Godfrey Bless You

~
In the beginning, there was only Godfrey.

It was not good. That was all there ever was. It might have been all there ever would be. It if hadn't been for the argument He'd had with his imaginary friends, that was the way it would have remained.
....Every Friday night Godfrey would invite them over for a game of "Hold 'em." (Texas, or any place, for that matter, were not invented yet.) Godfrey studied His hand, a pair of step ladders (AA) and glanced around the table at Buddha, Mohammad, and Dollar. Each of them waited for the others to open. But they never did open. The name of the game was "Hold 'em," and that's what they did. That's what they did every Friday!
....Mohammad said, "I think I'll go home and make a mountain." He threw down his cards and stood up to leave.
...."If you make a mountain," replied Godfrey, "I'll move it."
....Mohammad thought for a moment before countering, "Then I'll make a mountain You can't move!"
...."There is no mountain that I cannot move!" Godfrey shouted.
....Buddha, who referred to himself as the Enlightened One spoke, "Ah, but can You make a mountain that You cannot move?"
...."Of course I can," Godfrey answered Godily. He pondered for a moment before continuing, "Hey wait a minute, Bellyman, that's a trick question!"
....Dollar decided to chime in, "I'd bet the house He could!" He paused for a but a moment, "Well, I'd bet the house if You had gotten off Your keester and invented one." Dollar always said that someday He would be worshipped above all things.
....Godfrey knew what They were up to. They were trying to corner Him into a no-win debate. If He were to build a mountain that He Himself couldn't move, then His epithet of All-Powerful and omnipotent would be called into question. Then again, if He moved the mountain, the validity of His engineering degree would be suspect. If His knowledge was challenged, They would scoff at His omniscience. Perish the thought that He would allow Mohammad to build a mountain He couldn't move. Before long They would be challenging His right to sit at the head of the table.
....So it came to be, He ordered them to go away. It was His chair. It was His card game. "There will be no others before Me!" And so it came to pass. He glanced at the remaining hors d'oeuvres, which consisted of a twenty-three bean salad, enchiladas, and broccoli hearts. He wasn't hungry, but it would be a shame to let it all go to waste. He knew He would regret it because of His constitution, but He cleaned the plates anyway. He washed it all down with a keg of beer. He made a note that He would have to make cold beer the next time. The room temperature stuff tasted like panther piss. For the time being, he would be the only one who knew what that tasted like.

....And so it came to pass - the massive release of gases and food stuff flew off into space. Quite by accident the raw materials and gases began to gather and congeal even as they spread across the soon-to-be-named Universe. Fascinated by the processes happening before Him, He struck a match to better see the most distant objects. Inexorably some of the larger objects that had retained some of the gases, ignited to become brilliant lights and sources of heat. The lifeforms there would write in their in books that He'd declared, "Let there be light." He would lament, "I wish I'd said that."
....Many aeons later, Godfrey would chuckle that the best minds of the times would come up with the Big Bang Theory of creation. Just how close their postulations were, they would never know. While listening in one time, He thought that maybe they'd figured it out when He heard someone say, "Holy Shit!"
....He became very interested in the life that had developed and evolved on the myriad of planets. He thought to Himself one day, "I invented the very first Sims Game." Of course, He thought of everything first. Because of His love for a good beer, He planted the idea for a drinking establishment in one enterprising man's head. The result was Babel's Bar & Grill. Night after night the patrons would drink themselves into legless stupors. Because of their slurred speech, they couldn't understand what the others were saying. One man thought he heard somebody say, "Go west young man." And so he did. It wasn't long before others were dispersed throughout the world. Ever since, the different regions and the peoples developed their own languages. While Babel's Bar & Grill not long after closed down, drinking establishments would appear where ever people settled. It was the birth of Hooters.

Probably because of their inebriated states and difficulty speaking, Godfrey noticed that the people began to use nick names and abbreviations a lot. Curiously, they shortened His name to just plain God. They gave Him different names all over the world. He was especially fond of "Big Ernie." In time they forgot His full name altogether. As such when someone sneezes, because of that nickname, you never hear "Godfrey Bless You!"

Amen.

No.427