Today was the Sunday that I agreed to come early to church to be the first one there to open up and get the church ready for the morning in the absence of Jimmy Lynn.

Now, I readily admit, it is difficult to fill the venerable shoes of TSF’s church sweetheart and beloved caretaker!  Jimmy is also the meister of miscellaneous information. He has a story or an isolated little-known tidbit on almost every topic.

When I was a kid in the 60s, there was a silly TV show called “Queen for a Day.” A sort of early reality show, it featured fairly ordinary women telling their stories, and through some criteria one was chosen to sit on this huge throne. She was crowned “queen for a day” and regaled with roses and a robe. It was ridiculous, but it was very popular. A famous TV critic has said of it, “one of the most ghastly shows ever produced … tasteless, demeaning to women, demeaning to anyone who watched it, cheap, insulting and utterly degrading to the human spirit.”  Wow!

My experience as “Jimmy Lynn for a Day” was a lot better than that. And I have some stories to tell. I often wonder why Jimmy’s stories go on and on and on about various topics. Well, it is because of how interesting his life is!

After checking out the bathrooms and only needing to add one toilet roll, I opened all the doors and turned on the hall lights. I can report that only one door was unlocked! But criminals reading this: don’t dare attempt to steal anything, even if the door is open, because our security system WILL catch you!

I moved on to bug and worm execution and elimination. By my count, we did have actually a more people at church today than we did beetles and inch worms. However, there were likely more of such behind the walls than there were people hiding in the cracks.

Here is what I observed: The worms are more numerous than the beetles out in the hallways, but in the auditorium, there are more bugs. That is clearly because of the distance that needs to be traversed … it would be something of a marathon for the worms to go that far. Also, about 55-60% of beetles were dead – clearly victims of our extermination program (or a Tim Lester sermon).

I was pleased to know that I can still outrun and outmaneuver the worms, but the bugs were more of a challenge (the living ones, I mean). If I brushed them into the pan, there was the possibility that they would run out before I could throw them outside. So, I had to, ah, well, crush them. But here is the problem with that – if I crushed them too hard, they would be smashed into the floor or ground into the tread of my shoe. So, the proper technique I discovered was to sort of pop them on the dome lightly and stun them without smashing their guts all over the floor.

So… all in all, it was an exciting experience. Who knew that the job had so many details to talk about? And what an honor! How many of you have ever been “Jimmy Lynn for a Day?”