By John Mattingly
We had a crazy Uncle Bob in our family. He wasn’t clinically crazy, he was just odd. My mom said he turned “funny” when he was born and never straightened out. He visited us at Christmas for many years when I was a kid. I actually thought Bob was pretty cool. He could rile my parents in ways I couldn’t.
One time Bob declared at the dinner table that he was coming out as an atheist. My mom, who could swordplay with the best of them in conversation, quickly informed those of us at the table that Bob wasn’t really an atheist, he just didn’t like to go to church.
To which Bob said something like, “Whaddaya you mean, I love churches,” and my mom shot back, stabbing him with her eyes, “Yeah, from the outside.”