"The Parable of the Shower", by Leah Bobet

"The Parable of the Shower"
Leah Bobet
Lone Star Stories: June 2009

The angel of the LORD cometh upon you in the shower at the worst possible moment: one hand placed upon thy right buttock and the other bearing soap, radio blaring, humming a heathen song of sin.

Fear not! he proclaimeth from the vicinity of the shampoo caddy, and the soap falleth from thy hand.

Motherfu—thou sayest, and then thou seest the light, the wings, the blazing eyes like sunlight and starlight both at once, and since thy mother raised thee right thou coverest thy mouth with one hand and makest the sign of the cross with the other. It is the soap-hand which covereth thy mouth: thou gett'st soap in thy mouth, and spittest—away from the angel of the LORD—and do not curse again though it is terrible hard.

So begins Leah Bobet’s “The Parable of the Shower”, a story about the visitation of an angel and the task it gives to the narrator - to make her pregnant. Leah Bobet strikes just the right tone with “The Parable of the Shower”, with the incredulity and irreverence from the narrator (because really, an angel appearing the shower?).

To answer your first question – yes Bobet does use “thee”, “thou”, and “-eth” throughout the story. In any other circumstance it would be overdone and obnoxious. But, when there is constant angelic communication AND when the narrator continues to protest up the angelic chain of bureaucracy, this is a damn funny sorry. Umm...please excuse the blasphemy.

“The Parable of the Shower” is not a strict comedy, though it is quite funny (to me). There is a deadly serious aspect about how this sort of thing might go down today. This is not entirely a re-imagining of the manger story with a modern spin. Jesus already came and went and there is such a thing as the Bible. This is for the next Son of God. Maybe this is the official Second Coming, maybe not. Doesn’t matter.

It’s a delightful story.