Hi. I’m Simcha Fisher, and I’m new here.
Since we got off to a kind of bumpy start with my blog here, I thought I’d set a few things straight. First of all, who is Simcha Fisher? Might you be Simcha Fisher? Answer these questions to find out.
1. You have more kids than there are planets, even with Pluto. With a family this size you’re the perfect one to:
(a) Evangelize, or something.
(b) Serve as a horrible example of what happens when you never learn how to use a thermometer. Thanks a lot, Common Core.
(c) Maybe find a hobby? There’s a fine line between being open to life and making a spectacle of your fecund self.
(d) Write a book about natural family planning. About natural family planning.
2. When someone asks how many kids you actually have, you’re likely to say:
(a) “Two.”
(b) “Exactly the right number. Hashtag blessed! Hashtag soblessed!”
(c) “I don’t like to impose my own numeronormative notions of quantity on them, so I’m going to let them grow up and decide for themselves how many of them there are.”
(d) Tearfully, “I dunno.”
3. Look up. What do you see?
(a) A wide open vista full of promise and possibility, at once challenging and inspiring.
(b) The sky curling up like a scroll and these freaky bird lion dudes with extra heads. No more gas station wine cooler for you, man.
(c) Some memorization notes for Latin verb conjugations. Nope, not studying for at test; you just like to keep the old noodle active.
(d) Literal noodles. Again. After you specifically made a rule against flinging noodles on the ceiling.
4. One of your most cherished memories of your formative semester in Rome is:
(a) Sketching cathedrals.
(b) Making a documentary about a grassroots campaign to let seminarians grow awesome beards because Theology of the Body Something Something.
(c) Eating, praying, loving, emphasis on all three!!!!! <3 <3
(d) That afternoon at that Italian police station with the four pregnant teenagers who stabbed somebody.
5. You met your husband:
(a) At a turkey trot. You had forgotten your energy gel, and he had an extra pouch – but it turned out to be Tri-Berry Gluten Free! And you’re allergic to tri-berries. Great conversation starter, anyway. He still looks great in sweat-wicking leggings.
(b) Through an online dating site. You were both working on designing a new algorithm designed to cut down on matches that ended up with pregnant Italian teenagers stabbing people.
(c) Last week. You’re getting married next week. Gift registry here.
(d) Surrounded by trees, darkness, destiny, and gin.
6. The last time you met a really important person, you:
(a) Got shy and clammed up.
(b) Came off a little giggly when asking for an autograph, but he must be used to that.
(c) Offered a firm handshake, and moved along. We’re all equal in God’s eyes, after all.
(d) Inadvertently made a joke about Archimedes’ Screw, which you totally would have gotten away with except that you then snort-laughed and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s a terrible thing to say!”
7. The whole time you’ve been writing this:
(a) You’ve been continually offering your typing fingers up to God, so that He may work His holy will through you, in ways large and small, capitalized and italicized, even unto that wiggly thing on Spanish “n” (it’s option+N, and then “n.” You’re welcome)
(b) Your children spontaneously cordoned themselves off into a different wing of your orderly, peaceful, adequately-sized house, and organized by liturgical color their collection of pre-Vatican I mantillas.
(c) You’ve been dripping sweat onto your specially designed laptop desk for use while planking. Fab abs don’t fab themselves! Theology of the Body again, woooo!
(d) Your child actually took an actual bite of her diaper.
8. You travel around the country giving speeches to Catholic audiences. This is because you:
(a) Are extraordinarily outgoing and sociable; might as well make a career out of it!
(b) Had a dream in which St. Josemaria Escriva and St. Christina the Outstanding sang a snappy show tune about how you had to.
(c) Enjoy pumping milk in the bathroom at O’Hare. Invigoratin’.
(d) Have a coupon for 40% a gorgeous dress with pockets and need an excuse to use it before it expires.
9. You keep getting hired to write for respectable Catholic websites because you:
(a) Have a degree in theology.
(b) Have a degree in canon law.
(c) Surely have a degree in something, anything.
(d) Understand the word “deadline.”
If you answered mostly (d),* you are Simcha Fisher.
God help you. And God help Aleteia.
*Except for the one about Archimedes’ Screw. That was my mother.
