As we say in my country, get an idiot to pray and she will bruise her forehead (extra points for guessing what a forehead has to do with praying). I have many errands today and I like that because I haven’t had any time to get sad. One of the errands was to get N.’s former car towed to the car service. N. tried getting it towed in the morning but the towing company went someplace else and seems to have towed somebody else’s car. So I had to contact the only other towing service in town. That’s when it became clear that I know nothing about the car I have been riding for over 6 years.
“What is the make and model of the car?” the lady from the towing company asked.
“Erm. . . It’s a Honda?” I suggested, realizing that I was turning into one of those annoying folks who make every statement sound like a question.
“And the model?”
“Erm. . . And by model you mean. . .?”
“Is it a Civic, an Accord, or another model?”
Accord sounded like a nice name for a car, so I said it was an Accord.
“What year is it?” the lady kept torturing me.
“Two thousand something,” I said. “I think.”
“And the color?” she asked in a very patient tone.
“White!” I yelled, happy to be back in my straight-A student role. “It’s definitely white!”
Of course, when the towing truck came by there were exactly two cars parked next to each other. One was a Honda Civic and another one a Honda Accord. And as usual, I had guessed all wrong. Ours was a Civic. In six years, it had never occurred to me to find out.
I did manage to stop the towers before they tried to take away the neighbors’ car, though, so the story ended well.
Clarissa's Blog 
I put giant flower stickers on my last car so I could always find it in parking lots. If I couldn’t remember where I parked, well, someone else would have noticed it. Now I need to get some for my current car….
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“(extra points for guessing what a forehead has to do with praying)”
Something to do with Islam? Maybe the idiot doesn’t know how a good orthodox christian is supposed to pray and mimics muslim habits (too enthusiastically)?
Something to do crossing yourself? The idiot knocks themself in the head instead of lightly touching the forehead?
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// Something to do with Islam?
Why Islam? I thought Christians sometimes bowed too, while kneeling.
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The christian tradition I’m most familiar with (nb I’m not a Christian) treats prayer primarily as a private conversation with god rather than a formulaic physical action to be done in a certain way or certain time.
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In the Russian Orthodox tradition people pray on their knees and put their forehead to the ground in a sort of a bow.
You are right, this is a highly ritualized and formulaic way to practice. This is one of the reasons why so few people practice it. It’s just too hard to keep up with every single rule.
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