Annals Of Andrew, Repeat After Me

My brother Andrew and I were baptized together when I was 16 and he was 24. In order to be baptized, we had to attend a series of classes and memorize the answers to various catechism questions, questions that would be asked of us during the baptism. This posed a problem, because Andrew was never much of a memorizer. I, on the other hand, was a memorizing fool. So Andrew, being a fan of finding the easiest way through any situation, decided there was really no reason to really memorize the answers if he had Suzanne The Memorizing Machine in the pool with him. He just acquainted himself with the general wording of each answer, and was good to go. Does this ring any bells, Andrew?

Q: "What is your only comfort in life and death?"

A: "That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by His Holy Spirit He also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him."

(Of course, Andrew's real answer to that question was "That my sister is better skilled at memorizing than I and cares about the future of my soul, and as such will allow me to ride her coattails through the pearly gates without malice".)

The Sunday morning that we were baptized, as we stood in the pool together in front of the entire congregation and my father posed questions to us, Andrew just looked at me and made various "humunuh, humunuh" sounds and got every fourth or fifth word correct. Because I was a paragon of virtue, I made sure to speak slowly and clearly, giving him the best opportunity to follow along and make it into heaven with me.

Though Andrew is not skilled at memorizing, God did bless him with the gift of comedy. From the creation of a joke to the delivery and timing, Andrew is second to none. So you can be sure that if Andrew had been the one who memorized the answers and I was the one following along, our baptism ceremony would have sounded something like this:







(Andrew told me about "Garth and Kat" the other day, how much their shtick reminded him of games he and I used to play. You can tell that while the scripted gag is that the songs are unscripted, Fred Armisen is doing his best every time to trip Kristen Wiig up.)