You Can Never Be Patronized Enough

September 28, 2006

Those wacky Catholics seem to have a patron saint for everything. There are saints assigned to protect racquet makers, outbuildings, and pastry chefs. On the flip side, you can invoke the appropriate holy crusader to protect against eczema, fainting, and scurf. I’m not entirely sure what ‘scurf’ is, but I imagine it probably wears a trenchcoat and giggles evilly to itself a lot.

“I’m no Catholic, nor do I play one on TV, but if I’m in a jam, I’ll pray to anyone who’s supposed to be listening. I’m not picky about my personal saviors; I can decide who to worship after I’m dead.”

There are even two patron saints for unborn children. Though it’s not clear whether those saints are meant as protection for unborn children, or against them, so I’m staying away from that one. Maybe it’s one on either side, and they duke it out in a saint-on-saint fetal deathmatch when there’s a conception in question. That’s got ‘pay per view’ written all over it.

With all of these saintly souls keeping watch over the world, you’d think all our bases would be covered. For any event or person or issue that needs a saving, a preventing, a blessing, or just an ectoplasmic pat on the pious shoulder, you’d think there’d be a saint or two waiting around in the wings to help out.

Not so.

In fact, there are countless precarious and prickly situations out there in the world that are fully uncovered by the hovering horde of holy Catholics supposedly keeping an eye on the joint. Worse yet, some of these situations directly and adversely affect me. I’m no Catholic, nor do I play one on TV, but if I’m in a jam, I’ll pray to anyone who’s supposed to be listening. I’m not picky about my personal saviors; I can decide who to worship after I’m dead.

So, I’ve decided to help the Catholics out. Below are a few things that as far as I can tell, don’t have some sort of patron saint, but in today’s modern world could really use one. In some cases, two or three. And would it excommunicate you to throw a guardian angel at a couple of these? There’ve got to be a few thousand of those things lying around up there somewhere. Throw us a fricking bone, already.

Where’s a Patron Saint When You Need One?

Phone sex operators — These gals are doing their job, just like everybody else, right? I say they’ve earned a little help from above. Think about it — if you had to answer the questions ‘Whatcha wearin’?‘ and ‘How big’re yer boobs?‘ three hundred times a day, you’d want someone to answer your prayers, too.

Food stuck in your teeth — Surely there’s a patron saint of dentistry or personal grooming we could borrow for this one. Also, given recent events and the food most likely to show up on those choppers, maybe we need a patron saint to ward off spinach altogether. And a world full of churchy children rejoice.

Avoiding a parking ticket — Personally, I can’t ‘just run in for a minute’ anywhere without getting an envelope slapped on my windshield. I think the cops hide behind trees and mailboxes and wait for me to show up. Maybe with the power of saintly voodoo magic, I could buy a hot dog and a Juggs at the 7-11 without owing the fuzz forty bucks when I’m done.

Protection from spyware — I’m no malware expert, but I have to believe that the spirit of some obscure monk who’s been dead for six hundred years and once drove the fruit flies out of Belguim would be at least as effective against spyware as those Microsoft Windows ‘security’ patches. Maybe that’s just me.

Walk-off home runs — This is another subject that needs a ‘for’ and an ‘against’ saint. I need somebody to counteract the mojo when Joe McCatholic from Brooklyn prays for Jason Giambi to take one deep in the ninth. Or maybe we could make do with a patron saint of candy-armed head case closers. Either way.

Channel surfing — All I know is, when I get close to my favorite networks during a circuit through the channels, I’m usually muttering, ‘Please don’t be a Friends rerun; please don’t be a Friends rerun…‘. And then it’s a Friends rerun. Can I just get some pious prat to pray to, to give me a fighting chance?

Sneaking in unseen — We’d use this guy all the time. Slipping into the office late, tiptoeing into a sleeping spouse’s bed after a night out, slithering back to your dorm after curfew — is there anybody who wouldn’t use this dude? He’ll need a saintly secretary and a whole sneaking entourage to handle the load.

Drive-through accuracy — Asking the greasy kid at the window to repeat the order doesn’t help. Ordering by the meal number with no substitutions doesn’t help. Asking again at the pickup window doesn’t help. So why not enlist some dead guy with a hotline to god to slap those bitches at McDonald’s into putting the right sandwich in the right goddamned bag?! Even if it doesn’t work for the food, it’d be fun to see a good smiting. I’ll take my fry cook extra crispy, please.

(All links to actual Catholic saints are from the Patron Saints index at catholic-forum.com. Amen.)