Yesterday was Talk Like a Pirate Day and so I did And got much of my coworkers in on it. If you have an iPhone, you, too can take a picture like this:

Anyway, the guy who took this picture of me and I started talking about FSMism and how great it was! He’s getting an FSM Jesus fish as well as a Yoda head fish for his car, when he gets a new one. I was actually surprised, given that I was in the company of geeks, that more people didn’t know it was Talk Like a Pirate Day. Then we started extolling the virtues of FSMism to our boss, who’d never heard of it (?!). We explained that pirates are holy (because they prevent global warming) and so are midgets, which I’d forgotten, and thought he said “ninjas”, so I told him ninjas were cooler & that I was having concerns about this since I’ve been inducted into Pirates v. Ninjas on Facebook as a pirate, but that I’d rather be a ninja.

“Think about it,” he wisely said, “How many ninja-like acts have you performed in the last, oh, let’s say six months? Now. How many acts of Piracy have you performed?”

I invoked the fifth & he laughed.

This is all background, however, to the conversation I had with the coworker who drew a pirate for my name tag: she has a necklace similar to another of our coworkers, so I asked her the significance. The other coworker, it seems, likes the look of them & made them both. This one, however, was specially made since, “Well, I’m religious.” She then explained that she has a St. Christopher medal & some crosses that she wears under her shirt all the time. This necklace has Jesus, Mary the Immaculate, and an angel.

It was her tone that really got me. She said it rather embarassedly, and slightly apologetically. I don’t know that this would have been the case if we’d not been poking indirect fun with all our talk of FSMism, but it struck me. I’ve been the only atheist in a crowd of religious, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been on the other side. Maybe some day all religious will admit to it only grudginly, if pressed about an article of clothing or jewelry. I’d like to think that’s possible.