You see the weirdest stuff at church

I've been thinking about this post for a while now and I thought today was as good a day as any to do it since I had another weird experience at Mass today.

Some of the things I list may only make sense to Catholics, but others I'm sure will be universally understood.

• I got panhandled [no, not man handled, you smart asses] at Mass once. I was kneeling before Mass started and a guy tapped me on the shoulder and asked for money. I said "no" but then felt guilty for the next 5 or 6 seconds. Gotta hand it to the bum, though. His idea is genius.
• Oh, that reminds me. I got panhandled in the church parking lot about two weeks ago. A guy walked up to my car [this happened at St. Patrick downtown] and asked for money and I waved him away and he let go with a stream of obscenities. Not a very good modus operandi.
• This never fails. I mean never freaking fails: someone's cell phone rings during church. It's a given. It happened twice today. Why in the hell would anyone bring their phone in to church? Oh, in case God calls you? Is any phone call that important? Even if you're a professional who is on call and consciously do it, if you're cognizant of the fact that you have a phone in church, why are you not smart enough to turn it of or put it on vibrate? Idiots. It's even worse when it rings once, they silence it, and it rings again 5 minutes later. **SMACK**
• About a month ago, someone's phone rang and the priest stopped in the middle of his sentence and looked right at the guy and said "do you need to get that"? I was giddy.
• Same priest, different day: a group of Catholic school kids attending mass. Apparently one of them was making some sort of commotion. Priest stops, walks around the altar, leans over the rail and says "are you done"? I was in heaven.
• To make a good story better, I made sure to get close to the kid when he went up to receive communion. The priest was shaking his finger in the kids face. Awesome.
• Mexicans do some weird stuff. All the weird sign of the cross extras: kissing their thumbs afterwards and doing all kinds of Sammy Sosa looking junk. It's a simple and beautiful gesture. Why mess with it by adding all that extra crap? They also do all kinds of weird hand gestures. If anyone knows what this means, please clue me in.
• I actually saw a guy answer his phone during Mass once.
• Seeing people sending text message is commonplace.
• There's a Vietnamese lady that always sits behind me no matter how much I try and give her the slip. Her English is so bad that it messes me up when we pray out loud.
• Someone was banging on the front door of the church last week. I almost went out and told them to stop.
• I see the occasional bum sleeping during Mass.
• The person who leads the singing is always off the chain. If you would sing at a normal pitch or key or whatever you call it, I'll bet a lot more people would join in.
• Guitars should be banned from Catholic Mass. Protestants can keep them.
• I thought I had seen it all, from people dropping the host on the floor at communion, to bag ladies to yelling priests, but what I saw today took first prize. So I'm kneeling before Mass and a lady enters the pew in front of me with a kid and a gallon jug of water. She sets the kid down [she was probably 2 years old ~ she had teeth anyway and was a pretty good walker], and takes a big ol' pull of the water jug ~ it's an old milk jug I notice. So I go back to my prayers and the kid starts squawking [I can empathize with this having been there, done that]. I'm still praying. The kid suddenly goes quiet. I open my eyes and look to my right and what do I see? A big giant titty hanging out of her shirt with a 2 year old kid sucking on it. SHE WAS BREAST FEEDING IN CHURCH AND I SAW HER TITTY!! I immediately start thinking: is it a sin that I saw her sweater puppet in church? Why is she doing this in front of me? Couldn't she have sat in the back or something? It was like a car wreck ~ I couldn't stop staring. The funny thing was, she's sitting there drinking out of this giant water jug while breastfeeding her toddler. What a circus.