"Hurray!! ... And you killed him!" - Baldrick

In our previous episode, I was describing one of my favorite episodes of Blackadder.  Again, I'm going to start on a totally different topic, but you will eventually see how it all relates back.

So in church, the Pastor is currently doing a series on the book of Acts.  In the past month or so, he's been preaching on the section of Acts 3:1 - 4:4.  Each Sunday, generally, between the songs and the sermon, someone reads aloud the passage of the day.  And, this is a whole chapter plus, so it took several weeks to get through it all.  So each Sunday someone would get up and read Acts 3:1 - 4:4.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can be easily distracted - by dust motes, something sparkly, anything really.  So you won't be surprised to hear that every Sunday during the reading of this passage, and specifically these three verses:  

¹³ The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus. You handed him over to be killed, and you disowned him before Pilate, though he had decided to let him go.  

¹⁴ You disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. 

¹⁵ You killed the author of life, ..... (Acts 3:13-15, NIV).

So in my mind I would hear "And you killed him!"  Which brings me back around to Blackadder.  At the end of their incarceration, Blackadder and Baldrick are, in fact, rescued by the Scarlet Pimpernel who, it turns out was one of Prince George's idiot friends with whom Blackadder made the original bet.  By means I'm not going to go into, (you can read the entire transcript of the episode here: Nob and Nobility) Blackadder gets his hands on some suicide pills and this happens - [watch the video]

 

It would be all I could do, those mornings in church, to not repeat, "And you killed him!" in my best Baldrick-like voice and giggle.  Fortunately, during that month, I was in the sound booth, so if I had giggled, no one but the others in the sound booth would have known, and they already know I'm weird.

So as you can see, since the early 80's, the Scarlet Pimpernel has affected my outlook on life.  I even have a tattoo of the Scarlet Pimpernel - the flower, not the person, of course.  People assume it's a rose because of my name, and if I care about their being informed, I'll advise them what it truly is, but otherwise...   And there's [REDACTED] at the office who has made less than appropriate comments about it, considering its placement (over my heart, so to speak), but that's another story.

I guess this wraps up my Scarlet Pimpernel story.  I'll try to come up with something new for next time.  Just let me jump in this corner first....