I have an Atheist friend.

I know, I’m amazing. There should be a bust of me at the Museum of Tolerance.

As a spiritual seeker, I personally believe in God. And I’ve always had an easier time with Agnostics, who are really just hedging their bets as if the hereafter was a roulette wheel. But as an enormously forbearing and open-minded person (see above), I respect everyone’s beliefs. Even the stupid ones. And I’ve really come to appreciate the Atheistic moral code – which, although it sounds like an oxymoron, is surprisingly not.

My friend Max and I argue frequently, not only about the existence of God, but about the practical realities of the Bible, like whether Jesus would have worn open-toed shoes in the middle of the desert. (I mean, come on, it’s filthy out there.)

But I cannot argue with his desire to invalidate the existence of a higher power in a world where there is SO much suffering and inequity. After all, God hasn’t exactly appeared on top of the Hollywood Bowl, hollering, “Hey, y’all, I know war and starvation and tsunamis are a bummer, but this is just Act One of your infinite existence!” (If he does choose to make an appearance, I hope he follows it up with a big tap dance number and maybe some fireworks.)

I can understand Max’s hesitance to believe. And this is exactly what I admire about him.

You see, given his conviction that when we die, we’re done, he conducts his life in a way that would have Christ/Krishna/Buddah/Allah pretty much high-fiving and chest-bumping him all over the place.

Most people in this world conduct themselves with some measure of decency because:  a) They’re scared to death of having to paddle around the everlasting lake of fire in a rowboat with a flotation problem; or B) They’re awaiting a reward of virgins or VIP seating in the bleachers by God’s right hand.

But someone who doesn’t believe in Hell – or Heaven – has little reason to behave in anything but the most heinous of ways. Why not steal milk from a starving baby? Why not screw old people out of their life savings? Why not subjugate the masses so you can buy slingbacks?

My friend Max lives a life based on kindness and respect for others. He behaves ethically simply because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. He has morals because not having them would feel weird.

And I admire the hell out of him, pardon the pun, for this.

I highly encourage you to get to know an Atheist, if you can get to know one like Max. 

But until you’re sure, I probably wouldn’t mention the fact that, technically, they could rob you at gunpoint and not feel bad about it.

I’ve always enjoyed emotional confrontations in movies – Celie’s “The jail you planned for me is the one you’re gonna rot in!” avowal in The Color Purple, or Aurora’s “Give my daughter the shot!” moment in Terms of Endearment. These are the kind of cathartic, high drama scenes that are not only fun to watch, they’re fun to act out in your living room.

Alone.

Late at night when you’re kinda drunk.

Scenes like this are considerably less fun, however, when you have to act them out in front of others.

In the middle of the day.

For real.

My mother has been sick for the past couple of months. Never one to do anything halfway (this is, after all, a woman who routinely ironed bedspreads and window treatments in the middle of the night), she compounded heart failure with a blood infection and pneumonia, turning what should have been a weeklong stay in the hospital into a triumphant, extended run in ICU, held over by popular demand.

The first time I saw her lying there in the hospital bed, so tiny and helpless, I wanted to cry (and not in some attractive, music-swelling, movie kind of way – more of the fetal position, sniveling in the corner variety). But I quickly realized that, as their only son, I needed to pull it together and be the strong one in this situation.

So I set to work trying to figure out how I could make the situation better. I sussed out who the good nurses were. I brought in lunch for my Dad, who was spending 14 hours a day there. I sent a maid to clean their house.

But nothing seemed like an important enough gesture for the woman who – although a little (or maybe a lot) crazy around the edges – had been my most ardent supporter my whole life.

Until the lunchtime incident.

At this point in her recovery, my mother’s daily “outing” consisted of being lifted from the bed into the easy chair next to the bed – a journey of some 36 inches, and one that required two nurses and a lot of praying. Because of the many tubes inserted into her, one of which was a morphine pump, Mother was not only extraordinarily weak but extraordinarily high. So standing up on her own was not even remotely an option, and the burden of her safety fell to the nurses.

Now, I have enormous respect for health care workers. Many of them are absolute angels of mercy, compassionate people with the patience of a hooker working a funeral home. (That’s supposed to be a compliment but I don’t know how to fix it.) And there were two in particular that I worshipped. Watching them was like watching Jesus. (Well, if Jesus wore a kitten blouse and made seriously crappy money for holding people’s lives in their hands.)

