Arguments, Lost Clothes, Crowded Bathroom... It Must Be Sunday

As usual, the kids wouldn't start getting ready for church until the last minute... or rather, the last five seconds. When I get tired of telling them, then get tired of yelling at them, I start a count and if they haven't gotten on their feet and started moving by the count of five they get a spanking, so they almost always are scooting when I reach four and I hardly ever give spankings anymore. Actually it's only on my youngest that the threat works. The older one gets threatened with taking his car keys.
We made it there on time, but only by a couple of minutes and surprisingly found an empty pew where we could sit together.... close to the back. I have this thing about sitting close to the front. I get a little claustrophobic and much prefer the back of the church where I'm not surrounded by two hundred people. This has been a point of disagreement between my wife and I because she likes to sit close to the front. Today she had to work so it was just Nathan, Ryan and I going to church, so I found a seat toward the back.
Having carted three boys to church for years, I have come to expect a certain amount of embarrassment every Sunday, but today was pretty much uneventful. No one picked his nose through the whole mass, no gas was passed noisily, everybody's pants stayed up, and no one knocked the collection basket on the floor. My seventeen year old, Nathan, wore another pair of torn pants, but at least his shirt was nice.

If you know anything about the Catholic Mass you know it's a set ritual with not much deviation. When my youngest son, Ryan, was about three or four I told him to stay in his seat while I went to Communion. I went up and took Communion and went back to my seat, only to see that Ryan had made his own trip to the front of the church and was now coming back into the seat. When Communion was over the priest made an unprecedented trip to the middle of the congregation... to my pew. He had given Ryan a host, not sure how old he was (Ryan was a good sized boy), and didn't know what he had done with it, whether he had dropped it or eaten it. Thankfully, he had eaten it or else we would have had backtrack his path looking for it. The priest was quite upset and I was mightily embarrassed. Just another story to add to our list of Sunday adventures.