I had the pleasure of knowing my online friend "Jane" for about a year. We would talk a lot about random things on ICQ, and all was good.
I knew her father and mother were really religious and stuff, and I was perfectly fine with that. They had a little Christian company in Indiana, and her father would go all around the world preaching. Hey, that was cool with me.
So, one day, I was reading the syndicated column News of the Weird in my local newspaper, and I stumbled across an odd story, not unlike the other odd stories in that week's column. It was talking about people who claimed that God had magically given them gold teeth for being pious. At the end of the article it read "And ahead of the crowd, Dennis (it gave his last name, a unique name that I knew to be the last name of my friend, since her parents combined their two last names when they were married), from Indiana, claims that God has given him a platinum tooth."
I was dumbfounded. Surely this could not be my friend's father. People in News of the Weird are supposed to be random people you can laugh at and not feel bad about doing it. But, in my heart, I knew it had to be her father. The facts were all there.
I had a moral dilemma. What was I to do with this information? Should I keep it to myself and keep my friend in the dark about how insane her father was? Looking back, I feel that that is what I probably should have done. But I felt strangely compelled to tell her of my discovery.
So, the next time I saw her online I messaged her and asked,
"Your dad's name is Dennis right?"
She said that his name was, in fact, Dennis.
"I was reading the paper today, and I found this article that mentioned a Dennis so and so from Indiana and I thought that was your father's name."
"Oh really?? What was the article about."
I typed out the article for her. It was only a couple paragraphs.
"So, your dad has a platinum tooth?"
"Yeah, he does. He just got it a couple months ago."
Ok, surely he got it from a dentist, I thought to myself.
"Oh, so its platinum? Was that expensive?"
"What? No, didn't you read the article? He got it from God. He just woke up one morning and he had it."
Whoa, shit. She believes its from God too! What do I say to that!? What could I say to that?
"Oh ok, thats cool then."
What else could I have said? I didn't want to really question her beliefs because she was obviously very set in them already. I went on to change the subject, but later she told me that her father wanted me to send the article to him. I did. I don't know what he wanted to do with it. It was making fun of him. Oh well. I don't talk to her much anymore. |
