What is a prayer meeting?

I had my braces readjusted just recently and I was expecting for another week of orthodontic pain, which was normal, but has caused too much food-deprived anhedonia for me to bear long enough before I impulsively decide to remove these braces... with my bare hands (considering the fact that i have lost weight already from my last dental visit).

But thank God, there was no pain this time, which was quite odd but the hell I care as long as I am pretty much able to consume the calories and proteins I need to restore the weight I've rapidly lost a few weeks back.

So what better way to this than pig out before the pain starts to dissipate my appetite.

* * *

I was at my tita's furniture shop during lunch time just so I could leave my laptop there before heading to Robinson's. I was about to leave when Tita Lets called out my name and told me to stay in the shop for lunch, after all it was her secretary's birthday. And being the frugal person that I am, which also happened to be genetically passed on from my mom and tita's side of the family tree, so I decided to stay and type my P&S notes on one corner of the office while my tita and her 2 other church friends have their meeting on the other side.

I have been once or twice present during their prayer meetings in the past, but this recent one turned out to be very interesting that their chitchat was able to seize my attention away from what I was doing.

Along their babble session, I overheard them apprehending a certain member within their church org. They called her "P1". So little miss P1, who happened to be also single (for the past 50 years of her life) like my tita and the two other women in the table, had a one night stand with my tita's driver.

I can't believe what I am actually hearing during that moment, no, not the one night stand (because I already know my tita's driver was, uh, sort of a manwhore). They, I mean these 50 year old respectable religious women were calling P1 names like katlan, putay-putay, alpot. I can't even.

I was at a point during their conversation that I couldn't contain my guilty laughter for all too many reasons. Then, they started to talk about "P2", who was a friend of P1. And you know why they call these two women P1 and P2? Because P, according to them, stands for prostitute.

WTF WAHAHAHAHAHAHA seriously, I never thought that adults from a religious org gather for a prayer meeting just so they could bash and gossip other people. It's like the epitome of epic irony. But then again, I enjoyed their company during lunch. And my tita's friend told me, "Don't be ashamed."

My face was like O_O I was so certain that she knew or had an idea about my life outside the realms of my family's security, equating to me in reality being the opposite of what my family is expecting or describing to other people (e.g. "Ka-alam na sa iya, gakuwa Nursing sa West, buot pa dayon klase nga bata!, which no one in our decent family tree does not hold any accessible information to prove such (well, except for my sister). Of course, I also don't have any vices to anxiously beset on which further protects my faux-virgin image to my parents and relatives.

But what she meant about "don't be ashamed" was that I shouldn't be too shy about having lunch with them. For a moment there, I thought they knew about and recognized my inner bitch being and perhaps even called me degrading names stereotypical of a shamed unworthy rebel whore during in one of their so called "prayer meetings".

That was close. Or maybe, just maybe, they're already on to me. Ha, ideas of reference. But who knows, life is full of surprises and today's revelations assimilate to a number of surprises I couldn't handle in just one day.