Sarah Jarosz – Come On Up to the House

I didn’t much care for the Sunday service as a little kid. You had to sit still and be quiet and the sermons boring.

I do remember liking one sermon about monsters with lots of heads. Didn’t understand it, but it sounded like an awesome Godzilla movie.

Mom and Dad had church things to do, so I had to sit with lady who pinched if you talked. One Sunday my buddy stuck me with a hat pin. When I hollered, she pinched. Hard. He was a little bastard, which was why I liked him.

But after the service, church was a different place. The grounds became an awesome playground for hours, until our moms got done in the nursery.

The whole facility was our oyster, lots of places to hide and check things out. You could get into any room with a wire hanger.

We checked out Sunday School rooms, looked through closets, got into a room full of electronics which thank goodness we never touched. We slid down the stairs on our butts, flew paper planes in the sanctuary.

We showed some other boys and how to get in the steeple. We got caught before most of us could climb to the top. “What are y’all doing up here? I’m telling your parents!” The lady began taking names, but my buddy and I got away before she could ID us.

When we got hungry, we barged in on the nursery, stuffed handfuls of crackers in our mouths, drank Kool-aid from the pitcher and pestered our moms till they chased us out.

When they finally packed up the nursery and began turning off the hallway lights, we’d fling ourselves around the corner and go “Raaah!” Got ‘em every time.

There was a point where I couldn’t sit in a Baptist church without feeling like a liar. Some of the doctrines were rather traumatic for me as a young adult, in fact. But I did have fun and met some of the best people I’ve ever known. I feel like I should talk about both.