The Protestant

The first Protestant I ever met was a silvery gentleman sitting at a table at my uncle’s wedding reception, in New York City, when I was eight years old. This was 1964. I had been the ring bearer at the wedding, and that had been a tense moment during which I clutched the ring so tightly in my palm that my dad, the best man, had to peel my fingers off it one by one as everyone in the church laughed. And then I had been forced by my mother to waltz with one of the demure flower girls at the reception, during which I thought I would die of embarrassment. So I was already rattled when I was introduced, by my dad, to the Protestant.

The Protestant was sitting alone at a table in the far corner of the reception, near the dessert table, and while now I suppose he was sitting alone because everyone else at his table was dancing or standing outside smoking and talking about the Mets, at that time I assumed he was alone because he was Protestant and no one would sit with him, probably because they didn’t speak Protestant.

I had never met a Protestant before, and while I knew they existed, and why they broke away from Our Holy Mother the Church (the Anglicans had to leave because King Henry of England wanted to commit adultery, and the Methodists had to leave because John Wesley made them, and Lutherans had to leave because Martin Luther ruined a church door, and the Presbyterians were Scottish and didn’t like anyone telling them what to do), I had never actually met one, so this was a fraught moment, made all the more so because it was my own dad who led me over to him and, talking as easy and friendly as you would to a regular person, introduced us.