How the Chick was Hatched

I am not the original pastor's chick. It was a name that I had dubbed another pastor's wife when my husband and I were at a Labor Day Retreat in Nowhere, North Carolina. Hubby and I shared a cabin with his sister, her husband, and another couple from Texas. I will call them Pastor and Mrs. Cowboy. They were fabulous and we all got along tremendously.

Anyway, there were cabins sprinkled all over this campsite, and if you wanted everyone to know your every belch, fart, giggle, and sigh, all you had to do was tune out the sound of crickets, mosquitoes, and the mouse in the bathroom eating all of the toilet paper, and you usually got a pretty good chuckle. Hey, it was like summer camp. I never went to summer camp. I'm allowed a little regression.

One morning I had to run to our car to get something and I happened to overhear a conversation in the cabin next door. Most of the pastor's in our area had very young children with varying degrees of experience in the bathroom.

Pastor's Wife: Jacob, I reallllly need you to cooperate with me. You have
to go potty for mommy.

Jacob: No. I don't have to.

Pastor's Wife: Jacob, last time you said that you had an accident. You don't want
to have an accident do you? Come on...

By this time Jacob's voice had turned into a whine and the poor mother was getting more and more exasperated. Finally, I heard Jacob kicking the floorboards of the cabin and saying, "No, I don't have to potty and YOU REALLY ARE UPSETTING ME RIGHT NOW." For a two year old to sound so adult struck me as hilarious and I laughed all the way into our cabin. Mrs. Cowboy asked me, "What's so funny?" I replied, "Oh, some pastor's chick is having problems getting her kid to go the bathroom."

"Did you just call a pastor's wife a chick?"

"Yes. She's a chick. She's young. I'm a chick; I'm young. So?"

"Don't you know her name?"

"I did once, but I've forgotten it."

"Well, what am I?"

"As far as I'm concerned, you're a chick too."


Once everyone realized that me calling a pastor's wife, the beloved of a reverend, a chick was due to my forgetfulness and terrible ability to recall names, and not because I wanted to dabble in pseudo-blasphemy, we all kissed and hugged and sang Kum-bye-yah.

I never figured out who the anonymous pastor's wife was in that cabin, but she won my respect for her abilities in the area of potty wrangling. I don't know if I won any respect from my roommates, because by the end of the weekend they had me dubbed pastor's chick. I know one of my friends, (Hi, Mel!), hates the word chick. She thinks it is anti-woman. She knows me though, and part of our great friendship is her ability to see past my moniker and my ability to forgive her for once going to speed-dating.