Both were, however, at lunch when Mother, exhausted from just sitting up and supremely stoned, decided she wanted to move from the chair back to the bed.

A new nurse came in – a middle-aged redhead who, although nice enough, didn’t seem to be high on the experience scale. (I think I saw her stabbing an orange and mumbling, “I think I’ve got it” before she came in.) She reached down and started to pick Mother up, alone, without even gauging how she was going to handle the five different tubes and cords attached to her.

I jumped up.

“Wait, do you need some help? Those tubes are gonna get –“

“Nah, I can do it. Come on, Elaine, clasp your hands around my neck.”

Mother whimpered, too weak to even lift her arms, much less support her body weight by holding on to this woman.

The nurse did a squat and, as if bench pressing an Olympic barbell, heaved my 98-pound Mother up to a semi-standing position. Mother whelped in pain. Immediately, the cords became tangled, and the nurse, unfazed, leaned Mother against the bed like a sack of potatoes in order to untangle them.

“Are you sure you don’t need some help?!” I hollered, as Mother began to crumple, her frame bending in half like a wilting flower.

“I got her,” she said calmly, more intent on the hoses and cords than on the bony, exhausted patient who was beginning to slip off the edge of the bed.

“She’s falling!” I yelled.

The nurse turned to see Mother sliding down. Grabbing at her in a vain attempt to halt her rapid descent to the tile floor, the nurse – who I’ll henceforth just refer to as Stupid – YANKED OUT one of the ¾” chest tubes that had been surgically inserted into Mother’s lungs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mother screamed absolute bloody murder. This is a sound, I’d like to add, that I hope you never hear from anyone you love. Nurses came running from all corners of the ICU. It was, essentially, a Code Blue situation. I’ve never seen so many people descend on one room in my life.

Another nurse helped Stupid get Mother onto the bed, and Mother lay there, shrieking in pain, unable to get her breath.

I was enraged. “Get her morphine hooked back up!” (This IV had also been ripped out.)

“Oh, good idea,” Stupid replied.

A doctor flew into the room, quickly examining the hole where the tube had been.

“She needs extra morphine,” I said loudly, “and she needs it NOW.”

Give her two extra doses,” the doctor ordered.

“Can you give her a shot, too, maybe some kind of topical or something, where the tube was yanked out?” I added.

He did.

After a few minutes, and as the extra morphine kicked in, Mother began to calm down a bit, only moaning instead of shrieking. I, on the other hand, did not.

I marched out to the nurses’ station and found one of the nurses I loved, who had charged in when the screams began.

“I could kill somebody right about now,” I said to her, sotto voce. “But then, that nurse almost did it for me.”

“I’m so sorry,” the kindly nurse said. “She feels SO bad.”

“She SHOULD,” I replied. “Who tries to move someone like that singlehandedly?”

She patted my hand. I knew she couldn’t say too much, since there was potential liability involved.

“Can you give her a shot?” I said. “She’s really, really hurting.”

She did.

We repeated this process a second time, when Mother still complained of blinding pain, and the kindly nurse obliged with a round of pain pills.

And eventually, things calmed down, and Mother (courtesy of enough painkillers to fell a buffalo) went to sleep.

I, however, did not.

I marched out to the nurses’ station again, and found the head nurse, who looked as though she expected me to bitch slap her.

“Hi,” I said in my friendliest I’m-About-To-Rip-You-A-New-One voice. “I don’t want that woman in my mother’s room again. Ever.”

“I understand,” the head nurse said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “But I mean, EV-ER. Please.” I smiled in order to indicate that I wasn’t actually going to deck her or rip her hair out by the roots.

“I promise,” she replied.

“There are two other nurses that I love,” I said, handing her a slip of paper. “These are the only two women that I’d like taking care of her for the rest of the time she’s here.”

“You got it,” the head nurse said with an air of utter assurance. “If there’s anything else you need” – she handed me her card – “you come see me. Okay?”

I walked back in to find Mother sleeping soundly, everything reattached except the chest tube, which would have to be surgically reimplanted.

And I realized that I had just had a “Give my daughter the shot!” moment.

Those of you who read this blog regularly have ascertained that I do not relish confrontation. But I have also learned that, when push comes to shove, I’m not half bad at it. And I was glad that I was there when this happened. And glad that I could, in some tiny way, make a difference for my mother, if only in that moment.

