Dear God; (Jeremy)

Dear God;

I know I haven’t really been that great a citizen lately. I’m certainly no Mother Theresa; I don’t help the poor, or the orphaned, or anybody in great need really to any great extent. I know that I haven’t been buying The Big Issue all that much lately; it’s a question of finances, y’see, but I suppose that you already know that, being God and all. And I know that I have been thinking highly inappropriate and vulgar thoughts, but I guess that really doesn’t make me any different from most of the world’s population (let’s face it, even Bill Clinton did that, and he turned out alright). But, underneath it all, I think that I’m not really all that bad a person. I stopped a bag from cannoning into an old lady on the bus last Thursday, does that count? I tell my Mum and Dad that I love them every day. I wash the dishes when I’m asked. I try to study hard and be nice to people. Overall, I’m not really all that bad.
Which leads me to this one question; why, why on Earth, did you just give me the Weekend From Hell? Yes, I know that may well be overstating it somewhat; nobody died, and the world for most people kept on turning all the same regardless of whatever happened to me, but there’s no doubting that the weekend you just gave me was a bit of a shocker. Really, if you’re going to give me that bad a seventy-two hour stretch from Friday morning through to Monday inclusive, I’d like a bit of a forewarning about it, please. Perhaps a burning bush at the bus stop, or something. I understand you have experience in these matters. Whatever the case may well be, I thought it was a bit rude of you to drop a bomb of a weekend like that on me without even so much as a couple of half-decent thunderclaps from the sky.

They say that the best stories have a good introduction, in which case this was most certainly one of your finest. Admittedly you seem to be quite strong as far as introductions are concerned; I thought the simplicity of flooding the planet with water before letting us all down by saying that after that there was forty days and forty nights of nothing bar seasickness (and presumably a couple of health issues) was a brilliant introduction. Admittedly I thought that the introduction to the New Testament could have been handled with a little more excitement and derring-do – the whole manger idea was cute and succint but perhaps paled a little in comparison to your earlier story about a man being eaten by a whale – but as far as my weekend was concerned, Friday was certainly a return to form. I gave myself a “self-rostered day off University” to ride over to the place of the girl I like, as we had prearranged to catch up, which was fantastic, except for the fact that she wasn’t there. I sat outside her place for hours feeling like a total dickhead and wondering just what it was about me which was so unappealing that she didn’t even want to catch up with me. I was also highly impressed by your attention to detail; you’d even remembered to turn her phone off, and even managed to time her mother leaving the house as I rode down her street so as to put me within about thirty seconds of saving myself a lot of waiting and heartbreak. It was a pretty horrible couple of hours. Eventually I wrote her a letter, stuck it through the door, and rode off home. I was pretty distraught, to say the least.

Sometimes your stories have sagged a little bit in the middle – having a parting of the Red Sea followed by forty years wandering in the Desert comes to mind, although it’s not a patch on James Cameron’s Titanic – but you managed to keep the pace right up on this one. I’m quite sure that, being God, you have no problem seeing that the bank balance in account 250-3342-1159*** is roughly three dollars and twenty cents, and that my monthly Metcard expired the next day. So I have no doubt that the decision of work to call me, with about forty-five minutes to go before I was due there, was a premeditated one, and so I spent a nice lonely night by myself at home, with extra time to contemplate just what had gone on earlier that day. Even better, you managed to make sure that C (the girl) wasn’t home, and that her phone STILL wasn’t on, so I couldn’t even get close to sorting out the mess from that afternoon. That was certainly a neat touch that ensured that my mind kept spinning in circles for hours that night, and so it’s fair to say that I didn’t really sleep so well.

Come Saturday day and it was time for football down at Sunny Kilsyth. I didn’t get selected, so it was certainly a character-building experience to watch our team get flogged in the afternoon sun by ten goals. It certainly made me a tougher person but I couldn’t say that I really appreciated the experience. Nor did I really appreciate the flat tyre that I got on my bike just as I rode into the ground. After a good afternoon contemplating not only my own fate but also that of Warrandyte Football Club, I managed to get a lift back home to do some study before it was time for work.

