The next morning Noah slept in, and deservedly so, but it was cut short due to another cameo appearance by the my old man who was intent to see how his little animal pep talk turned out and how well Noah did in the collection of animals. It was the trumpeted crescendo of Pops dissension to Noah’s front door that got Noah’s eyes to open. God noticed that there was an overwhelming lack of grazing critters around the house and know very well by the fresh wood smell of the boat that there were no animals aboard.
It was on the second barrage of ill-tempered door knocks that a very relaxed and perma-grinned Noah opened the front door. The big guy was taken back by this, because when the Lord Almighty beats on your door, twice, you better have the fear of his wrath in your eyes. Having Noah answer the door at his own leisure with a small grin on his face, and with eyes filled with utter satisfaction was a whole new experience.
“Hey God, beautiful morning don’t you think.”
“Noah, where are the animals?”
“You want some coffee? I had a bit of a late night and I’m sorry but your glory really isn’t doing it for me this morning, I’m going to go put a pot on.”
I can honestly say that in all of my years on this planet, I have never heard a line so brilliant that it left the great one completely speechless, “…and I’m sorry but your glory really isn’t doing it for me this morning…” I laughed till I cried. Pop’s just stood in the doorway as Noah walked back into the house to make some coffee.
Once the initial shock wore off and dad had decided he should probably get mad about the whole “glory” incident, Noah came out of the house with two cups of coffee and handed one to the Lord. He sat down in a chair on the front porch and invited the great one to sit in the vacant chair next to him.
It has been said that the old man won’t let anything tough his ass but silk or gold but I’ll be damned if he didn’t look down at Noah sitting in an old dirty, sand-worn wooden chair, with his feet up, smiling while sipping his coffee and plop right down next to him. There’s something very relaxing about watching a relaxed earthlings. Pops got caught up in the moment and actually sat quietly for a few minutes sipping coffee and taking deep breaths of mid morning air.
It was only when Noah pointed at a goat in the tied next to the house and asked if the Lord wanted any cream in his coffee that this moment of bliss came to a thundering halt. Quite literally I mean, the storm clouds were forming as Pops began to fume. Then began the animal discussion.
“Where are the animals Noah?”
“Well I have a lama right over there.”
“Where are ALL the animals NOAH?”
“Out there, enjoying life and freedom.”
“Did I send you to get 2 of every animal?”
“Well yeah, but…”
“Where are they?”
“The thing is Lord, that I tied, and no offense but animals deserve to be free, not locked in a cage or stuck on a boat. They are apart of nature and belong there.”
“But I COMMANDED you to…”
“Yeah I was thinking about that too and well…”
“YOU WILL NOT INTERRUPT THE LORD AGAIN!”
“How come a majority of everything you say begins with you will not?”
“YOU WILL NOT TELL ME WHAT I SAY! I’m the god here! You do what I say! YOU will NOT argue with me!”
“You know you really need to get over your little deity ego thing and calm down.”
“DEITY EGO?”
Pops was so pissed that he threw his cup of coffee at the ground. As the mug shattered Charlotte rounded the corner with her arms filled with groceries. Noah had actually been polite enough to use one of their best dishes for God’s coffee and seeing it be purposefully destroyed before her very eyes set her off.
This was actually a blessing in disguise because had my old man and Noah kept up their conversation at its present pace there was a very good chance that someone was going to get killed in the next three sentences, and since the old man is immortal I’ll give you three guesses who the dead one was going to be.
“Alright Mister, just what the HELL do you think you are DOING?”
Both God and Noah looked toward Charlotte a little startled. Pop’s was startled because he was caught being very un-god-like. Noah was surprised because it looked like she might actually be taking his side on something.
“I…err…well…”
“Do you treat your own home this way?”
“Umm…well no.”
“So because you are the LORD ALMIGHTY you think its ok to treat others home like this?”
“I didn’t mean…it’s not that…no Ma’am I don’t.”
“You’re damn right you don’t, not you calm down right now or I think the conversation you are having with my husband is over, do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“And you ARE playing for that cup.”
“Oh! Of…of course! I’ll get you a whole new set. I’m really very sorry. Really! I’ll behave ma’am I promise.”
Charlotte then walked into the house, stopped, turned around and said to Noah, “And you, wipe that damn smirk off your face.” She then turned around and walked into the house and out of site.
A much more cautious and polite God began the conversation with Noah again.
“Would you please tell me what happened to the animal collecting?”
“Sure.”
Noah was still smirking.
“I was doing quite well the first four days, but then something occurred to me, animals eat and shit a lot.” Noah did feel it was best to dismiss the fact that he was a touch inebriated when he came up with this.
“And to be honest, we did not plan for animal food or waste storage.”
Dad was quiet for a little while. He was hoping that Noah would take it as a sign to keep talking instead of a contemplative moment of, “Oops, someone screwed up.” So Noah kept going.
“Then it came to me that animals are instinctual and will naturally get to higher ground, and even if they didn’t you could always make new ones, since it only took you a day or two to make them in the first place. And to be quite honest, even though I’m a vegetarian, my wife and kids love meat. And even though we would have provisions for the flood, if they had some live animals near by I can promise a majority of the pairs I took on the boat would leave the ship as singles.”
