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The Second semester of my Freshman year never really existed.
I say this because by then I was no longer a Freshman. I went to vote for class officers and such, but I was on the Sophomore list. Too many credits to be a Freshman. That caused me some embarrassment at the end of my second year, when I won the English Department’s William Henry King award, “presented to a rising Senior” who distinguished him/herself with excellence in the English Language. We all thought one of my buddies, Teresa K. would get it. It never entered my mind that I was up for anything at that Honors Convocation. I accepted the award in natty sweats. *shame* Teresa forgave me, but it made me mentally determined to actually graduate with her, so the “rising Senior” part wouldn’t be a lie.
I wasn’t a Freshman, technically, but I wasn’t a Sophomore either. It was odd, so I never mentioned it unless my name showed up on some list or other where it shouldn't have been.
Strangely, David (remember Grady’s roommate?) and I got on just as well as we always had, despite the cold shoulder from other mutual friends. He was a math wiz, but was sort of borderline literate. I helped him study for the core requirements, like the Old and New Testament Survey classes.
We had a list of people we had to know from the Old Testament, and we tried to quiz each other.
“Who was Deelee-uh?” He asked.
I stared at him blankly.
“She cut Sampson’s hair.”
I am ashamed to say it, but I laughed. Hard. “You mean, Delilah?”
He turned bright pink. I giggled. I just didn’t realize it hurt him so much. I didn’t realize that the reason he was still talking to me was because he wanted to date, and being laughed at by a girl you like is the worst the worst sort of invisible injury a young man can endure.
If it makes you feel any better, I suffered for it.
That was the semester I met my match. Both of them, actually, but the one I’m talking about was the perfect match of the person I was trying to be. His name was Scott, and he was essentially a sociopath.
He invited me to play computer games in his room during Open Dorm, when the sexes were allowed to mingle in the dorms as long as the doors were open six inches. The RA’s called it the “Caucasian rule”. I did not get the joke.
It didn’t go well. His usual material was falling flat, and I spilled coffee (I was NOT a coffee drinker, but I choked it down because he offered) on his keyboard. It was horrible. His roommate laughed and left.
“He’s laughing because he knows I would rape him if he’d spilled coffee on my computer.”
I think I was expected to laugh at that, but I did not.
He was trying to be charming, but I wasn’t getting it. I think the things that usually “worked” on young virgins (his chosen prey) simply did not work on me, like bragging about his car(BMW). To this day I associate BMWs with class A jerks, as unfair as I know that is.
He tried a different tack, by asking me about my favorite books. This worked a little better; at least he had me talking.
I talked a little about the Transcendentalists, since I had a thing for Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne at that time. He didn't seem to get that at all, so I moved on my favorite fiction, trying to cloak my love of fantasy in scholarly terms. Yeah, I was a twit to worry about impressing a guy. It backfired spectacularly.
I went on a bit too much about C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia, I think. I said I’d like to go to Narnia, that I wished it was real. He asked me if I wanted to be an elf or something, and I said, “No. Maybe a water sprite. I like the water.”
He played up the “creative” angle by saying he was the first horn in the Spirit of Atlanta Bugle and drum corps. Described the feeling of playing when he was really in the zone, etc. He also mentioned how the director would tell him to go get laid before a performance.
I was horrified that such callous behavior existed in the world. I had certainly never encountered the attitude, but was vaguely aware that it existed from books I'd read and movies I'd seen. Perhaps I was disturbed because it made my studied self-transformation into a heartless man-eater less unique. Not really sure.
The most puzzling thing about it was that he seemed to think this would impress me.
The night wore on and he managed to charm me a bit, make me laugh. The we stopped outside the Lit building as he walked me back to my dorm, and I let him kiss me. The kiss was followed by a very creative and sincerely passionate monologue on his part. He’d never met anyone like me. I was so easy to talk to, to really talk to, and he wished he could just crawl inside me and sleep.
O_O I’d never heard it put THAT way before. But that was essentially the end of the evening. He didn’t try anything, so I figured maybe it was just awkward phrasing of a more innocent concept. Ha.
