Monday 7 November 2005

Pic of the day: And I am such a sinful boy. OK, I may be too old to be a boy, but you wouldn't believe it from what I did today.

Sims and sins

I bought the game Sims2 for the Nintendo DS, even though I don't have time to play it. But I felt like doing something bad, because I was irritated. Buying a computer game in November felt suitably sinful.

The reason for my anger was that I was going to the bank to take out some cash to get my hair cut. The small old-fashioned barber shop where I go don't take cards, but they are cheap and they don't try anything fancy. So I went to the bank and lined up to withdraw some money from their ATM (minibank as we fittingly call them here). There were two of these. One of them lets you also deposit, while the other is only for withdrawal. Both of them were occupied.

At the more complex ATM was a middle-aged woman doing some lenghty transaction. I am pretty sure she was trying to deposit some money. This is possible, but probably not easy the first time. So I had patience with her. I went to wait at the other automaton. There was just one man in front of me. It was an elderly man, but still walking without a stick. I should have taken a hint when I noticed that his trousers were half again as large as the man. I've shrunk out of some trousers myself lately (although this seems to have stopped finally) but never on such a scale. Anyway, I just noticed it and did not make the connection. So I just waited for him to finish. And waited. And waited.

There is something I only read this summer, when I researched weight loss a bit more thoroughly than before. One study showed that persistent and unplanned weight loss was one of the earliest symtoms of Alzheimer's. (That's the neurodegenerative disease that causes elderly people to forget more and more until they lose all semblance of human mind and die horribly years later. It is very common.)

If I had kept enough brain cells myself to draw the connection, I would have just left. Instead I waited patiently while the man entered into a staring contest with the machine. By the time he lost and started to slowly scan the locale (while still blocking the ATM), so much of my lunch break was gone that I just had to go. I decided to punish God for blocking my ATM with an old geezer, so I did something I knew God wouldn't like, namely buying another computer game I don't have time to play.

Only when I came home did I realize that I had actually accused and judged an innocent person in my heart, finding him guilty even though he could clearly not help himself. Jesus tells us a story about one man who had borrowed a lot of money, but when he couldn't pay up, the creditor had pity on him and forgave it all. Later the same man found an acquaintance who owed him some small change, and told him to cough up the dough. His friend didn't have any cash on him, and the guy went rabit and leaped for the throat. I am like that man. If you behave like that, said Jesus to his disciples, God won't forgive you either. I realized that I was on the express route to hell and eternal damnation.

I was shocked and deeply disturbed that I hadn't realized this right away. What if I had died in the meantime and gone straight to hell? I repented straight away and want to never do it again.

Kept the game, though.