I'm going to church today but...

I already had a "sermon moment" on Friday afternoon at shool. I was out on my regular afternoon duty--directing cars in the parking lot. Here's what that looks like:

Kids line up in clusters of letters that are color coded. For example, A/B is yellow, CDE is red, and FGH is orange. Cars wait until there is a hole at their child's color and then we pull them in there. My job is to keep them in line and direct them when the openings occur. Even though it may seem to be a pain for parents, we move about 400 children and their cars out in about 10 - 15 minutes. I don't think that's too bad.

As you might expect, there are ALWAYS those who don't WANT to wait in line and try to scoot around other cars. I usually stand in the middle of the passing lane to prevent this from happening. I've sent them back around to put themselves in line properly if they try and cut in line.

Honestly, this whole thing has taught me that apples don't often fall far from trees. The parents who think the rules and procedures don't apply to them are the same ones who wonder why their child can't behave in school.

OK, back to Friday. One tattooed, ear-pierced, rough-looking father pulled in driving his battered van. He immediately pulled around the first ten cars in line to a spot that was "open" near the front. It was a space, but it was there for cars that may have needed to exit from another direction. He was heading to orange. There were three other cars in front of him waiting for the same spot.

The minute the car at orange started to pull out, he started to ease out of his spot ready to make a bee-line for it. I stood in front of his car and motioned for him to roll down the window. I smiled and said, "You have three cars waiting for orange in front of you. And, by the way, you may have also passed some other cars waiting for orange when you cut in front of all those cars behind you."

His reply was priceless: "I'm only doing unto others what they do unto me!"

I said, "You still have to follow the rules and it's "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." In other words, treat others the way you WANT to be treated! Thank you for waiting."

He smirked and although I knew he wasn't happy, he waited.

I am fairly certain he didn't know that he was was trying to quote scripture to me. And I'm certain he didn't know that just a few weeks ago the entire school read the book pictured above called The Golden Rule.

For me, I wondered just how many times I twist my own faith lessons to meet my own desires. The second thing I thought was: "In my opinion, this story will preach!"