Pops was actual actually impressed because Noah did have some very good points.
Noah went on, “I mean the creating thing might have a few problems with it since I remember something in Adam’s journal about your day being equal to around 1000 of our days, or was it years? Anyway, I figured that it took that long to create all of the animals, but remaking the few of them that did not survive the flood, well that would only take a few days.
“I see your point Noah. You better get your family to start moving your goods to the boat, you only have a few more days before its going to start raining.”
Noah was a little dumbfounded, he could not believe that God actually bought all that rubbish, but he sure wasn’t going to argue. When Noah told me about it I was a little surprised myself at the ease of Pops acceptance to Noah’s rational for not doing what was asked of him. I later discovered the true reason Pops gave in so easily.
Sven, one of the fallen masses who came with me to this planet, had been spending a lot of time with Aphrodite and her followers. This was mainly for aesthetic reasons, but they were a loving group and very accepting of others, and Sven enjoyed the company. Anyway, it was two days after the flood actually started that Sven met up with me and told me what Aphrodite had said about the old man at one of her naked and drunken afternoon gatherings. Apparently the old mans flood plan was running way behind schedule and all of the other gods were starting to give him a lot of guff about it.
The one reoccurring chink in the great ones armor is the fact that He is incorrigibly vain. Having others question or poke fun at His mistakes is something He does not handle very well. It seems that the week before, Pops told His drinking buddies Zeus, Ra, and Dharma that, “…Thursday next week is it. The flood is coming whether that damn hippy is ready or not.”
Another part of the problem was that Pops made the mistake of having Noah attempt prophesizing, which wasn’t really prophesizing as more just telling the truth. People kept asking Noah why he was building a big boat in the middle of the desert. Noah had decided that the best thing to do was to just tell the truth. He figured that if God caught wind that he was lying about the purpose of the boat and the existence of God then boat or not, God would become bothered enough by it that He would be looking for a new person to drive the boat because Noah would be a pile of smoldering ash. This resulted in a huge surge of deity directed ridicule form the very people Pops created. This only confirmed to the old man that He was right and that killing everyone and starting over was the correct decision.
Pops did know that He couldn’t start over completely, all the other gods would be too far ahead of Him as far as their evolution and technology. So if He wiped out everyone one but a few families that could start reproducing then the flood would be enough of a reminder to keep the parents faithful and they would make sure their off spring would be faithful. To him it seemed like a good plan. Yes, this does mean that there was more than just Noah’s family that survived the flood. The story of Noah just happened to be the one that was written down first and had dibs when it came to making it into the bible.
Finally, Pops has this planner and scheduler personality trait about Him and get incredibly anal about it. It annoys Him when someone’s personal schedule gets in the way or is in competition with His schedule. You would think that He would have taken a cue from the other gods at this point and stopped scheduling things, but He didn’t. And because His earthlings were building and collecting on their own time and not His time, He was a continually growing more and more impatient. You would thing that if 1000 of our years equaled 1 of Gods years then He would be incredibly patient, but He’s not. Just between you and me though, I think it’s because Pops has a really short attention span and if things don’t get done right away He looses interest. So because He was already running behind schedule and because He knew Noah had gotten some the night before and it had been almost 500 earth years since He had gotten any, well, by god, it was time to kill some people and make things wet.
I swear, my dad is such a drama queen, but… well, yeah that pretty much sums it up. So all those things included, this is why He so readily agreed with Noah and his reasoning for not collecting the animals. That and He didn’t want Charlotte to come back outside and yell at Him again.
Pops told Noah he better get the boat loaded because it was going to start raining that afternoon and wasn’t going to stop until He wanted it too.
“Um… don’t you think you better have a set amount of time? I mean I only collected enough food for everyone to survive for about 37 days, and we will need to eat after the flood too.”
“Fine! Go to the store and get some more food for at least another 30 days and I’ll start the storm after you have supper. Oh, and make sure you packed your fishing supplies.”
This was the only time Noah actually smiled of his own free accord since this whole flooding event was placed on his shoulders. He had never put together that the upcoming flood and his big ass boat equated to a minimum 2-month fishing trip. It suddenly appeared to Noah that he was getting one of the greatest rewards for going through this “boat from hell” project from God. Noah just sat there looking up at his creator with the most sincere smile Pops had ever received or would ever receive from Noah again. Then in a genuine and appreciative tone Noah said, “Thank you Lord, I will.”
Noah got up, shook Dad’s hand and walked into the house to get packed. He had a fishing trip to get ready for. Pops took this as His time to leave. He was tired and just wanted the “damn flood” (as He began to call it and still refers to it to this day) to be over and done with. Even as He was heading back home and He heard Noah say, “Kids get packed, we’re going on a fishing trip…” He chose to ignore it. It was going to start raining tonight, and that was all that really mattered. The trumpets played in muted crescendo as the Pops headed up into the heavens. He wasn’t going to say anything, but had a bugger of a headache and wanted a little time to lie down before He got the storm underway.
