5/9/2007
And so we have Mr and Mrs Molloy! The wedding dinner was awesome. The food was good, the speeches were touching, the venue was charming and the romance quotient was high. Besides, any wedding that blares 'Sound Of Da Police' over its confused guests earns top marks in my book.

It was also my first, well, proper exposure to Catholic Mass. 'Proper', cos the last time I attended Mass was way back when I was nine or ten as part of a Moral Education lesson in 'understanding the religions of Malaysia' where I kneeled on the kneeling benches and recited the pledge of allegiance cos I wasn't sure what to pray for. Look, at least I didn't wash my face or rinse my mouth in the holy water basin like how some of my other classmates did.

So as you may guess by now, I'm not Catholic and neither am I well-informed about prayer rites, so I was rather anxious about doing everything mentioned in the booklet given out at the Wedding Mass properly, lest I be singled out as the lone dumbass in the entire congregation.

I sat beside Dominique, a friend of Michelle's, who was thankfully Catholic so I sort of took cues from her. All was going well, and soon we came to the part in Mass where we were supposed to offer a sign of peace to the person next to us. Alright – kneeling, sitting, standing – everything else had been pretty straightforward thus far and didn't require any form of interaction. But offer a sign of peace? What am I supposed to do? The booklet says to either offer a greeting or a handshake. At the risk of exposing my idiocy by saying something totally irrelevant, I was left with only the handshake option. That should be safe enough. But who was I supposed to shake hands with? The person to my left? Or right? Everyone within a 50 metre radius?

While all those things were running through my head I finally hear the priest instructing the congregation to offer each other a sign of peace. This is it! All systems go! Lasers on kill! With the imagery of me executing the perfect handshake constantly repeating itself in my head, I turned to Dominique.

But of course, things never go the way you want them to.

Before my brain could even generate the nerve impulse to extend my hand, Dominique turned to me, smiled and said, "Peace be with you."

OH NOES!!! That completely threw me off balance and wrecked my train of thought! What was I supposed to say in return?! I couldn't proceed with shaking her hand now could I, that'd be too awkward. And I certainly couldn't turn away without doing anything. Think Benny, think!!

So I smiled and said, "Hi."

Realising my astronomical inanity, I turned away quickly, focussed hard on the altar ahead of me and offered a silent prayer (now I'm praying) that she didn't hear what I said. Ok ok, relax. It was kinda under my breath anyway so I should be safe right? Right? But why didn't I just repeat her greeting back to her? Ughh. I kicked myself and clenched my teeth in embarrassment.

I have my Morals teacher to blame for this.