But I gotta say – these scenes are a lot more fun with a bowl of popcorn and a movie screen.

I know that even in the midst of all the insane calamities surrounding us these days – terrorism, natural disasters. Donald Trump – we have to forge ahead. Life is filled with both tragedy and triumph, and we can’t let ourselves drown in the deep end of despair, even if the White House being renamed Trump Palace makes us want to.

To paraphrase the wisdom of General Foods’ International Coffees, we must commemorate the joyous moments of our lives, if only to remind ourselves that life is more than just one scary s***storm after another. So I say, party down, do the Macarena, Celebrate Good Times, Come On.

But I draw the line at a hot pink, super-stretch Hummer limo and a two million dollar diamond ring.

Celebration is one thing, ostentation is another. In a world where tornadoes and floods and earthquakes render thousands homeless, where war leaves innocent bystanders limbless, where a lack of basic necessities leaves people around the world starving, how do you say, “Hmmm…I wonder if Hummer makes a 16-person limo that would match my dress?”

As I sat at a stoplight watching drunken bachelorettes hurling themselves out the moonroof of this block-long wad of vehicular eye puss, I wondered, was donating half the money to Japan and taking a standard limo just not obnoxious enough?

Basketball player Kris Humphries just gave Kim Kardashian a 20.5 carat, $2 million engagement ring. Granted, if the reality show ever (mercifully) dies, Kim can start a second career landing planes with that thing, but really – imagine how many houses they could build in Joplin, Missouri with half of that money.

Don’t get me wrong. I love business class flights (using miles), celebrity chef restaurants (with a Groupon) and designer clothes (at a warehouse sale). I’m not a tree-hugging, Cumbaya, Socialist bummer (all the time). I just think that somewhere up the food chain, there has to be a limit. Just because you make $10 million a year doesn’t mean you need to blow $5 million gold-plating your Bentley – while the guy who drives your Bentley lives in a Kenmore box because his house was washed away.

It is important to enjoy life. A little luxury makes your heart feel good. But – and this is just a thought, mind you – maybe for the rich, a little less luxury and a little more generosity would make your hearts feel even better.

Of course, I’m probably talking out of my ass, here. I mean, imagine how cool I’d look standing on a jewel-encrusted soapbox?

I don’t enjoy scenes.

I grew up living in the midst of a few, and ever since have avoided them like a particularly unattractive plague. This childhood desire to evade confrontation, in fact, turned me into a world class people pleaser, so eager to make others feel happy and loved that I allowed them to leave stiletto marks on my face.

And while I’m proud to say that that behavior has moderated over the years, there’s nothing like meeting a sky freak to see just how far you’ve come.

When I fly alone, I make it a point to politely greet the person seated next to me and to find something to compliment them on. That way, when I insert my nose into a book or pretend to be asleep in order to avoid a four-hour discussion of rectal fissures or how 9/11 was an inside job, they don’t get offended. They’re happy, I’m happy.

Conveniently, this behavior is also advantageous should one’s plane crash into the ocean and you need to push them off the only floating piece of wreckage. (They’re less likely to hold a grudge, since, after all, you’ve thoughtfully praised their choice of flip flops.)

Thus, a recent flight from St. Louis to LA should have been a convivial slam dunk. But I was seated next to a skyfreak.

This flight was, as always these days, completely full. And, as a pretty, fashionable, 30ish woman – who I’ll call “Renata” – took the middle seat between a kindly older lady and myself, I silently thanked God (since, of course, He has nothing better to do than to coordinate seating on American Airlines). I smiled graciously as she settled into the seat, complimented her backpack, and, my work done, returned to my hilarious book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.

It quickly became clear, however, that Renata had “issues”. It began with some simple fidgeting: opening and closing various reading materials every 20 or 30 seconds, followed in quick succession by a lean forward, then a lean back, then a sharp, 90-degree turn in either direction like she was auditioning her seatmates for a hot make-out session.

The older lady, mystified by this behavior, caught my eye as if to say, “Do you think she has a bomb strapped to her Spanx?”

Ever the accommodating one, I said nothing, choosing instead to close my eyes and attempt to nap.

At this point, Renata tired of fidgeting and got up to go to the restroom. This would not have been a problem had she only gone once. But after the fourth trip in one hour, her “I’m sorry’s” – as she climbed over the older lady and fell into my lap, startling me awake – seemed a bit pointless, since she wasn’t sorry or she’d have stayed in her seat and strapped a colostomy bag to her calf.

