Save Us From Glurge. Amen.

It was a beautiful sunny day, as Little Susie got off the school bus. She picked up her Dora The Explorer [TM] backpack and her Barbie [TM] lunchbox, and went into her classroom.

"Good morning, boys and girls!" said her teacher. "Today we're going to learn all about ...the transportation system!"

"Yay!" cheered the class. They opened their books.

Just then, Bad Adolph, who lived in a shack down the road, burst in and killed them all in a blaze of gunfire.

Susie came to and found herself floating on a cloud.

"Why there are all my classmates! We're all in heaven!" she said.

God floated by and said, "Welcome! How are you all feeling?"

"Okay I guess," said Susie.

"You don't sound okay. Are you upset?" asked God.

"Well. Yeah! Why did you let that man kill all of us? It's nice here but my mom and dad will be all crying and everything, and I wanted to grow up and be a ballerina first, and it's just not fair!"

"Little Susie," said God. "I'm very sorry, but I'm not allowed in school anymore."

Susie was puzzled. "What do You mean? You're God! You can go anywhere You want!"

God shook his head sadly. "They threw Me out of schools when they said there couldn't be school prayer anymore."

Little Bobby was on the next cloud and he listened to what God said to Susie. Then he spoke up. "You mean we should start every morning saying 'Hail Mary,' like we do at church?"

Little Aaron, on the other cloud said, "No! It's supposed to be 'Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who made me an Israelite.' "

"Is not!" said Little Maizie, "It's supposed to be to Jesus!"

"I don't ... t-h-i-n-k... so!" said Little Rasha, the Hindu.

"Tell us, God!" begged Bobby. "Which kind of praying are we supposed to do in school?"

God threw back His head and cackled. "That's for ME to know and YOU to figure out!" He started to walk away, chortling.

Susie didn't think this was right, so she said:"WAIT just one cotton-pickin' minute, Boss Man! I pray and so does Maizie and Bobby and Aaron and Rasha. ONE of us had to be doing the right one! But You don't count the prayers we say in our minds or our hearts, it has to be said by ...who? Faculty? Students don't count? What's the deal here?"

God said, "See those children over there?" Susie and the others looked where He was pointing. A group of little Amish girls sat on their clouds, not far away.

"They prayed in school every day," He explained. "Their teachers led them in prayer every morning, and before meals. I let them get blown away too."

Susie's voice trembled. "Then...then what would bring you back into school so people couldn't kill us anymore?"

"A PA system," God said. "The myth is that I am anywhere that people are loving me and praying to me with their hearts. But actually, I am confined to electronic mass communications. As long as I am prayed to through a microphone - either in an assembly or over a PA system - it counts. There is no 'God Unplugged.' Sorry."

"Oh," said Susie sadly. "I sure hope that down there on Earth, they figure out the rules really soon."

Nothin' Could Be Finer

Oh, but my sheer adorability makes it more than worth your while!

Only those whose calling in life is To Serve Cats will understand the pain.

The pain of a foreign object lingering in your eye. Not a big thing. Not an eyelash or a grain of sand.

Nope. Something so ultra-fine, so microscopic as to be impossible to see. Or remove. Something so flexible and weightless it seems to defy the laws of physics.

I speak of cat undercoat.

With three permanent cat residents, plus a GrandCat here on a lengthy visit, the hair is phenomenal. Tumbleweeds of it waft through the house and lurk under furniture and behind doors.

But it's the undercoat hair that settles into the eyelid and clings, sodden, refusing to wash out no matter how many applications of Visine [TM] Tears drizzle uselessly down my cheek; refusing to allow an end or a loop to spring forth and get caught.

There's just nothing like it.