#Ashtag

Ash Wednesday is always one of those days of the year.  You know you should go and be a good Catholic and wear the ashes but in your head you're thinking "do I really want to deal with all the questions all day?"  For the record this terrible (a. it was at the end of a day that began at 5 am and b. I'm the worst selfie taker in the world!) photo was taken 14 hours after I originally got the ashes.  So you can imagine just how huge they started out.  

When I was teaching in a Catholic school, it was always much easier because everyone around you was in the same boat.  Half the time, you forgot they were there and couldn't quite figure out why everyone at the grocery store was looking at you like you'd just landed on Mars.  Plus, when working with kids on Ash Wednesday, you had the added bonus of the parents forgetting it was that time of year again.  At least half of them would come to pick up their little angels, and upon seeing the black smudge, rub it off and scold them for playing too hard, only to get yelled at by the little angels.  This in turn, I'm sure, made them feel guilty and also filled up the church for the evening mass.  

Now that I'm not surrounded by the Catholics all day, I'm forced to deal with the questions.  My favorite being the first one I received when I walked in to work this morning at 7:45: "Do you know you have something on your forehead?"  Really!?  This can't be a new thing.  We Catholics have been around for thousands of years, surely you've seen ashes at some point in the last 30 or so.  Others included "Where to the ashes come from?" (fairly logical so I'll let it slide), "When can you take them off?" (the follow up for that one after I told her I would wash them off in the shower was : "Oh you can do that?)  I was half way tempted to say "No not really, but I figured I'd stink a bit if I refrained from washing my face for the next 40 days." (Maybe I should give up being snarky for Lent...)

Long story short, for someone that likes to fade into the background, walking around with a dirty forehead is not really my cup of tea.  But I suppose I've gotten a bit used to it.  Anyway, it's just one day in the whole 40.  It's not like the whole no meat on Fridays during Lent thing, that just really stinks!