The Most Stupid Idiot

     Today I sold my birthright for a bowl of lentil soup.
     We went to the service at the Berliner Dome this morning--gorgeous church, awesome organist--and sat in the "international visitors" pews with headsets so we could hear an English translation. At the beginning of the service, the translator was doing pretty well, and though some things got a little jumbled, we got the gist of it. Then two little boys were baptized, which was kind of fun to see--apparently German babies don't cry when dowsed with water--and the translator struggled a little, saying at one point, "I'm not completely sure what this baptismal verse means..." But it was the sermon that was the fun part. The guest biblical scholar speaking this morning focused on a story I don't remember from Catholic Bible School about a guy named Esau. According to the speaker, as interpreted by the translator, Esau was "the most stupid idiot to be talked about in the Bible." He was "just very stupid" and "so stupid." This "extremely stupid man" sold his birthright to his brother for..."a plate of lentil soup." Why I do not know, because that was simply lost in translation. What I got was that Esau was very stupid. And lentils will be the death of you. Mysteriously served on a plate, it was made clear over and over again, "don't sell your life for lentil soup!" It got to the point where we giggled every time the translator said either "lentil soup" or "stupid" because they were repeated so frequently. It made the rest of the long and rather confusing service totally worth listening to.
     After the service, we made our way across town to a flea market right where no-man's-land between the Berlin Wall and security barriers were 25 years ago. We wandered back and forth between vendors of waffles (awesome with Nuttella), jewelry stalls, and antique vendors, pulling our scarves over our noses and jamming our hands in our pockets to stave off the bitter wind swirling around us (snow soon, please?). And what should I see but a stand where a man is selling soup. Want to know what kind? Lentil. I saw my future flash before my eyes. We'd been joking about lentils for hours now, so of course, nothing sounded tastier. I looked back at Eric and Caleb for one last glance before I ran, in proper slow-motion with my 3 Euro to sell my soul for all eternity. Steam from the pot of the orange Turkish concoction wafted through the air as the vendor ladled my liquid doom into a paper bowl, me greedily grabbing the complimentary bread before raising up my hands for the most delicious, costly soup of my life....
     I regret nothing. Long live the stupidest idiots.