New Belt

Guess what I’m wearing.

No, not the notorious gay underwear I accidentally (I swear) bought in two separate online debacles. A reader turned me on to Under Armour, and I am now free to donate the ambiguous lingerie to the South Beach Goodwill. Right now what I’m wearing is a new belt. THE OLD ONE IS TOO BIG.

What a chore it is, trying to find a simple brown belt. The old one is about ten years old. It’s from Abercrombie & Fitch, in the incarnation between the safari-outfitting days and the soft-porn-teen-catalog days. When I got this belt, Abercrombie & Fitch was sort of like American Eagle Outfitters, only maybe a little nicer. Today I went to Abercrombie & Fitch, and they had like three belts. I am so sick of the baggy pants fad. I guess no one wants a belt these days. Anyway, they had very few belts, and the ones they had were odd.

On top of that, as I have noted before, everyone in Miami has a giant rear end, so the overwhelming majority of the selection was size 36 and up. I finally found something acceptable at the Gap.

I also went to Old Navy for cargo shorts, but the stores are closing them out because it’s OCTOBER and the temperature may drop THREE DEGREES. They had a bunch of enormous shorts on clearance. Some guy shopping next to me told his girlfriend his size was 38, and he was about 5’5″ tall. Obesity is a real problem here, due to the frijoles and yuca and rice and plantains. And Cubans put sugar on everything. They drink malta with condensed milk in the bottom. Try it and see if you can stand it. I think pancake syrup is actually less sweet.

I located a couple of pairs of 32s, and I took them to the register, and one pair rang up for $3.48. No kidding. It turned out it had been discounted because a belt loop had come loose. I went and looked for another pair, but the only 32s were messed up in other ways, so I gave up. The clerk talked me into taking the damaged ones. It will take ten minutes to make them like new.

I always hear Christians talking about how God finds deals for them and drops free stuff in their laps. Is this an example? I don’t know. I tried my best to avoid this blessing, but I couldn’t.

I took my old belt off in the Gap, to compare the length to the new ones. I almost had a Janet Jackson/Plaxico Burress moment. Loose pants, a crowded mall, and a pocket full of loaded pistol are a bad mix. Hey, that could be a new rap hit.

Robert Morris has sermons stored up online. You can subscribe via Itunes. I made a CD for the truck. Very exciting. To me, anyway. Some have the same names as his shows, so I assume it’s the same stuff. Here is a link to the page. The Holy Spirit series is under “Who is He?”, “Is he a Person?”, “Is he Pentecostal?”, “Does he Baptize?”, “Is he Charismatic?”, and “Does he Speak in Tongues?”

Interesting thing. He points out that the Bible says Jesus is the one who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. That rang a bell with me. I had an experience in the mid-1980s in which a warm, loving presence swept over my body while I tried to sleep. I could feel it, physically. I started to doze off, and I awoke with my hands in the air, and I felt and heard energy shooting into my palms. And I felt sure the presence was Jesus. Wonder if that was the actual moment when I got the baptism. It doesn’t always require laying on of hands. Some people, it just drops on.

It’s always a great day when you have new cargo shorts. I can’t wait to put them on.