One Sunday morning an elderly woman walked into a local country church. The friendly usher greeted her at the door, “Good morning, ma’am. Where would you like to sit?”
“The front row, please,” she replied.
The usher said, “You don’t want to do that. We have a visiting preacher today who is really boring.”
The woman[,] bristling at the comment, asked, “Do you know who I am?”
The usher said, “No, ma’am, who are you?”
She replied “I am the preacher’s mother!”
The usher asked, “Do you know who I am?”
She said, “No.”
He said, “Good.”
–William J. Carl III, The Lord’s Prayer Today (Westminister: John Knox Press, 2006), p.85
Oops.
We have a saying around here, which is pretty ingrained culturally in what is essentially still a small community with a lot of inter-marriages:
“Never say anything bad about anyone because you might find out you are talking to their cousin.”