August 12, 1980, Tuesday
Yesterday this old man — a white guy with white hair and three teeth (each about 1 1/2” long) got on the bus I was on, yelling “Keep your prayer life going, Folks, keep your prayer life going!”
Then he stopped right at my seat. He was leering down my shirt, peering at me through little beady eyes, blind with their own self-satisfied “knowledge.”
“Everything’s a puff of smoke…a puff of smoke. Do you know what a puff of smoke is? It just disappears — like that! Poof! So keep your eyes on heaven — put something under your shirt. Don’t wear your shirt like that — close it up — put another shirt under it, put a dickie under it — that shirt will keep you out of heaven.”
He continued, “You’re young — 15. * You’ve still got 75 years left.” (“I hope not!”)
blah blah blah
People like that! He would never be able to listen to another person — especially a younger person. I was saying, “Bodies are bodies, souls are souls, minds are minds” to deaf ears.
I think my shirt is more likely to keep him out of heaven, if he’s so obsessed with it.
What kind of shallow God would ignore a whole life’s thoughts, striving for good, for knowledge, etc., and focus judgment on the cut of a person’s shirt?
* (actually I was 22 at the time, living on my own in an apartment in Chicago. It should be pointed out that I was fairly eating-disordered at the time and had ZERO cleavage.)
