How not to take a 2-year old to church

Remember Papa of the Berenstain bears? I liked him because he was always teaching by bad example. You always need someone to mess things up so badly that everyone watching can't help but say, "I'm never doing it that way."

This week, Ginna and I decided to take over sacrament meeting with a show of how not handle a 2 year old. We started by selecting a bench before the meeting started, which was wrong in two ways. First, the only available benches are always super close to the front (older people covet the rear side benches so much that they practically camp out for them, forcing those who come late to either sit on plastic chairs in the rear or be disruptive up front). Second, the fact that we got a bench means we got to church early--that's bad because babies are like time bombs and every minute counts.
By the time the meeting had officially started, Max was already swimming back and forth across the bench. We started with toy cars as entertainment, but they only worked if they were making noise. Next, books failed. Who wants to whisper their ABCs anyway?

Food is always a last resort, but an entire family size box of cheerios couldn't have kept Max quiet today. He squirmed and thrashed and screamed as he spilled his cheerios, smashing them into the fibers of the cloth seats. All the while he was continually tugging and pulling on Ginna's clothes; there was hardly a moment when she wasn't indecent. Everyone knew he wanted to be running free. The rows of retired parents behind us cheered for him secretly, hoping we would haul him out.

As the end was nearing Max played his final ace: terradactyl-like shrieks in a last ditch attempt to get sent to the penalty box foyer, but it was too late. We weren't giving in. We forced Max into kissing his stuffed fish relentlessly until the final amen had sounded. With an exhausted sigh of relief, even his most obnoxious sounds disappeared into the din of the exiting congregation.