Olive Oyl in the Factory

When I was a little girl I really enjoyed Popeye and Olive Oyl. There was one cartoon in particular where Olive was working in a factory and got conked in the head. She was sleepwalking around the factory with dangerous choppers and slicers and swinging things whooshing just in front of her and behind her. Popeye is hit by every single thing while trying to rescue her until he eats his spinach and breaks everything in the factory to go get her.

(What a methaphor for life! As dangerous as it looked Olive never needed any help and Popeye broke everything for no reason. As we always told the second graders, "Mind your own garden.")
I feel like Olive Oyl in the factory on a daily basis. Driving Sister Mary Fiacre for her doctor's appointments and trying to keep her from bumbling out of the car at any moment while Sister St. Aloysuis gasps at every other vehicle on the road causing me to slam on the brakes every two feet while other driver's honk and commit sins in our direction, causing Sister St. Aloysuis to gasp again...you get the picture.

We lost Sister Mary Fiacre for a full two minutes at the entrance of the clinic until the valet returned her. Apparently she had somehow gotten back in the car. Remarkable for a woman who can't walk. Eating her spinach, I guess.

And yet, I don't worry. I leave it all up to my guardian angel.

It is one of the tenets of the Catholic church that every single person has a guardian angel, even Saddam Hussein and Tom Cruise, whose angels are very embarassed for them.

Your guardian angel is there to guide and protect you. I'm not sure how that works, with free will and all. Maybe they somehow guide you so that things that aren't supposed to happen to
you don't happen. Like Olive Oyl in the factory.

Some people become so enamoured at the idea of a guardian angel that they give their angel a name. I believe Bishop Fultion Sheen called his 'Fred."

Now far be it from me to admonish Bishop Fulton Sheen, who is up for sainthood, but you can't name an angel 'Fred'.

Angels are not human. They are not dead people living in heaven who have been reassigned to earthly duty. That's "It's a Wonderful Life", not reality. Angels are some other entity all together. No sex is involved.

If you want to name your angel, give him a nice gender neutral name. (Him is gender neutral in this sentence structure. Look it up.)

Yes, I know there are famous angels with the names Michael and Rapheal. God named them. You're not God.

Whatever you name your angel, be at peace in the knowledge that you won't be flattened by a steamroller or break your leg (unless God wills it) with your angel ever vilgilant.

Unless there is another War in Heaven. This worries me constantly now, since Sister St. Aloysius pointed out to me that the angels did have a war once in heaven. There is no guarantee that war couldn't break out in heaven at any time. Then our angels might be called up, like grandmothers to Iraq.

If that happens, we may lose Sister Mary Fiacre for good one of these days.