My old man called me last night to share the most amazing true story I have most ever heard. He has been pastor at a little country Baptist church for the past seventeen years. On Wednesday nights they do not have regular preaching, but everyone separates into smaller groups and has bible classes. The children go to what is called Awana. The only thing I know about Awana is that it is a church program for kids, but I intend to go to this web site and find out more after hearing this story.

Anyway, after Pop finishes up with his class, (he teaches the adults) he is walking out into the auditorium when one of the Awana teachers walks up to him and says, “The Little Cubbies have made you a gift and would like to present it to you.” Little Cubbies is what they have named the preschool group. I think they are called this because they have a short temper if they do not get enough sleep.

Pop follows her into a classroom full of little kids and sees that they have baked cookies in the shape of small bears, or little cubbies as the case may be. The teacher says, “Brother Pat, we would like to present you with this token of our appreciation for having the best goatee of any preacher in lower Arkansas.” Or something like that. He was not real specific on the ceremony.

This is how the action unfolded. He is standing there in front of the class and he has his hands out, together and palms up, and the teacher is placing a little cubbie cookie into his hands. A youngster in the front row sees the cookie and thinks to himself, “Wait a second, that is my little cubbie cookie.” The munchkin runs squealing across the classroom as if he were shot from a connon, collides with pop, and bites onto his crotch.

Yep, no shit.

Pop dropped his cookie, grabs a double handful of toddler hair, and they have themselves a little Mexican standoff. The crotch-biter is scared to move, the old man is scared to move. As Pop put it, “Thank God he had the frank and not the beans, cause he was biting down hard!”

Finally the kid relaxes his bulldog jaws and Pop pushes him away. The teacher was crying, the classroom was bedlam, the old man had a big wet spot on the central area of his slacks, and the kid still got the cookie.