You’ve all seen my battle-ready rosary.

I had a much smaller, silver crucifix that I wore with a pendant of Mary. It was quaint, maybe 3/4″. A couple of weeks ago at the Fish Fry in walks a Latino gentleman, Ramon, I believe his name is. And he has this giant crucifix, red and just hard to miss.

I thought, “that’s how you do that.” Because really, like a personalized license plate, or a t-shirt with your favorite cartoon character on it or witticism, the crucifix is partly a message – this is who I am. I don’t spend a lot of time staring at my own t-shirt, nor can I follow myself in my own car.

And see, people see a Mexican guy wearing something like this and no one thinks a thing of it. He’s Mexican, it is almost to be expected. It seems natural as a goth rocker or hip hop artist wearing a giant cross, or a gangbanger.

At three inches, I got some attention (yes, there is a joke in there… ha ha!). Not that that was my object (then again, you are not supposed to go around keeping it secret and holding it to yourself either…) but I couldn’t help but notice some people not being able to keep their eyes off it. I felt like a woman well endowed – “Eyes up here, buddy!”

Only $25 and I have a cheap piece of deerskin as the rope. There are crucifixes that go into the hundreds of dollars (and probably higher, but I didn’t look) and I just feel like that isn’t what one should do. All that extra money could have gone to charity and not to ostentation.

Then again I am not rich so maybe someone in a higher tax bracket wouldn’t find a $350 investment to be extravagance. But I always preferred this sort of thing to the gold and silver. Especially the silver…