Sunday: Penguins, Loaves and Fishes

I have just concluded Sunday breakfast with a steaming cup of chamomile tea.

This is day three without coffee, and no headache yet. Since becoming ill with an upper respiratory infection Thursday, I have given up the coffee in favor of juices, chamomile and green teas, and have yet to experience any adverse effects. So far so good. Let's see how long I can last...

I always enjoy Sunday breakfast. It is the one day of the week my family is together during breakfast time. (We are often together Saturday mornings, but not always). Sunday usually means the biggest breakfast of the week, and sometimes my wife will fry bacon or sausage or cornedbeef hash and make homemade biscuits and we will eat so much that we don't want lunch until two in the afternoon.

Sunday also means Sunday paper, and I have been pleased with the return of the penguin Opus to the Sunday funnies. I was a huge fan of Opus in the 1980s, when I was in high school and college. Steve Dallas, the womanizing lush of an attorney from the 1980s comic strip "Bloom County," has appeared recently in Berkeley Breathed's "Opus" Sunday strip. Seeing attorney Steve Dallas back in action -- now graying and raising a son -- reminds me that 1985 was twenty years ago, and that I, too, am graying and raising a child.

And on Sundays I often take my child to Sunday School.

Recently, the Three-Year-Old class learned about the loaves and the fishes. In the story, Jesus is preaching to a huge crowd of people and everybody gets hungry. So a couple of fish and five loaves of bread are gathered by the disciples and Jesus then performs a miracle by feeding everyone with such a small amount of food.

The miracle did not register with my daughter, but the gathering of the loaves and fishes did:

DADDY: What did you learn about in Sunday school today?
HARPER: About Jesus.
DADDY: What did Jesus do?
HARPER: Jesus talked some kid out of his lunch.