Magic Etch A Sketch

My partner in ministry, Morris, and I were playing with my son's Etch A Sketch yesterday when...
What? What did you think we did all day? Pray? Write letters to the editor? Gamble?

Anyway, we were playing with the Etch A Sketch when I tried to rope him into a little friendly competition. I said, "Map of the United States" and passed him my squiggles.

He looked without comment, erased, and drew something of his own. My son erased it before I could check it out. (My son attends all high level clergy summits such as this.) I tried again with "Mount Rushmore" and passed it back.

Morris despaired, "Why is it that your lines are all curvy and mine are all straight?" We both laughed and he said, "Hey, is this thing some kind of personality test?!"

Morris and I get a lot of mileage out of pretending that we're opposites. It works for humor purposes. Whether Laurel and Hardy, Lucy and Ricky, or Seinfeld and Kramer, we've found that memorable duos are opposites. The Etch A Sketch confirms the appearance of our differences.

The deeper truth is that we are incredibly compatible on a variety of levels. We like a lot of the same foods, laugh at the same jokes, are puzzled by the same conundrums, and we often find ourselves responding to each other with,"I was thinking the same thing."

For humor's sake and for the sake of shared sermons Morris and I will continue to play up our differences, but as the Hardy/Lucy/Kramer half of this duo I want it on record: we BOTH play with the Etch A Sketch.