Karl

Teenagers today get so much bad press. I get to hear that they are good for nothing junkies, they are violent and can be deadly. I don't have much contact with teens, and I kind of tend to stay away from them anyway. What the perfect body projection of nowadays... I'm better off away. But I had such a pleasant surprise yesterday. It filled my heart just like a cell phone's top up card. Better than that. Maybe I should have known. Because a sweetheart can only produce... another sweetheart. So I am at my friend's house, and her 15 year old son suddenly saunters in. Me.. I freeze and expect the worst. He's a good-looking guy with a smile to melt anybody's heart, now he'll start sniggering. Not so. He does smile, but it's such a heartwarming smile I am taken aback. He's just 15 and he hugs his mum and calls her his beauty. So strange. He makes himself a drink and asks me in an I-really-want-to-give-you-a-drink, if I want anything. And he means it, somehow I know he does. And he sits down with us old hags (sorry Jo), and talks to us. He talks to me as if I were his friend. No this isn't happening. But hello, it is. And he makes me laugh with his boyish looks, and the way he keeps touching his hair. And he talks about his life, about his hobby, his education in the most natural way. He's outgoing, but polite. Not stuffily polite. He tells me about the girls! And I find myself laughing. Me? laughing with a 15 year old I've just known for 15 minutes. And I find myself feeling so comfortable, it's as if I've known him all my life. But then the same thing happened when I met his mother, who looks like his sister. This is intriguing, his mother kept badgering him to go take a shower. I just loved talking to him so much, good thing he didn't obey her on the spot (sorry Jo). And I watched him go about, he took empty glasses from the table and put them in the sink, he made himself a sandwich and cleaned up all the crumbs. He also promised his mother he would take down the clothes from the washing line. A 15 year old? And he told me about his friends, his female friends who scream when they realise that his mother is on TV. He asked me about myself, not just in a how-are-you and I don't expect an answer way. This young guy is the man of tomorrow. Such an impish smile for girls to fall in love with too. You've done a brilliant job Jo. Now if only I had a 15 year old daughter....

Of saints and madness

I am on a weekend break of being bombarded by a man talking nonsense about holy saints. Totally my fault. Every year the Zabbar festa comes up, and ever year I swear not to go and give my musical expertise in the Zabbar church. Every year I fail to keep my promise. Perhaps it's through nostalgia of my childhood, perhaps because it makes me remember the festa with my nannu and makes me feel so young again. Perhaps it's because somehow the Zabbar saint is female and known to give favours, and I could do with one or two. This year it hasn't been any different. I've accepted, so now I have to do it. It's a job, and well I have to do it. Well, maybe it's not a job, and although I grumble about the stifling heat in the church, the smelly people who need an acid bath, the other people who think they can sing and deafen me with monotone 'singing', I think I'd miss it. And it makes my mum happy because I get to listen to a lot of 'quddies', although really I'm fumbling with my mobile and giving detailed accounts what's on. This year, the Zabbar priests have really overdone it. They have invited this Father Antoine to make a lot of speeches, probably better known as sermons. Now this Father Antoine is not more than 45, and seems to be physically fit, but I think he could do with the shrink 24/7. He is mad and they are letting him preach his madness to the spectators, better known as the congregation.
He is standing there talking to the microphone, making big crescendos every two minutes, and saying that 'our mind should be obsessed with God.' That is the exact translation although it sounds worse in Maltese. He is also adamant that we should have this intimate relationship, more intimate than sexual, according to him. That to me spells La Senza, and I cannot see a God in garters and stockings, or underwiring or padding. That was yesterday. Today he outdid himself. Yesterday it was Saint Padre Pio, today it was Saint Maximilian Colbe, someone whom I thought was a nice guy. I'm not too sure anymore. This priest has told me and some two hundred people that Saint Colbe liked to make himself suffer all to praise the Lord. The exact words were, 'we must make our body suffer'. What the hell? Do I tie myself up in chains and whip my back until it's raw or what? Catholic s and M? My body suffer? Do I just bin all the creams and serums and lotions all for the praise of the Lord? Will the Lord love me any less just because I think eye cream is a must? What can the Lord have against body lotion? Is this a new kind of Catholic fashion? Because if it is my Catholic days are over. There is absolutely no way I am parting with my beauty things. God created all things beautiful and I praise the Lord in my own way, with plenty of bling bling thank you very much. And I won't make God wear La Senza, I'll wear it myself. Burn Father Antoine at the stake I plead, he'll probably love it, and it would do me a favour.