We Are Sardines

In the quiet, we huddle together and scold those who speak too often or above a whisper. I shift my weight carefully on the old wooden floors of the closet that protest with creaks at even the slightest movement.

Eight of us have piled into the utility closet off of the church parlor and are waiting for the rest of the “sardines.” Every muscle in my body tightens with the anticipation of voices or movement from the other side of the door. The must of old choir robes mixed with the generic old church smell that gets trapped in between the pages of pew Bibles and hymnals is particularlyphoto-1442706722731-7284acc0a2d7 dense in our close quarters.

A paper palm frond tickles my elbow, the trunk of its tree standing tall in a bucket of cement. This prop is one of many artifacts left from Vacation Bible Schools and church events where the sanctuary was transformed into a tropical Island or the Sydney Olympic games, depending on what the Sunday School curriculum companies were pushing that year.

There are only so many spots in the church building that can fit all the sardines attending youth group on any given Wednesday night. Each hider imagines they will find the new, most secret of spots. Everyone ends up in the same rotation of hideouts: the closet with the Christmas pageant outfits and fake floral arrangements, somewhere under the pews in the choir loft, or this closet off the parlor where we wait now for the rest of the kids to find us.

Once I join the cloistered youth group members, the act of hiding alerts my dormant primal instincts to survive. We all become prehistoric cave people, sheltering ourselves from a wooly mammoth, and we communicate with grunts and nudges in the darkness of our enclosure. We are alert, ready for fight or flight, knowing that at any second we many be startled by someone looking for the group hiding spot.

There is no real threat among the signs for long passed rummage sales and supplies used for church coffee houses, but for the thirty minutes the game lasts, we are in mortal danger. In the dark, in the secret place, we belong to each other. We are at the mercy of the loudest sneeze or the kid who clumsily knocks something glass off of the shelf.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Photo Courtesy of Flickr: Le Luxographe

Next to me, a girl leans into her boyfriend, emboldened by the covering darkness and closeness  implied in the game of Sardines. One person finds a hiding place, and everyone who finds them must join the person in that spot. You win if nobody finds you, you lose if you’re the last one to find the group. In a couple of years, someone would wise up to the fact that shoving a bunch of horny teenagers into a small dark space wasn’t the best move  for promoting a culture of chastity and purity.

It’s very popular to bring your boyfriend to youth group. I had a grand total of one boyfriend during my middle school and high school years, and we were too shy to interlace fingers during the gathering time or to cuddle during movies at lock-ins. In the presence of my peers, my limbs and extremities became clumsy and sweaty, each finger unable to coordinate with its neighbor to reach out and show affection.

The boyfriends who came to youth group were often sullen, tall boys with baggy cargo pants and shirts silk-screened with bands whose faces were frozen in eternal screams. Some wore sweatshirts made from the material of Mexican blankets, while others had long hair that hung down over their eyes.

We were encouraged to bring our friends and boyfriends, an evangelism tactic as old as the tent meeting revivals held by our ancestors, or perhaps as old the four men who lowered their paralyzed friend to be healed by Jesus. All the same, friends and boyfriends were brought to church to hear the gospel or to play ultimate frisbee or to eat a shake made from a blended happy meal.

I often found excuses to slip away during the loud games that ended with youth group members accidentally putting their hands through windows or face planting on the cement floor. In these situations, I imagined that all eyes were on me, ready to notice the way my feet bowed out when I ran or the inevitable sweat circles under my armpits.

Sardines was the great equalizer.

We are in the dark, we are all the same, we must not make a sound. I am caught up in the energy of the game. In an era when I am most singled out and exposed, I am blissfully anonymous, another set of shadowed shoulders, a counted head as we wait for the next youth group member to join. All I needed to do was find my people, to wait and breathe, and be.

 

Riding in Cars With Myself

Some people affectionately name their cars. I vow to drive my car into the ground.

I am not impressed with color or shine or seat warmers or the increasingly techy sound systems or those commercials where silver-tongued announcers say words like “driving experience” or “performance” or “driving modes.” These are all lost on me. I’ve always said as long as it gets me around I don’t care what it looks, feels or smells like.

When I was little, my parents drove my brothers and me around in a blue ‘86 Chevy Celebrity station wagon. The paint job couldn’t hold up, and it ended up peeling and curling in long strips down the hood. I was so embarrassed by it I asked my father over and over again not drop our family off in front of the church on Sunday mornings. “Please, can you just park in the back and then we can all walk in?” I begged. My dad would give me a quizzical look and kept right on dropping us off at the door.

When I was in high school instead of being embarrassed by a car, one embarrassed me. I was at a youth group picnic when one of the new youth leaders drove up in his car. It was small and black and so shiny it blinded me in one eye as I went up to greet him and the other kids. I leaned casually against the hood. He promptly turned white as did several of the boys.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You’re leaning on my car.”

“So?” I got up and the group gave a little collective sigh of relief. One of the boys saw the shame and confusion on my face and explained to me that it was a Maserati 3200 GT, a special object costing over a year’s salary that was allowed outside for car shows only. I backed away and tried not to roll my eyes. I thanked heaven I was going away to college the next week where presumably no-one would drive a $90,000 car for me to smudge accidentally.

Without having the money to afford a nice car, I have always simply driven hand-me-down little four-doors. In college I drove two cars: one that had been abandoned so long a nest of mice had taken up residency in the engine (there was a small, unpleasant surprise for me when I had to replace the dome light), and a navy Celebrity wagon so like my parents’ car, I nicknamed it “The Blue Bastard”. Cars have alternately been a source of embarrassment and a source of indifference to me over the years.

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For the past ten years I have been driving a tiny Corolla. There’s nothing very special about it—but then there is something special about it to me. This was a car I bought at 22 and had a very long payment plan on, but I managed to pay it all myself in my twenties. It became a badge of adulthood for me. Responsibility, too.

For several years, I had a job where I would spend my lunch hour in my car. I sat in the parking lot reading books by Lauren Winner, Susan Howatch, and Rob Bell, thankful for a whole hour inside a quiet, familiar space with beloved authors.

Some of my coworkers would go to mid-day Mass, some would spend the hour shopping at the mall the next town over. But my spot was in my car. It was a place to pray in, to reflect, to take time out from hard or boring work situations. If I had a late night, I’d eat my sandwich, crank the seat down and take a nap.

Eight months ago, my husband Dan and I drove my little car from Cape Cod to Denver. I was doubtful it would make it. It’s now fourteen years old and New England winters are tough on cars, with five months of gravel and salt under the wheels every year. But we decided to put our money into repairs, rather than buy a new car just yet.

You see, I’m really attached to it.

I’ve never cared for cars because of what they stand for. Wealth or poverty. You can tell by looking at someone’s car how they live, possibly guess at their monthly payment, and judge what they value. I value my four wheel fortress of solitude. The paint is peeling so that’s a little embarrassing—the old feelings of shame well up! But I’ve reclaimed my car and cars in general because of their potential as a quiet box, a room I can take anywhere with me. I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to my car because she and I have had a lot of good moments together. It’s a bit of home that’s with me still even as everything else has changed.

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