Well, I suppose that it would’ve been time for work, had, of course, not work called, this time with half-an-hour’s warning, to tell me that I wasn’t required. There went both my shifts for the week; thank you very much. Is this your way of trying to tell me that money and me just don’t go together? After trying to ring C yet again (guess what, she still wasn’t home and her phone was turned off) I tried to console myself with the thought that I could at least watch Geelong on TV. The game was being broadcast on only half-an-hour’s delay. We were playing against Collingwood, and going in as favourites.

After Geelong had been flogged by 102 points, their worst loss for roughly ten years, I began to reconsider my position in life. Stuck at home with nowhere to go, I consoled myself with the thought that tomorrow I would be meeting up with Soph and our friend M, then going to dinner with Dad, who was down in Melbourne for the weekend. I went to sleep, hoping that Sunday would bring some better luck with it.

Meeting Soph and M was fantastic. It was great to catch up with them and get some Womanly Advice on my predicament with C. After going up with Soph to her tennis at the University, and hitting the gym, I then caught the tram back to Jolimont. Guess what happens? The first Met Nazis I have seen for roughly six months get on. I’m so used to having a monthly ticket, I’ve forgotten to buy a Sunday Saver. I thought it was particularly sadistic of you to make the Met Nazi in question tell me that he was sorry for my predicament. Yeh right, buddy. Sure you are. It didn’t stop him from issueing me with a ticket, though. My bank balance rocketed from positive three down to negative one-hundred and forty-seven.

In short, I didn’t think that I’d had such a bad weekend for ages. I said to the friend whose house I stayed at on Sunday night, that I had just had the sort of weekend to make me yearn for Monday Morning. Boy, was I wrong.

Monday morning, Union House Computing Centre. First email recieved; hey it’s from C! I opened it up in anticipation:

“Jez
please stop ringing my house every five seconds cuz ur freaking my parents out. As for friday, thanks for confiming you coming over- You cant just rock up to my place like that- you should have rung and let me know you were still coming- thats why i wasnt home
two. we are not going out- so stop acting like we are
three- you are too possessive for my liking and ur starting to freak me out too.

So please just leave me alone

C”

I thought that was particularly cruel. It’s nice to know, that so many years after making the Egyptians squirm like Rabbis in the Vatican, you’ve still got that magic touch, the ability to make people utterly miserable. I love the way that you completely trapped me into that situation; you knew that I kept on trying to call her from Sunday through to Thursday inclusive, except of course for the fact that her phone was off or engaged. She ended up believing that I didn’t try to confirm the day with her; so she went off and did something else! I must take my hat off to you. That was probably the most devious thing you’ve done since you put apple trees in the Garden of Eden.

But – and this is the most complex part of the script – I still believe that she’s a good person, underneath it all. She’s just not someone who can empathise with other people all that well; she can’t see, straightaway, what her actions make other people feel. I know it sounds like I am trying to convince myself, but really, I’m not. In the finish, I guess that it wasn’t meant to be, and so on I move. That won’t be easy but it’s got to be done.

So, God, in the finish, thankyou for that bomb of a weekend. All I can ask is that I have used up all my bad karma for roughly five years so hopefully I can have a better one next weekend. And after that, who knows? Overall, I think this story that you’ve put together really has potential in the finish. We could do with releasing it in book form. After all, your last publication seems to have sold quite well. It would certainly be a welcome return to form after those pale imitations written in your name, “The Crusades”, bombed most spectacularly. Above all, we have GOT to keep Mel Gibson from stealing the limelight in YOUR title roles.

Anyway, I’m off to ring a few friends; Brok, Caitlin, Krista, Soph… it’s tim-tam and hankie time. Best of luck up there in Heaven, and don’t forget to tell Elvis to wash behind his ears,

jez.