Unsettled out of Zzzzzz...

This morning I was awakened at approximately 4:30 A.M. by 'something' skittering, brushing or featherly flapping against my neck. The sensation was just vague enough that it gave me a shiver and got me up. I didn't even look for the culprit and suspect it was a small spider or maybe a moth. Either way, my imagination immediately went to something larger and much more frightening. What if it was a lizard? A Palmetto Bug? The Crypt Keeper's fingertips? A Teabagger tickling me with a flag? That last one just makes my blood run cold......

So, I got up, swigged from a bottle of water and sat down at my drawing board. There was no use trying to sleep anymore. Besides, I could get a head start on my weekly cartoon. Switching on my lamp, I blearily stared at my pencil sketch I had begun hours earlier. It was an image of a man holding his head in his hands while sitting on some steps. He looked depressed. My idea was the unfinished idea for a parody of an anti-depressant called 'Catholica' (pronounced Kath-all-eh-kah) The pill's purpose is to help Catholics who have had it with their church; may have priest abuse memories or troubled faith. The drawing was mostly complete and it needed inking.

I threw myself into it. As I drew, I wondered what it was like to grow up going to catechism, attending all those masses, maybe having a priest who didn't know boundaries and being able to choose from all those saints. My childhood was loosely based in a mixture of Methodism and the Congregational Church. There were no strict rules or steadfast doctrine my family followed. Sure, we went to church but it was an arbitrary event. We didn't say grace before meals. I certainly didn't have to eat fish on Fridays. Besides, I was allergic to it. Tuna was the only fish that didn't make my throat close shut. I guess I could have counted on a can of Starkist every Friday. just in case my parents switched to Catholicism.

We didn't have a Catholic school in my hometown so all my non-protestant friends went to public institutions with me. They didn't seem all that different except that they had to kneel at services and had weddings that were much longer and elaborate. No one I knew was abused by the local priest but who knows?

My paternal grandparents were very protestant and conservative Methodists. Neither of them had ever been in a Catholic church until my cousin Patty was married in the mid 60s. She married a Catholic guy and it horrified them at the time. It took all their courage to go to the ceremony. My cousin still laughs when she remembers my grandmother looking simultaneously freaked and amazed at the rows of Saints displayed. Grandmother Miller thought Catholics were idol worshipers who weren't really Christian. She was a really nice woman but really bigoted when it came to Catholics. Such stuff just amazes me. It was her southern upbringing, I guess.

My other grandparents were Mormon so they couldn't really say anything about anyone. How do you criticize a guy in a skyscraper hat and Prada Shoes when your original leader had multiple wives and an angel named Moroni who flew over New York state?

Either way, my background did not lead me to dislike Catholics. That is not the thrust of this latest cartoon. What I can't stand is the church's dogma and ridiculous dug in policies concerning birth control, marriage, gays, women and a whole lot of other things. There is plenty to criticize. The Catholic leadership pretty much deserves the fan of excrement that is currently being flung its way. My cartoon is but a reflection.

But getting back to whatever woke me up this morning...perhaps it was the spirit of satire forcing me up so I could get this cartoon done early and to the presses? I may never know but I am looking for spider webs before bedtime.