gets out. I expect The Amazing Randi will weigh in calling me a mountebank, but dammit: I know what I read.

Hi, my name is Christ.

And don't you forget it.