Fanatacism

I stopped at Beyond Bread for supper tonight to quiet my grumbling tummy on the way home. (Yeah, and because I haven't stopped at the grocery store in a week-and-a-half. I will be so glad when I'm finished with all the Pi Phi beginning of year stuff and the second round of TCA press releases. I want some time to grocery shop and clean my house and sew and I can't find it! Oops, got sidetracked.)

I was sitting quietly with my Sudoku book, living vicariously through the three-generation family next to me, melting each time the little girl, around fifteen months, smiled and waved at me. Missing my babies. Then I noticed a large group massed at a table across from me.

They were all nicely dressed, smiling, happy, immersed in conversations among themselves, a laptop or two perched in the center of the table. I watched them surreptitiously for a while, trying to pin a label on them. First I thought, "Realtors." Then I thought, no, there are too many of them and they're too happy. They must be "Christians." They must be from that cockeyed Cool Church or one of the megachurches or something. But there was no praying going on. So I kept watching and after a little while more I noticed an orange box on the table.

It had distinctive letters on the side and I immediately thought, "software." Geek that I am, of course I'd think a cool box on a table was software. I went back to my puzzle, and more people came in to join the group, many bringing others with them, all of whom were introduced around the table.

And the more I sat there not watching them, the more I remembered a thousand years ago when Terry decided he was going to quit his doctoral program and sell Amway full time. And there I was with two little boys, trying to keep the family afloat on my small salary as a ballet accompanist at TCU, trying to be a good little wife and not scream, "Are you out of your freaking mind?"

When I got home from supper, I did some Googling and learned it is, indeed, multilevel marketing of a food supplement.

That's the thing about fanatics. They just need something to be fanatical about. Doesn't matter what it is, so long as it gives them something to believe in.