The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Jihad Jimmy, last time any of us South End yahoos talked to him, was holding court at the Thursday AA meeting a month ago. Jimmy had kicked his drinking problem but now he had a religion problem, maybe not to him, but for the rest of the assembled abstainers, for sure. Jimmy had grabbed the first lifesaver that floated by when he was hopelessly adrift in a gin-filled sea and I suppose it could’ve been music or woodworking or yoga …. But no, Jimmy found four nicely dressed folks at his door one inebriated afternoon who asked if he’d care to discuss Scripture.

Good timing! Brenda, his long suffering wife and breadwinner the past two years, had left him the day before and in his drunken despair, Jimmy had sense enough to reach out for proferred help. Always nice to find a Sign or an Omen when you’re free-falling over the cliff of your imagination and believe me, Jimmy was expecting the Bottom.

Addiction, whether it’s alcohol or Heaven, makes True Believers of us. I’m not saying they’re equal, especially when you see Jimmy clean himself up, dust himself off and return to the world of the living. Course now J.J. is talking Rapture. Revelations. End Times. Sign of the Beast. He finds Signs everywhere now. He’s a prophet, although he never claims it. He just Sees what’s obvious, just wants to share it with us Lost Souls.

Just for once, I’d like a religion that loves THIS world. That doesn’t think the Next World is gonna be better. Maybe Jimmy’s going door-to-door with 3 other Jimmy’s, knocking on broken hearts, broken dreams, broken hopes. Maybe they’re saving lives, hell if I know….

Brenda’s doing some clerical work for Windy Rear Realty. It’s okay, she says. Twenty hours a week, not too stressful. She told me he’d stopped by her house a week ago. Wanted her to leave with him and start over. He’d changed, he said. He was sorry. He asked forgiveness before it was too late. “Too late?” she asked. “Too late for what?” “The Rapture,” he told her. “You’ll be left behind.”

Left behind?? “Jimmy,” she says to him, “that sounds exactly like heaven to me.”

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