amos sets some new rules

Editor’s note: Since the holidays, Amos has been feeling the drudgeries of life under the church pew. He enumerates his complaints and decides to do something about it. Amos is a church mouse, who types by hopping on the computer keyboard, but he can’t operate the capital shift, and he shuns punctuation marks — except hyphens and dashes.

i ve said it before

boss but life ain t

easy under a cushionless

church pew

either the church

custodian gets sloppy

with the mop water

and floods my little

hole-in-the-wall home

or marcellus the cat

is forever chasing me

out of the kool-aid

covered kitchen

but in saying that

boss my biggest problem

is me

jesus and me would get

along just fine if me didn t

get in the way so much

so with the new year

here i prayed about it and

decided i needed some new

rules to live by — besides

the old ten commandments

you understand i needed some

way to personalize them to

me and make them more

translatable to my personal

situation

so here they are boss —

amos s new rules to live by —

number one — remember god —

put him above everything —

even a full bag of cheese puffs

number two — worship god

and not things — including

honorary membership in the

prestigious mickey mouse

club or tickets to the

super cheeseball game

featuring my favorite team

the dallas mouseboys

number three — don t

badmouth god or people —

not even marcellus the cat

number four — rest and

honor god s day my new

motto will be all work

and no rest makes amos

a grumpy pest

number five — honor your

elders and be kind to

your web-footed friends

for a duck may be somebody s

mother — oops sorry boss

i got carried away

number six — don t

deliberately hurt other

living creatures let

kindness and peace rule

your heart

number seven — respect

and honor every mouse s

marriage and family

number eight — don t take

another s bread or cheese

life is more than that

number nine — don t

fabricate the truth —

unless you re a writer

p s — i sorta added

that one on boss i don t

think that s in the

original version

number ten — try not to

lust after somebody else s

cheeserolet or cheese

roll or anything

the essence of life —

i m sure someone must

have said — is to love

god rest in your hammock

once in a while

smile at the sun and

be content with who

you are and what you

have

after all ain t god

good and life so

grand once you know

the man with the

master plan

amos