Today, as I was heading down the stairs to leave for church, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Turning, I bent down, grabbed it, stuck it in my pocket and had a quick chortle (not to be confused with a giggle) and headed to church.
I wasn't sure what I would do with a plastic chicken leg, or should I say, plastic "drumstick" (seeing that it is "cooked" and all) but I figured if it got one giggle from my seven-year old (giggle is okay here) at an inappropriate time, it would be worth lugging it around in my Dockers (not to be confused with knickers.)
During the sermon, my daughter was drawing and leaned a little close to me, resting her thigh against my left pocket where she felt the lump of the toy. She knew from sitting close to me every Sunday that this was unusual, so she started to reach in...and to stop what could have been an outburst, I stopped her hand and shook my head.
Now she was curious, so being a good seven-year old, she persisted. Looking straight at her, I pulled it to the edge of my pocket and gave her a peek. She cupped her hands over her mouth and her eyes did a devious dance as they looked into mine. My first success.
After the service, I was conversing with the family in front of us. Their pre-teen daughter was telling me about the buck she had shot last week, and at a pause, I knew I had my opportunity. Out came my hand and in it was the drumstick. "Want a drumstick?" I said. She just looked at me and laughed, shaking her head no, rolling her eyes, and nudging her mom to show her what I was up to.
As we were filing to go down to the fellowship hall, I stopped to talk with a guy who I hardly ever see laugh, or even smile. After listening for a while, I offered to help him do some tiling in the new addition he is building, all the while knowing the formed plastic that was colored to a perfect brown glaze resting in my pocket would NEVER get a rise out of him.
But then God smiled upon me...his daughter came up, pulled on his arm and muttered the words that only a 40-year old wanna-be comedian who had a fake chicken leg in his pocket could love..."I'm hungry!" Out came the drumstick. Success number three.
Traversing the crowd in the fellowship hall, I ran into the worship director who invited me to attend the creative planning meetings on Thursday mornings, which I was hoping to do again, and had emailed her about it only a few days prior. She told me there would be breakfast provided—and to that comment the finely-crafted kids toy made somewhere in China (where the chicken that modeled for it is obviously very small) made it's last appearance and got it's last laugh, with the footnote from her, that a guy who carries a fake chicken leg in his pocket definitely needed to attend these type of meetings.
