Knew I wouldn't get in

I’m sure most of you, gentle readers, have dreamed about something you’ve read or watched just before falling asleep. I took a little trip down that path last week, dozing off while reading Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.
For anyone who is familiar with Twain (nee’ Samuel Langhorn Clemens) only from Huckleberry Finn or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, there was much more to America’s premier satirist. Twain could be incredibly biting in his comments about anything from societal practices to the interpretation of scripture.
In Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, Twain voices his views on what the after life is really like as opposed to the “halos, harps and hymn books” picture painted by the popular clergy of his time. The edition I was reading also contains some fragments of unpublished pieces Twain never finished. One of these is Twain’s musings about his own approach to the pearly Gates. As he arrives, a back woods country preacher from Texas shows up at the same time. Twain says this guy was hollering and hosannahing to beat the band. The preacher got in, despite all of St. Peter’s efforts to find something irregular about his pass, but within a week the Texas preacher had the place all to himself as everybody else left to find a more peaceful eternity.
This was the piece I was reading as I fell asleep. In my dream, I was in a line of the recently deceased, awaiting inspection of our credentials before being allowed admittance to paradise. In front of me were a real estate salesman, a lawyer and a television evangelist.
The real estate agent had some problems to start with because he kept asking St. Peter if he owned his own home. The keeper of the keys to heaven just couldn’t convince the guy that there was no private property in paradise.
“But how do you accrue equity?” the salesman asked.
“We don’t,” replied St. Peter, “we don’t need it.”
“That’s ridiculous!” said the salesman, “You can’t insure yourself of a worry free future if you don’t own property.”
“Shows how much you know,” said St. Peter. “You should have spent more time in Sunday school and less with your nose stuck in the classified section of the newspaper. But your papers are in order, so you can go in.”
“Fine,” said the salesman, “But I’m gonna shake things up around here.”
“Sure you are,” said the head apostle with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “You and every other know-it-all who has come this way.”
When the lawyer stepped up and presented his credentials, St. Peter looked them over, then it was some time before he could control his laughter. “What in the world were you thinking?” St. Peter asked. “Do you realize there isn’t a single lawyer in all the vast realm of heaven?”
“Any married ones?” the barrister asked hopefully.
“This is hardly the time for jokes, buster,” the gatekeeper scowled. “What made you think you’d get into heaven? You haven’t told the complete truth about anything since you were 18 years old.”
“But that was my job,” the lawyer whined. “I didn’t make the rules, I just followed them. I just used the talents God gave me.”
“And I suppose somebody forced you to line your own pockets in the process,” St. Peter snarled. “Tell you what. You go back and live a couple of lifetimes as a nun. Sometimes the boss looks favorably on that kind of thing.”
The lawyer was disappointed, but it was better than spending eternity in hell.
Up stepped the evangelist, full of confidence.
“Oh, yeah. I know you,” St. Peter said. “Played kind of fast and loose with the interpretation of scripture, didn’t you? Especially when it came to getting people to send you money.”
“I spoke as the Lord gave me wisdom to speak,” the evangelist said, neatly dodging the question.
“I’ll just bet you did,” said St. Peter. “But go on in, God has a spot for you in the accounting department.”
The evangelist was a bit down hearted as he passed through the Pearly Gates, because he had been sure God would have wanted him somewhere near the throne to help Him make important decisions.
I stepped up to St. Peter, with very low expectations. He looked over my papers and asked, “What kept you? We thought somebody would have shot you a long time ago.”
The only thing I could think of to say was, “Just lucky I guess.”
“Well, your luck just ran out, sport,” said the saint with no small amount of satisfaction. “You don’t get in.”
“I expected as much,” I said. “But if the real estate salesman and the tv preacher are in there, and you’re going to let the lawyer in, I probably wouldn’t have liked it anyway.”
“You see, that’s you’re problem right there,” St Peter commented. “Always rationalizing. But don’t worry about it too much. I understand your place in eternity is all ready for you. Nicely shaded, relatively cool, and not too near the furnace.”