Dear Diary,

There’s a saying that goes something like, ‘Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.’ And oh boy, can you get it. I’m a man walking in fear.

Unfortunately, this might be a situation I brought on myself. Now that my colleague Jenny is temporarily living with me after her house was destroyed by the recent floods, my house has undergone some very radical changes. One of those changes is that, for the first time ever, we have to pray before we eat and before we sleep.

The first one is easy since we do it at the table. The second one happens through the door since Jenny, as a single woman, cannot enter my bedroom. I had intended to get myself out of the bedtime prayer by saying that I usually read in bed before I sleep. This part is true but it wasn’t enough to get Jenny to leave me alone.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll give you an hour after you retire to your room, then I’ll come to your door and we can pray together.”

Frankly, I’ve only been awake for a few of those, but it still stings when she mentions me in the prayers.

“Dear Lord,” she said the other night, “thank you for rescuing your lost servant Tom from yet another moment of his perpetual weakness of the flesh. Like you inform us in your good book, fornicators like Tom will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur to face their second death.”

First of all, I don’t look forward to dying once, let alone twice. Secondly, it seems like God might actually be listening to her.

Last week, I went on a date that might have ended badly and I called to let her know where I was, just in case something happened to me. Within the chitchat, I happened to tell her to pray for me, and I think she did it all too well.

My date last night was probably the worst I’ve been on in a long time. It started even before I shook my date’s hand. We were to meet at a posh restaurant in Upper Hill. I parked my vehicle in the back and I had just turned the corner towards the front when I was attacked by a bee.

There I was, swinging my arms around, ducking my head this way and that, hopping and jumping and stumping… Do you know how crazy someone looks from a distance while fighting a bee you can’t see? Do you know how even crazier that person appears to be when you’re meeting them for the first time?

“Are… are you okay?” she asked when I got to her.

“I’m fine,” said I. “Why do you ask?”

Turns out she had spotted me right as I was rounding the corner and then, “Suddenly you broke into this crazy dance like…”

“Like a mad man?” I finished for her.

“I mean, from a distance it didn’t look that sane. You know?”

I couldn’t blame her. That wasn’t an ideal way to meet a date for the first time. Problem was, I couldn’t get that bee off my mind. I had made it through the ordeal without a sting, but I couldn’t be sure what happened to the bee after our tussle.

I was beginning to settle inside a comfort zone by the time food came to the table. Then I swear I felt it squirming somewhere inside my trousers. That’s when I got up and began jumping again, this time accompanied by very quick spontaneous stripping.

As they say, the rest is history.