Rocky Raccoon

(Beatles, 1968)

Tonight Ron and I were sitting outside our favorite paper/card/ink pen/irreverent magnet store, minding our own business, when a bushy raccoon came careening around the corner like the lead car in the Indy 500. Ron reacted like I do when I see a mouse - he dang near hopped up on the bench. It was quite funny, although Ron failed to see the humor of the situation.

It reminds me of another humorous story involving Ron, a dog and a prayer vigil. "Ah," you're thinking, "this will be good."

We were taking part in a 24-hour prayer vigil and were scheduled to pray at our church from 1:00-2:00 a.m. As we walked outside our home in the wee hours of the morning, we were greeted by a semi-large dog of questionable breed. He was wagging his tail, so I started down the stairs, talking to the dog in a friendly manner. Ron, who had just come outside, ordered me to stop and come back up on the porch. I know my jaw dropped and I said, "Excuse me?" Ron said, "Do you know that dog?" I found this extremely funny and proceeded to approach the dog. Ron, again ordered me to get back on the porch. He obviously was acquainted with this dog and knew that I was in grave danger of having my hand severely licked.

We finally got in the car (without petting the dog) and it was silent as a tomb. Ron was still irked at my unsubmissive wifely behavior and I was trying to prepare myself for the hour of prayer. About a half mile from the church I started giggling. It quickly turned into one of those honking, gasping, tear rolling laughs. Ron saw nothing even remotely funny about it. I finally managed to get out "Do you know that dog?" He shot a deathray my way and yelled, "Well, did you?" By this time I was screaming laughing and I was pretty sure I would never be able to focus my thoughts on the Almighty. Thankfully, Ron finally started laughing, too, and by the time we reached the church we had calmed down enough to keep the prayer vigil going. I had already decided that if I got the giggles during our prayer time that I would chalk it up to laughing in the Spirit.