I’ve always been pleased with the fact that our church recycles the Sunday bulletin. You know what the bulletin is, right? That little flier they hand out when you walk into the church that contains general announcements pertaining to the church and (sometimes) the order of service.
Our church has two services every Sunday and, as long as we’ve been at this church, they’ve always recycled bulletins — you know: Feel free to take the bulletin with you, but if you’re finished with it, just lay it on the table near the exit. And then, at the start of the second service, they hand out these once-used bulletins.
It’s a small thing, but it’s a good way to be responsible: saving money and keeping an eye on our consumption of natural resources.
So this morning I received my bulletin and Bill received his and we sat down with our children in church. By and by I opened my bulletin, but to my surprise found I could not open it all the way. No, I could not. And this was because, lodged in the crease of said recycled bulletin, was Someone’s Discarded Gum.
I thought this was hysterically funny.
Maybe Someone meant it as a joke. And maybe Someone was new to our church and Didn’t Quite Get the whole recycling thing. And maybe it was simple confusion: the table on which one is to set one’s about-to-be recycled bulletin is a little tray on the top of the trash receptacle.
At any rate, I felt Decidedly Lucky. I mean, what are the chances? I felt like I was attending one of those corny seminars where, at some Surprising Moment, the speaker tells you to look under your chair for some magic number that means you’ve won a prize.
Yes, I felt like I’d won a prize. Of sorts.
My friend Colin, who was sitting to my right, didn’t seem to think there would be a prize in it for me. But he thought that maybe, if I took the Gum to the table where they greet visitors, I might be able to score one of those loaves of fresh-baked bread.
That’s what we give to our first-time visitors. Bread. Not Gum. Never Gum.
