Get Down From There!

My mom always said I was a climber. I would climb everything. As a baby I climbed on the furniture, climbed in and out of the crib. I would even climb up my dad. One time, as told to me, I climbed up the front living room windows, pure buck naked. Mom said, it was funny, cute and scary. All at the same time. I was 2. For the longest time I thought my name was "GET DOWN FROM THERE"!!

As I got older I did what any boy would do, I kept climbing. On top of the house, up a tree. Another time my dad had to go get a ladder from the neighbors to help me out of a tree that I couldn't get down from. I only cared about going up. Down was just a circumstance.

Well, now I am a carpenter. And as all young carpenters should, I spent my younger years framing houses. Big houses. Tall, huge, high up, wonderful houses. My first year I got to work on a 14,000 square foot house. Talk about HUGE! The guest quarters are bigger than my house I am raising my children in. Every little chance I got, I would climb to the top and look around. It was awesome.

I hope that I have established that I am indeed a climber. Or at least that I want to climb stuff. Here comes my problem. We are getting a new ceiling at church. The ceiling was very old and had been painted before. But now is falling apart. It's a cathedral type ceiling, with wonderful large wooden beams and the ceiling is made up of patterned tiles. Kind of like drop ceiling tiles without the grid, for sound. Anyways. To get up to the peak of the ceiling and all points in between, they are using scaffolding. To put it bluntly, our church looks like a huge jungle gym. Like, the best best jungle gym ever made. I cannot focus on a homily with a contraption like that looming over my head!!

For the past few weeks I have no idea what the readings, or gospel, or whatever is about. All I see is the "jungle gym". At first I thought, "Oh cool their fixing the ceiling, sure needed it". That lasted for about five minutes. Every time I leave church without climbing and frolicking on that behemoth of a structure, a small tear runs down my face. Not really, BUT JEEZ!!!

I even want my son to appreciate it. My wife gave me the "What the hell do you think your doing?!!!" look last week. Like there is something wrong with holding your 18 month old son up so he can hang on one of the cross members. I never thought of the flip side of that. I just wanted him to want to climb like every other boy around. Well, he does want. And he does do. And his name also is "GET DOWN FROM THERE!"

I guess one good thing is, hanging in my garage is the ladder that my parents neighbor gave them to get me down, will get him down too. Thanks, Mrs. Rochford.