This Reminds Me........

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885541/ns/us_news-life/?gt1=43001

I saw this on MSN the other day and it reminded me of a funny experience I had growing up.

The year was 1988 and I was rocking a spiral perm and a pair of leg warmers. Or maybe my dad’s old trench coat and a pair of black combat boots; I was always pushing the envelope of fashion. In our Christian community, the small paperback version of “88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988” was making the circuit. Not that we were believers in the theory personally, but my dad liked to have his hands on the hot sheets as it were, to form his own opinions. The pros and cons, the possibility of accuracy was weighed in on by the faithful at many of the small bible studies held at my parent’s dining room table. I alternated between dreamy dozing on the couch and blatant eavesdropping on conversations I could only understand pieces of; though the parts I heard were enough to worry me. Based on my imperfect information, I began to worry that I would be left behind in the rapture.
The day of the predicted rapture dawned, and I woke apprehensively, tuning my ear so that I could hear the trumpet just in case the angel sounded. I gave myself a few testing sort of jumps to be certain that I could leap heaven bound at a moment’s notice if called upon. My parents were surprisingly blasé about the whole thing and didn’t mention it at all. Honestly, the day passed pretty uneventfully, until I got home from school. My mother was a stay at home mom. When I say, stay at home. I mean that she stayed there. She rarely went out, and hardly ever in the middle of the day. I suspect now that she spent most of her time taking naps and eating bonbons, but I can’t prove it. Throughout the day, I had been doing surreptitious checks on other kids that I thought might make the rapture too, just to make sure they hadn’t been called away without me noticing. When school ended, we were all present and accounted for and my brothers and I rode the school bus home.
Instead of the usual hustle and bustle of our home, dead silence greeted us at the front door. We let ourselves in and when I saw the vacuum cleaner standing all alone in the middle of the floor in mid sweep, I knew it, my mother was gone and I had missed it. The Lord had taken her up right then and there as she vacuumed. My brothers and I went around the darkened house calling in vain for our mother, who had clearly gone on with Jesus leaving us behind to fend for ourselves. As oldest, I didn’t want to let on to them what a mess we were in so I encouraged everyone to have a snack while I thought about what to do. I sat bemused on the couch for a while, wondering how such an event had transpired without my knowledge and what I could do to fix the situation. But then, sweeter than candy, the most welcome sound in of all my 15 years, I heard the sound of the turning door knob as my mother returned from her mysterious errand. We were saved! Laters.