Retiring From Beauty Pageants

Perhaps I opened a can of worms in last week’s column that I wasn’t quite ready to fish with. Lest your imaginations run wild, I now feel I must use valuable column space this week to clarify my participation in two separate womanless beauty pageants. It is indeed true that I participated and received the first place prize in a womanless beauty pageant at my church in South Carolina ten years ago. First let me note that no man wants to win a womanless beauty pageant, at least not this man. So the fact that I achieved that feat is not a source of pride or accomplishment to me. But win I did. Probably because I bucked the system and, emerging as the last contestant, rebelled against common dignity and appeared with a couch cushion stuffed in my “dress” to indicate my pregnantness. And to add to the effect, I grabbed a jar of pickles at the last minute and pretended to throw up a few times while walking down the “runway”. Mind you, I did all this to raise money for a good cause. Churches dress men up in women clothes so we can raise money to send mission teams to foreign places to teach people how to properly conduct themselves as godly men and women. Go figure. Of course it’s all in fun and the cause truly was a good one. So when I heard my current church would be conducting a similar pageant a few weeks back, I debated whether or not to risk losing my title. In the end, the event coordinators forced me to enter and in doing so, I saw an opportunity to relinquish my crown once and for all. I decided to rebel again and go with the whole pregnant theme and coming out last routine. This time, with my wife’s help and blessing, I sported a bathrobe, slippers, and sponge curlers in my wig. All was going well beforehand until me and some of the guys backstage got a little carried away. Unfortunately for everyone in attendance, I discovered a small baby doll in the church nursery where I was dressing before the performance. Why in the world I decided to stuff the hapless child up into my bathrobe next to my pillow I don’t rightly know. But I did. And at the proper moment, in front of several hundred fine Christian onlookers, I birthed a baby on stage. Caught up in the moment was I. Devoid of good sense was I. Inconceivably out of my gourd was I. Fortunately for me and everyone in attendance, I did not place in the top three. A guy in my Sunday school class who dressed like Cleopatra took home the crown. Thus my reign ended. Thankfully. And I decided then to hang up the wig and bathrobe for good. But the reverberations reverberated the next day at church. The pastor publicly mentioned something about a “churching,” which I think is similar to excommunication. I don’t know if I imagined it, but there were whispers about my continuing as a deacon. However, it seems everyone is okay now that I have announced my retirement. Hopefully I won’t pull a Brett Favre and come back seven or eight more times. (Unless it’s for a good cause.)