Don’t make a scene, I thought.

Realizing that sleep was out of the question, I opened my book and attempted to read once again. But Renata was just gearing up for her eleven o’clock number.

She then began – as God is my witness – doing aerobics in her seat. I am not kidding. These upper body exercises, apparently designed to prevent an embolism, were far more successful in nearly giving me a black eye and the grandmother in the aisle seat a stroke.

Grin and bear it, I thought. It’ll be over in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Deciding that her workout wasn’t utilizing enough muscle groups, she inserted three sticks of Bubble Yum into her mouth and began popping the gum in rhythm with her movements.

That did it.

Whirling around to face her (which consisted of a fairly imperceptible turn of my head), I announced in my best I sound like I’m joking but I’m kind of NOT voice, “Is your meth dealer meeting you at LAX?”

“I know, right?”

It took my brain a moment to untangle her sentence, given that it shot out of her mouth like a cannon. Renata was clearly under the impression that speed-speaking earned prizes and parting gifts.

“I-think-I-had-way-too-much-coffee-this-morning,” she rattled off in under a second. “I-probably-shouldn’t-drink-that-much-before-I-fly,” she added in a rapid fire coda. “Plus-I’m-used-to-having-a-window-or-an-aisle-seat-and-being-wedged-into-this-middle-seat-is-driving-me-insane.” That last sentence took well over two seconds, which appeared to upend her crack-fueled oral apple cart.

“Oh, trust me,” I replied, before the filter in my brain could clamp down on my mouth, “it’s not just driving YOU insane.”

There was a long silence.

Figuring that she may have fashioned a shiv out of her lipstick tube during one of those trips to the bathroom, I quickly tried to cool the tension by presenting her with what I imagined was a winning, adorable smile.

I was, apparently, the only one who imagined it that way.

“Why are you being such an ASS?” she announced in a voice that required no assistance from the on-board p.a. system.

I glanced at the older lady, who rolled her eyes and let out a heaving sigh.

“I don’t mean to come off that way,” I said in my most inside voice, trying – a bit halfheartedly now – to placate her. “It’s just a little hard to relax with you flailing around like an electroshock patient.”

She slammed her backpack onto the seatback tray table.

“Well, you know what?” she said in her most outside voice. “You can just go electro-f*** yourself!”

 Perhaps unsurprisingly, we spent the remainder of the flight in silence. And I discovered that pretending to be asleep for 74 minutes involves a lot of coordinated breathing and muscle control.

 But as I sat there faking a coma, I realized that although I may still have issues with wanting to please people, sometimes standing up for yourself feels really, really good.

Every once in a great while, you just have to tell someone to go electro-f*** themselves.

I think to think of myself as a spiritual seeker, always in search of enlightenment in whatever religious form it may take. (Provided it doesn’t require detonating stuff, which really tends to complicate things.) And not long ago, my partner and I went to a very edifying church service.

The minister wore a zebraskin cone bra, a cape, a semi-see-through nun’s habit, and a one-piece bodysuit with actual headlights. She lit a piano on fire, fought a dragon and slithered across the floor like a stripper with vertigo.

The house of worship was an 18,000 seat arena. The sermon was all about love, acceptance, treating everyone with respect and kindness, and personal empowerment. There was more pageantry than a Catholic mass and almost as much drinking. It was, in essence, Church With Swear Words.

The leader of this faith was Lady Gaga, who apparently believes that connection to the divine involves showmanship on a level not seen since Cirque du Soleil teamed with Cher.

And really, is that such a bad thing? I grew up on many of the same Christian values – love one another, do unto others as you would have them do unto you – as the ones Lady Gaga espouses, but they were presented in a package that included hymns sung like funeral dirges, Biblical readings that required a CIA code-cracker, and a level of mind-numbing cheerlessness that implied God would smite you for breathing too loudly.

I’m not sure where we got the idea that church was supposed to be dreary and tedious, but I just can’t help but believe that as long as the message is love, God probably doesn’t so much care about the costumes, and whether you fund the spread of his message through tithing or t-shirt sales.

Oh, I just got a mental picture of my childhood minister wearing a zebraskin cone bra. I’d better go wash my eyes out with soap.