Anyway, the coffee kept me up until 3am. I slogged through the next day, sleep-deprived, and by the evening I was convinced I was falling for him.
We hung out a bit, and he asked to take me out to dinner Saturday night. I told him I was going home on Friday and had some stuff to do on Saturday, but I could be back in time to go out. What was I doing Saturday? Let it be a surprise, I said.
See, he’d talked about how he liked girls with short hair. I had a perm that was growing out, and had planned to get my hair cut anyway. I had an appointment with my mother’s stylist.
At the hair salon, I ran into Mike, the Football Player (Second String). He picked me up and flung me around, and wouldn’t let go until I agreed to kiss him on the cheek. Of course he turned his head at the last second, and gave me lip. I acted horrified, but was actually amused and flattered. My mother was openly amused.
He asked me to go out with him, but I said I had to get back to campus.
“She’s got a hot date,” my mother said through a sly grin.
“You’ll have more fun if you stay with me,” Mike said, laughing.
He was right, I’m sure, but I didn’t. By the time I got back to school, I was feeling sick to my stomach. Roiling guts do not a pleasant date make. I tried to call Scott on the hall phone of his dorm. No one answered. I tried many times, but no one ever answered. I didn’t feel like eating anyway.
I met some friends in the TV lounge of the Student’s Center. Scott was there, but didn’t say much. My buddy Gloria asked about my hair.
“I was going to get it cut short, but I decided on just a trim.” I really wanted to grow it out, and a short cut would have been too big a setback. I told Gloria about running into Mike, and we had a laugh. Of course, it was mostly for Scott’s benefit.
Later, he was playing pool in the game room. I called and asked to speak with him. He got on the line and said, “Scott’s not here.”
“I know it’s you, [rudename]”
“Sorry, [rudename] is not here.” There was background laughter.
I ran into him later and told him he was a coward to act like that without any explanation. Why was he afraid of me? If he didn’t want to go out, why not have the courage to say so to my face?
Zing! Direct hit in the Male Pride Zone, score one for Parker! He had to answer me. Not because I'd said it was rude to do what he did, but because I'd called his behavior what it was which was cowardly.
“Listen, I’ve heard things about you. That you’re crazy and you hit guys for no reason.”
I smiled, because I knew exactly what had happened. Or close enough that it didn’t matter. “I promise you, Scott, there is a reason for everything I do. But you couldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. You didn’t have the balls to ask.”
I saw the doubt cross his face, and shook my head. “See you ‘round.”
I thought that was it, but it wasn’t. One day I was walking to the library, and somebody shouted, “Sprite!” very, very loudly. I glanced in that direction and Scott and some of his friends laughed.
In the Library, E. Roy came up to me while I was studying. It was rainy outside, and getting dark early. “Olivia, I’ve heard a rumor that I wanted to ask you about.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Somebody said that you practice transcendental meditation, and that stone in the cross you wear is a focusing crystal that you use to channel a water spirit.”
Just then, I kid you not, the lights went off in the library. It was suddenly completely dark. Not sure if that helped or hurt, but it was dramatic.
O_O
“No,” I said in the direction where E. Roy had been a second before. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The Lights came back on.
“The cross was a gift from my mom when I placed in a regional art show. The ‘stone’ in it is plastic. I don’t meditate, and I don’t think water spirits exist outside fantasy books.”
E. Roy smiled. “I’m so relieved, Olivia.” He always said my name like that, even when it was unnecessary like it was then, since we were the only two people in sight.
“If you don’t mind my asking, who said that about me? Was it Scott _______?”
“I shouldn’t say, but why do you think it was him?”
“We went out once, and I mentioned I liked reading the Transcendenatlists. You know, Emerson and Thoreau.”
E. Roy made a face. His first name was Emerson, and he was at least passingly familiar with his famous namesake. “What does that have to do with transcendental meditation?”
“Nothing, but Mr. kicked-out-of-VMI doesn’t know that." Here I rolled my eyes. "He’s saying that stuff because I shot him down.”
