I had to go and watch the little boy in his first nativity play last Thursday. As a newly hardened atheist this was a fairly interesting experience. Having immersed myself in atheist literature, podcasts and watched countless movie files of lectures, debates and documentaries it was a real slap across the face to hear 70 young children singing, “Hallelujah to the Lord above” with all their hearts :-/

I had to flick my V’s at a Methodist church on the way home to make myself feel better.

One kid left the stage about halfway through with a teacher holding a box of tissues. I say “kid” in both senses of the word, as he was a boy playing a small goat (!). I didn’t really give that much thought to it, until the head teacher at the very end of the play revealed cryptically that the youngster had obviously got stage fright and had to leave. He shuffled onto the stage so he could get the chance to actually say his lines in the play. “Why would a king be born in a stable?” he sniffed, but this was after it had all finished and it just sounded stupid. How embarrassing for him; poor kid standing there in hisrubbish goat hat and white tights. I’d have preferred to get changed and just go home and excuse myself with a claim of partial amnesia or mild Ebola or something.

All in all I saw Toby for approximately 30 seconds at the very end of the performance. It was with literally about 5 minutes to go when I suddenly got a cold chill of realisation that I hadn’t actually seen him on stage or on the floor at all. I was thinking, “What if he’s been abducted? What if I’ve been standing here for 50 minutes like an idiot watching other people’s children fluff their lines and sing like castrated mice in a p*ss poor Nativity when he was actually abducted right at the very beginning and is now on a cargo freighter steaming towards North Africa?!”. Anyway, I saw him finally when he went up to take a bow for whatever it was that he did in the play. I have no idea.

Check this Jesus Christ action figure out.

Or, even better, OCD action figure!