4-12-12    The prompt:     Trivia: The average number of people airborne over the US at any given hour:  61,000

30-minute writing, fiction

61,000 made it to heaven before me.  Damn them.   Is that what frequent flyer miles are good for?  To get to see St. Peter before the earth-bound rabble?  I’m trying to be patient; God knows I try.  So why doesn’t he let me skip the queue and sit right down next to him and Jesus?  I don’t even know Saint Peter.  What would I say to him?  61,000 in the grand scheme of things may not sound like much.  Here at the time of the Rapture, I believe the population of the world stood at 6 billion.  So that’s like .00001 % of all of us get a golden ticket. And those lucky sods decided to go see Grandma on holiday at just that minute.

Wait.  That’s over the US.  What about all of the people in planes all over the world?  But that doesn’t matter.  If you’re a true-blue American, you know that heaven is hovering right above Kansas at all times.  It couldn’t be over Azerbaijan!  The heathens.  They can stay at the end of the line.  Wait again!  They have their own line!  There’s no way that they would get into the same heaven as me.  If they all get 72 virgins and all I get are a robe and a harp, that’s not fair.  There must be another heaven for Azerbaijanis.  And Russians.  They have Easter at a different time!  I’ll bet there were some Russians and Azerbaijanis in amongst those 61,000 lucky ones.  I hope their heaven is all the way over on the other side of the planet.  They’ll be last in line! And suddenly my line isn’t so long after all.  Maybe it’s only 55,000.

The bastards.

I’ll just get a peek at the fella ahead of me.  “Oops, sorry, ma’am.   If I may, could you tell me where you were when all of this fuss started?  Des Moines?  I suppose that makes sense.  You’re closer to Kansas than West Virginia is.  I just figured that I’d be around folks from my jobsite, you know.  Like we’d all stick together.  I guess some of them weren’t as good as me, and got held up a bit.  I guess sending Dan out for the beer might have delayed his arrival in heaven a bit.  Unless Saint Peter is a drinking man.  I’d hate to think that Dan could get in a bit before me.  What if I get up there and he’s sitting at Saint Peter’s right hand, sharing my beer?  Does that have the same import as God’s right hand?  But that’s reserved for Jesus anyway.”

It sure would be nice if there were a billion Saint Peters.  Then all the frequent flier bastards would zip right through and not hold it up for us decent folk.

Is the line moving?