The trauma a ten-year-old experiences watching a bear attack – even a fictionalized account on screen, stage or page – is enough to send the child into a mild form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is what I believe I have, no matter how many doctors tell me it’s all in my head. The “learned professionals” are constantly bandying about words like “psychosomatic” and “hypochondriac,” but they still charge my insurance for services rendered. Medical doctors like to consider themselves professionals, but all they ever seem to do is practice. Instead of any medical advice, I’ve decided a course of prayer every day or every other day is the surefire way to prevent bear attacks, and by golly it’s worked for several years now!

Since you’re reading this, I’ll share the little prayer with you, but I need to draw the background for you. I was ten and I had acquired a VHS copy of “Faces of Death” from a local video store. It had been out for a few years and gained cult status among my friends, who were enchanted by gore and all things morbid. The viewing shocked and surprised me when I saw the frank, purportedly real footage of a man being eaten by a brown bear. I could not see those cuddly creatures for anything but the savage, fat-ass killers that they were. I decided that something must be done about my new-found fear, and about the bears themselves.

My parents assured me that no brown, black, grizzly, koala or other form of bear would be wandering into southern New Jersey looking for a chubby kid with a bad haircut for a midnight snack. They only served to fuel my fears that because we hadn’t had a bear attack, we were surely due for a full frontal assault from a furry army of hungry Caniforms, most likely armed with knives, grenades, and flaming swords +3.

The teachers I spoke with were also part of the Ursidae conspiracy, trying to fill my head with useless facts about bear habitats and ecology. My friends agreed with me that my fear was based on founded fears of the impending overthrow of humanity by the lumbering devils, One of my best friends, Richie Resevich, took me aside and told me to go talk to the priest.

Father Rudolph was a nice man with perfect hair and an accent from some other language he spoke – German or Mexican or some weird hybrid, I could never tell. He was the first person to listen to me, my fears, and the constant night terrors I had due to the Faces of Death bear scenes. He told me to pray, and God would provide guidance and providence. So I began praying. First it was simple Our Father’s and Hail Mary’s, but I wasn’t sure they were 100% effective. They were generic prayers that everyone says for everything, from hoping to win the lottery to asking that the clown at the circus doesn’t eat them. So I began experimenting with ways I could customize my pleas to God, to ensure that I would not be eaten by a bear.

After twenty-five years of constant prayer to the Almighty to not be eaten, he has always guided me and given me the true path. The proof? I’ve never been a snack or a meal for any creature other than little tiny bugs, and I may add them into the prayer soon. That is all the proof one needs. I prayed to be spared from bear attacks and I have been, all because I prayed and God granted me that divine miracle. I even went to the zoo, as a test of faith, and the bears in the pen ignored me, as if I did not even exist. All because of divine providence.

I suggest you all try the Bear Prayer. You never know when a hungry grizzly will knock down your door looking for a jar of honey and instead swipe the top of your head from your body to eat the gooey remains of your medulla oblongata. The prayer is simple, and it goes a little like this:

Oh God, please protect me from the bears. Don’t let them eat me, chew my flesh like bubblegum, gnaw my bones like a dog-treat, eat my heart or brains like it was caviar, strike or disembowel me, sink their sharp teeth into my veins or muscles or tear apart my extremities from my body. Let them leave me and eat honey and lemon and nuts (but not mine), and be attacked by bees that do froth at the mouth and angrily sting them in places where their hides are thin and ragged, like the buttocks. Keep me safe and whole and protect me from all sorts of bears and I will glorify your kinglydom domains with song, prayer, and anal beads. Keep me safe from the ravages of the bears and I shall sing your praises.

It changes from time to time as I think of new ways to glorify. God likes you to change it up, to slip up the Satanic Bears. It works. You have to trust that it works, and you have to have faith it works. If it doesn’t, then the fault lies in you – not in the prayer, me, or God. This can be applied to practically everything. You should try it out. Ask God to keep the Sun in the sky. As long as you pray, it will happen.

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Tags: bears, coherentism, danger, humor, prayer, religion

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Panic!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.