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.