The Ultimate Distraction

The time was around 12:30 in the afternoon. We were located in the church of St. Bonosa for Sunday afternoon mass. Marie and I were across the isle from our family because there was a lack of room. We had just returned to our benches from Communion. Communion was now over. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I beheld an adorable little boy very slowly scuffling his feet up the isle toward his family in the front row. His shoes were very quiet and thus, it was odd to hear a scraping noise of plastic on the tile floor every time he tardily shuffled his cute little feet. All at once the bright orange tip of a plastic toy gun grabbed my attention. The whole barrel of the gun was now sticking of the bottom of his left pant leg with the handle still precariously lodged between his pant seam and his ankle. It made a quiet sort of raking noise as he passed by with a gleam of elated embarrassment in his sparkling innocent eyes. His eyes showed how much  he wanted to get this gun up to his pew, but how he was constantly wondering what would happen if he were caught.The church was very quiet because there was no communion hymn, but the scraping noise coming from the little boy walking very slowly up the isle persisted.

He slowly continued walking the last ten feet to his family pew. With each step, the little silver gun slid out his pant leg just a little more. By the time he got to his pew and was attempting to climb over his fathers legs, it suddenly dropped on the floor with a quiet sort of clatter. Across the pew from me was a good friend of mine. We had both witnessed this cute little rebel during this rather distracting episode and were both quite distracted as a result. But when we discovered that both of us were snickering, it certainly didn't help our situation at all. We were both on the very edge of exploding! Eventually, after quite a while, we were able to calm ourselves without causing much disruption to those around us, even though the whole scene of the ultimate distraction during Mass kept rolling around in our minds.