Hell on a technicality and heaven in a handbasket

A few months ago I wrote this piece...I'm not sure exactly what you'd call it. It's kind of a poem, kind of a monologue.

The hell on a technicality idea is about a sort of fear that's associated with a strict Calvinist theology, and kind of being afraid that something you did wrong in the past and forgot about and thus neglected to confess to God proves that you are actually not elect, not regenerate. (I'll note that I am at odds with strict Calvanism because I think there are better interpretations of Scripture that don't produce this fear that I don't believe would come from the God whose perfect love casts out all fear.)

The heaven in a handbasket idea is a similar thought but in the opposite sense--it's kind of like you're trying to assemble your own little basket of heaven and you sort of fear that you're forgetting about something good and that your basket is never going to be perfect unless you have every little tiny thing. It's an idea that I encountered as I was cleaning out my bedroom at home this last summer in the anticipation that I may never live there again (depending on what I do after I graduate), and mulling over what was worth keeping.

Well, here it is:

Hell on a technicality and heaven in a handbasket. The basket was woven by your mother, you asked whether it would make it down the river and said it was the same kind that carried Moses down the Nile.

Your basket is full of random stuff, the random stuff in your room that’s still there, sitting on the floor smiling at you like a stupid kid who thinks you promised you would play. Still sitting there, drooling, maybe just rescued from a corner or from underneath a stack of magazines as you go through the process of cleaning out your childhood room for the last time like you’re preparing for your own death. You must put everything in the handbasket. Heaven forbid something escapes the handbasket.

Hell on a technicality came in the 8^th inning of the softball game on that field you walked by that one time when you were twelve years old, tucked between your town’s tiny little power plant and a secluded pond but plain as day on a map so you’ve got no excuses. The ump called a balk but the batter still swung so they needed a sacrifice and you were the only one riding the pine. Actually, you weren’t there, but someone wrote your name on the lineup card, someone who had a crush on you in preschool who you didn’t share your candy bar with that one time has been writing your name on that lineup card for years, it’s always been in the back of your mind, kind of like that assignment you did in 9^th grade and you know you got away with cheating but you thought things like that just come out in the wash. Well sometimes they don’t and sometimes people remember and so they write your name down on a lineup card and you get hell on a technicality.

Heaven in a handbasket is simple for babies because they don’t need to take anything with them. But some people think if they go before their time they get hell on a technicality anyway so I don’t get how it works.

Heaven in a handbasket is something like a nomadic discipline and a suburban heritage, or anti-heritage, depending on how you look at it, the people who live in giant houses in the hills don’t know what it is. Oh, all the days you went looking for your Easter basket on those spring Sunday mornings, how you thought behind the curtains was such a difficult hiding spot, how upon finding it you rifled through each absurdly-shaped sweet snack and plush toy and pack of trading cards until they were scattered around the living room floor with thin plastic grass strewn about all of it, like someone had ripped apart a box of green cassette tapes—but no one ever told you you’d have to wind those tapes back up and play them back and that you’d be responsible for remembering exactly what had been lost in each place that the recording no longer played back clearly, that you’d have to load up the basket again at the start of autumn and the things you’d want to put in it you’d have to look much harder for than peeking in some gimme spot by the window and your mom won’t be giving you hot and cold signals, but that you’d had to find those things if you didn’t want to forget to bring the right book to study for the quiz and get the answer wrong and get hell on a technicality.

Hell on a technicality isn’t a police officer wrangling you down or a screech on the brakes, it’s not a straightforward scream in the face or a can of mace; it’s a letter in that P.O. box you forgot you even had from that city you visited that one time, or a phone call from someone you’ve never met asking when you’re coming home for dinner, it’s a bank account you opened when you were five and you didn’t know they charged you ten cents for that lollipop at the teller and so you were in the red and have been in it deep for years.

I loaded up my handbasket a few weeks ago tried to get into it and float away like Moses but there was no more room so I watched it slip down the stream. After a few minutes, I realized the one thing I forgot to put into it was my slow-pitch softball rule book. I opened it up the section on balks and started checking for exceptions to rules.