Shut Your Beak…

Either most people don’t pray, or praying doesn’t work.

One of these assertions is a fact.

Given that everyone in America except Jen and me is a God-fearing Christian, we can assume that the former statement is erroneous.

Ergo, praying is bullshit.

I know this because I prayed once, just once in my life. I was nine or ten. I’d been an atheist since the age of seven, and I wanted to check to see if it worked.

My grandmother on my mother’s side had promised me an Atari when I came to Scotland to visit. An Atari!! Rob Smith had one, Jay Tucker had one, and despite not having one myself I was actually the school champion on Asteroids.

I wanted one so desperately I could shit.

I lay awake at night for weeks, praying desperately for the Atari to be an Atari 2600, so that I could practice saving Earth from various invaders from space, or from the dragon realm, or simply from France.

The day we got to Scotland, my grandmother made a big song-and-dance, and presented me with a Binatone machine that played Pong. And only Pong.

I was out of my mind with anger, grief, and sheer confusion that despite making a pact with God for the first time in my life, that I would pray and he would ensure the delivery of an Atari, he had backed out of the deal.

I don’t think I ever wanted anything that much again, with the possible exception of Rebecca Priestley.

But there’s another reason for my statement.

I know praying is bullshit because Christian kids get mangled in car wrecks. They get abused by perverted alcoholics. They – gasp! – become homosexuals.

Didn’t their parents pray for these things not to happen? Didn’t they sit at the dinner table and politely ask God not to let their kid contract bone disease? Didn’t they sit in church and pray for more white people in the NBA? Or were they just praying for Cheerios for breakfast?

You, dear reader, have my permission to pray whenever you want, assuming you have the time to waste. I’m sure that it assuages your guilt, or calms your mind, or whatever.

But rest assured, whether you’re praying for Arsenal to get beaten at home, or for your wife and two children not to get killed in front of your eyes by a drunk driver, as happened to an acquaintance of my fiancée, nothing in the world can prevent shit happening.

I recently calculated that I’ve flown around 200 times in my life. I’ve passed through 51 airports in the process, traveled 300,000 miles or so, and sat next to precisely one hot girl.

One.

I mean, what the bloody odds? What are the odds that three times out of ten I end up sitting by some fat guy who thinks that the armrest between is is the Maginot Line, and he’s Herman Goering? And what are the odds that a further three times out of ten, I’ll be plonked down right by someone who wants to engage you in detailed discussions about their sales job, their recent discovery of Rogaine for alopecia, or – even worse – their children?

Then you’ve got babies. Oh, have you ever got babies. Usually the infants are either directly in front of me, or directly behind me. I think that the look I give to mothers who want to be seated next to me whilst tending to a baby puts them off the seat for good. But believe me, if there’s are three people left to board the plane, and one is a stunning redhead who looks like she might enjoy a conversation about poker, and an exhausted mother trying to control her hideous offspring is the other, I know where my chips are falling.

But that one time…

I was sitting next to a simply gorgeous girl on a flight from Boston to Denver. Her name was Pamela J. Cici**ati. The slightly off-kilter spelling of her surname was memorable. And the middle initial was just classy.

Pamela was first to go. She asked an innocuous question of some sort, and on hearing my English accent she essentially melted into my arms. Gushing with unrequited longing for me, or at least any bloke with said accent, she engaged me in a conversation that meandered from jobs, to homes, to likes, to loves, to what the hell you’d do if you could do anything, right here, right now.

Then she told me that she had always wanted to join the Mile High Club.

Not being used to the directness of a successful American girl on a mission, I think I remember stuttering, covering my lap discreetly and basically trying to pass the comment off as something that girls said to me all the time.

“Oh really? I hear it’s a little cramped in there,” I volunteered idiotically.

Pamela looked at me curiously, obviously expecting a different response. In fact, I suppose, any response at all that wasn’t that.

“Haven’t you wanted to?” she replied.

At this point my memory becomes fuzzy, mainly because I have blocked the incident from my mind after this. All I remember is that whatever I said wasn’t “Yeah baby, let’s get it on, this is very much my bag”, but something like “I’m pretty sure they can arrest us for that kind of thing”.

Pamela spent much of the rest of the trip looking out of the window, and the rest of it ignoring me even more obviously. I guess she was the kind of girl that guys just don’t turn down.

I spent sleepless nights for a while after this. It’s the kind of thing that men fantasize about, and not only was it on the cards for me, but with a seriously sexy, smart, and confident woman in her mid-twenties.

Go on, say it. I’m a fucking idiot.