So, there’s a family down the road from us who my wife and I are freindly with. They have rabbits in a cage outside, and when we go on our evening walk every day, we stop off at their house briefly so that my son can check out the rabbits while we chat with the woman and husband if they’re outside.

Well, recently the woman, Annie, mentioned holding kind of a community gathering at the end of the street and getting some of those inflatable jumping toys for the kids, and having just a nice autumn party for the kids. We said that it sounded great, and how could we help? She says it would be great if we could man a booth or something, so I asked what she had open. She said face painting, and I said, “Cool. I’m good at that. Sign me up.”

So, Saturday was the day of the Community Fun Fair. Well, as we get to the end of my street, there’s big inflatable slides and shit, a dunking booth, food, a stage with live music getting set up, games, the whole nine yards. Suddenly, I’m like, “Wow! There’s no fucking way Annie paid for all of this shit out of pocket. This looks like the shit!” That’s when I see the van parked out front that says ‘Fountain Of Life Church’. That’s the Evangelical Church around my area.

Oh shit…

So, we keep walking, and as we get closer everything gets fucking weird. Suddenly, these Stepford Wives come out of the woodwork and start greeting us. Like not just “Hey.” but “GOOD MORNING! Oh, how are you this morning? What a beautiful baby! Can I hold him?” Suddenly my baby boy is being passed around these spiritually enhanced stranger grandmas. They’re cooing at him and nothing malicious or anything, it’s just like they’ve upped their dosages for a day.

So, we get our baby and head inside, because I hear the guy on stage ask for all people working booths to please report. So, I go over to my booth and send my family on their way to go have some fun on the slides and stuff.

Now, there’s roughly 200+ people in this area at the end of my street, and I only recognize a handful of them from the neighborhood and I realize that I’m sitting smack dab in the fucking middle of a goddamn Evangelical Revival under the guise of a Community Fun Fair. I’m supposed to work the face painting booth from 10 – 12 and I’m hoping to sit down, paint some faces, shut the fuck up, and not get outted as a heathen by these manic freaks and to just get the fuck out by noon.

I get my paint situated on the table when this teenage chick comes over and introduces herself as Whitney, she’ll be helping me paint faces. I say hello as she sits down, and she says, “Uh…do you think maybe I could have some of that paint?” I wasn’t expecting her so, I had everything neatly arranged and seemingly horded on my side of the table. I over emphasize an apology, “Sure! Sorry, I didn’t know I had help.” She didn’t talk to me again until she decided she didn’t want to paint any more and left to go get one of her friends to do it. I was relieved because she was grouchy cunt of a girl.

I paint a Superman logo on my son’s face for practice. Looking good. I still got it! Then, I go through a few flowers and hearts and turtles and frogs and whatnot, and I’m pumping out the face paint like a pro. People are smiling, they’re happy, and they’re not asking me why they haven’t seen me at church. So, I’m happy. Then came the first stumble.

This chick comes over to get “I *heart* Jesus” on her face. I start painting, and notice her shirt. It appears to say “Stan Got PUNK’D”. I say, “Who is Stan? Is that a South Park shirt?” I get a glare from her and her two friends who came with her. Stan’s real name is Satan, and it looks like he’s not the only one who got Punk’d. “Um, we don’t watch South Park.” Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t… Shit. “Oh! Ha! My bad! I didn’t see the ‘A’.”

I finish her up and they go on their way. Phew, I think I made it out of that one. I paint a few more faces, when I get this little boy. He’s a very shy kid, and he’s not talking very much. So, I say, “What would you like?” He sits there quietly, looking at the ground. I say, “You like football? You want a football?” “No.” “What about baseball?” “No.” Truck? No. Dog? No. Cat? No. Snake?

His mom chimes in, “A snake? Why in the world would he want a SNAKE?!”

It dawns on me…oh fuck…Satan was a snake in the Bible… Jesus, they’re on to me! I revert back, “How ’bout a baseball. I’m gonna paint you a baseball…” He gets a baseball and I send him on his way.

The very NEXT person is my friend/neighbor’s little girl, Jude. Jude is a cool girl, and we kind of believe she is also my son’s girlfriend, but she’s only 4 and he’s only about to be 4, so you never know. But, she’s pretty cool. Anyhow, I say “Hey Jude! What do you want?” and she immediately responds with her typical Jude look of menace, “Fire.”

Fire. The 4 year old girl who I’ve just made a scene over as being someone I know wants fire painted on her cheek.

I look over at the new girl painting faces next to me, and not only is she staring at me but she’s stopped painting and the girl who was BEING painted is staring at me. As soon as I look over they kind of blink real hard and go back to work.

At this point, I figure, I’m out. I’m busted. They know. Let me go get up on stage and tell them all, “Hi! I’m an agnostic. My children aren’t baptized. And we don’t go to church… You can collect your stones in the parking lot behind you.” But, I just carry on. I paint Jude’s fire and laugh on the inside at the whole thing. It’s 11:00 and I’ll be done soon.

Suddenly an older woman comes over to the booth and tells us to stop doing what we’re doing and come to the stage. At this point, I’m freaked out now. So, I ask the girl that’s been painting with me, “What’s going on?” She says, “It’s time for the dramas.” I say, “The dra…Oh! Okay!”

I have no fucking clue what The Dramas are…

Turns out that The Dramas are a group of kids standing in front of the stage lip synching to and going through a choreographed dance routine for a couple of Christian ballads. After they’re done doing their Nell (Tay in the weend) impressions for Jesus, the announcer says we can go back to our fun.

So, I head back, and honestly the rest of the time was pretty uneventful except for a moment when this older woman was talking with my wife while she got her face painted. She told my wife that she had 8 kids and, “we had trouble having our last one, it took a while, so we named her Sarah.” she said with a knowing smirk. My wife says, “Why is that?” The smirk disappeared and was replaced by confusion, “Because it took so long, I had her after 40.” My wife, always on the ball, says, “Oh…riiiiight!” and goes on to say that she thinks it’s a lovely name.

I don’t know the exact story obviously because I haven’t memorized the Bible as well as some of these freaks, but I do remember from my 12 years of Catholic school that Sarah is a Biblical figure who I believe was married to someone important, Isaac or Abraham or someone like that. Like I said, I have no idea, but the fact that she dropped this obscure Biblical reference like a common little joke (He had no arms or legs, so we named him Matt.) just blew me away.

Finally noon came and I gathered the family and we got the fuck out of there. But as we were a good 100 yards from the Revival I hear behind me, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” So I turn around, and there’s this big fat dude who I’ve never seen before in my entire life, not previous to the Fun Fair, not during the Fun Fair, waving frantically at us (we were the only people in the vicinity), he calls out “Glad you could make it!”

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