St Anthony

My wife, Hilary, and I spent a good part of the past two days slowly driving our golf cart through the pasture looking for lost horseshoes. It's not that we can't afford to lose a three dollar shoe, it's that around here, riding in the pasture in a golf cart is considered a 'night out'.
After several minutes of scouring the ground, Hilary invoked St. Anthony to help us find them.
My first thought was that this Anthony fella surely has more important matters on his plate than helping us find a couple of rusty horseshoes, but being unfamiliar, I asked who he was.
"He's the patron saint of lost articles", she said.
"Really? They have a saint for everything, don't they?"
Lost articles.
I began wondering what it must've been like for Anthony that day he earned his wings.  A group of angels and wanna-be angels gathered around the holy water cooler, lamenting the poor play of the Giants, and the entire NFC east, in fact.
"Even the boss can't help the Redskins" one of them joked.
"Ant'nee!", St Vinny, the patron saint of summoning other patron saints gathered by the holy water cooler calls, "They wanna see yous in the office."
The other angels good-naturedly rib Anthony, "Oooh, Anthony, somebody's getting promoted!"  "Way to go, Anth ole' chap!"
"Alright, alright" Anthony interrupts, "Give it a rest"
Anthony and St Vinny leave the holy water cooler, past rows and rows of white cubicles, down a white hallway, up a white escalator, past the gates into God's office.
Anthony nudges St. Vinny and points to a painting on the wall, "Dogs playing poker? Really?"
St Vinny pushes Anthony's arm down, shaking his head. "Don't ask."
Soon after, a voice speaks to them, "Anthony, we've appreciated the work you've done around here and decided it was time we promoted you to full angel."
"That's awesome boss."
"Vinny, the wings" God commanded.
Vinny opened a filing cabinet, removed a pair of angel wings and securely tied them to Anthony's shoulders.
"So what am in charge of?  Defending mankind from evil?  Battling demons and protector of truth, honor and justice?"
"No, no, we've got one of those" God said, "You are the patron saint of findin' stuff."
"No, really, the suspense is killing me."
"Yes, really.  You are now St. Anthony, patron saint of finding things. Have at it."

Cut to 1000 years later:

St. Anthony, running through heaven, wearing a paper hat, red smock and carrying a set of car keys.  He's perspiring, out of breath and disheveled.
"Lady, here's your keys.  They were in your purse the whole time." Anthony says, as he tosses the keys and runs in the other direction.
"Johnny, here's that tic-tac you lost in the couch."  "Try getting a few in your mouth next time" he mutters under his breath.
Suddenly, a voice booms over the public address system, "Anthony, we've got a pair of horseshoes missing in Virginia.  They asked for you personally."
"Really? They've been looking for all of two minutes!" he barks.  Resigned, however, to his duty, he hangs his head, adding, "Be right there."
And that is how we came to find our horseshoes.

The Difference Between Men and Women #613: Light as decorative accent

My wife and I play a game that neither of us has ever acknowledged playing: She walks around the house turning the lights on, I follow her, turning them off.   While this game is played in households all across America, I don't know that anyone has stopped to look into the origins of the game.  Here they are:

As little boys, all men spent hours of their childhood watching the little wheel on the electric meter on the side of the house spin around in circles; sometimes it spun slowly, taking a couple of minutes for the little black line to make one revolution.   Other times it whirred around like a deli slicer, lethal enough to cut off that arm and a leg it was going to take to pay the bill.  

As curious boys, we wondered what made it spin.  What we found was an underground pit, a portal to hell, where ogres and beasts  are whipped while demons play "The Rowing of the Galley Slaves" on kettle drums made from human skulls.  Medusas cackle with glee at their pain while deformed and grotesque souls revel in their damnation.  The ogres and beasts, covered in the grime and soot and grease of hell, labor to push a giant turnstile, like Conan the Barbarian bellowing to Crom!  The whip cracks, the beast master roars, the turnstile grinds ever so slowly while fire and brimstone scorch the backs of the damned.
That's how electricity is made.

Meanwhile, my wife skips through the house from room to room, sprinkling potpourri and straightening throw pillows, always turning the light on as she leaves the room, as though it were a treat plucked from her little basket of sunshine.  
"Why are you turning the lights on?" I dared ask on one occasion.
"It makes the room so much brighter and cheerier" was the answer I already knew. She obviously had no concern for the ogres and beasts of hell, suffering to bring us every drop of artificial sunlight.

I've learned to pick my battles and deal with the lights, but sometimes I've got to stand strong.  One of those times was when we were recently leaving the house to start several hours of errand-running. As I reached for the door, my wife turned on all of the lights in the kitchen.
"Why are you turning the lights on? We're leaving."
"I know, but it makes the kitchen so much cheerier."
"For whom? No one will be here."
"I know, but when we come back into the house, it'll be cheery."
"Tell you what, when we get home, you wait in the car and I'll run inside and turn the lights on."
"It's just a few lights."
"If you multiplied 'just a few lights' times every household in the world that was leaving them on, that's billions of lights."
"C'mon, I want to get home so we can take a nap."

Fine, we leave the lights on so the house will be cheery when we get home.  
But they'll be no naps for the ogres and beasts and rest of us slaving away to make the little wheel spin.  Crom!