Excusez-moi?!?!

I found out yesterday evening before Mass that our parish will be breaking ground for our youth center, the first proposed building on new church's complex, next month. This building will be the place where the three weekend Masses, plus all the weekday Masses, will be held until the church, which is the second proposed building, is completed.

This will be very nice because the Sunday 10:30 Mass has grown far too large to accommodate the congregation that comes to worship, so it had to be moved to the theater of a nearby high school, which doesn't really answer. The Sunday 8:00 Mass and the Saturday vigil are getting pretty packed as well, and never was this more apparent than when I went forward to receive Communion yesterday.

Father likes two lines to form for Communion, feeling that this expedites the process of serving everyone before we all hyperventilate from singing the same hymn forty-two times through. So I got in the right hand line, falling in beside a large sort of man who was in the left line.

The pair of us must have made quite a sight, lumbering up the aisle like a couple of trained bears, our hands prayerfully folded at our midsections. Unfortunately, the man was a lot taller than I, even though his pumpkin shape was very similar to mine. This left him in the position to be able to jab his right elbow into my left boob as we got to a narrow place.

He tried to pretend he didn't know he'd elbowed me -- and in the boob at that -- but he knew that I knew that he knew, the big boob poker. You'd think he would have offered a humble, "I beg your pardon," but no, he did not. He simply proceeded forward, looking neither left nor right, maybe aiming for the change to nudge me again.

I will be very happy when we have a larger building with a larger center aisle.