E. Roy smiled, and in that second I loved him. Now, those of you who have heard the E. Roy stories know what a weirdo-pain-in-the-posterior he was(to me), but he had asked me about a rumor instead of believing it, repeating it, or just staring at me and wondering if it might be true. That’s got to count for something.
“I can’t confirm who said it, but thanks for telling me the truth.”
I sighed. “No problem.”
I don’t know how far the rumors got, or who believed them. It was a small campus, and my situation was such that it was hard for me to go unnoticed. Girls I had never even spoken to hated my guts, and I’m sure the “why are the pretty ones always crazy” meme had some legs. I’m pleased to say I don’t care about it now, but it was troubling at the time.
Mrs. Radev, my voice teacher, noticed I was down during my lesson that day. She asked. I told her there was a guy that I had kind of liked who had listened to rumors about me and dumped me. Then when he realized I wasn’t busted up about not seeing him, he started a few rumors of his own.
I’ve told this story before, so I’ll make it short, here. She looked me straight in the eyes and leaned in, shaking her finger at me. “A love for an unworthy person is like a cancer – you must cut it out, if you want to live.” The hand became a fist, for emphasis. Tzetzta (she always insisted I call her that) took me to lunch the next day, off campus, and gave me the highlights of her life story. How she had gotten special permission from her government to get two masters degrees, how she had married her engineering professor and how they had escaped to the West. It was amazing.
She was right, though. It only bothered me because I had begun to have feelings for him. The basic truth was the he was unworthy. Not because of anything incidental to him, but because his actions were unworthy.
I later joked to my roommate, “I thought I was in love with him, but I took an aspirin, put my feet up and it went away.”
And it DID. He tried to lure me back. First, by asking a girl sitting in front of me to dance at one of the dances, while looking right at me. They started dating, and were going to the spring formal together. I later heard that, a week before the dance, he sat down to lunch with her (and a table full of her friends) and said, “I don’t really love you. I was just using you, but we can still go to the dance if you want.”
Fortunately, she had several friends on the baseball team who were anxious to beat the hell out of him. Also, our soccer team had a lot of people from Puerto Rico. That seems apropos of nothing, I know. But he was the Psych professor’s assistant, which meant he would proctor and grade the psychology 101 tests. He had bragged about how he was going to “fail the Puerto Ricans.” He also told friends of mine that they failed their tests, when they had not. Oh! He had also alienated all the campus Republicans, who thought him fascist, racist and egocentric.
In short, most of the campus wanted his blood. He left one night, without most of his stuff. His roommate put a note on their door to the effect of “Scott doesn’t live here anymore. Please don’t hurt me.”
My friend Brad was upset that Scott had announced Brad’s Psych grade in front of his whole tennis class, so we went around campus and collected “send me more information” cards from bulletin boards everywhere. Brad worked in the switchboard office, so he had access to students’ room numbers, hall phones and home addresses.
I bet his parents wondered why their son was getting brochures about spending a summer working with Benedictine monks, and Peace Corps applications.
I later learned that the original rumor that Scott had heard had come not from Grady (I should have known he wasn’t spiteful enough for that) as I had thought, but from David, his roommate. David who was in my fellowship group, and prayed with me on a weekly basis. I just asked him if he knew who had spread rumors about me, and he said, “If you’re thinking it was me, you’re right.”
I had not been thinking that at all.
“I think you’re a mean, evil person, and I hope you get what you deserve.”
I asked him what I had done to him, and how I could make amends. I was really sorry for hurting him. I really hadn’t meant to do so. It was so funny, to me. After all the sly, manipulative things I had actually done, it was carelessness, not malice, that had caused all the evil chatter. Sort of poetic, in a way. I’m soooo much better at hurting people when I don’t actually want to do so. Oy.
In any case, Scott was a nice example of how far the anti-empathy I was trying to produce in myself could actually go, and it was ugly. David had shown me that I would probably end up hurting a lot more people than the ones I intended to hurt, if I let my heart grow that hard. It would be careless disregard for everyone’s feelings, not just those who had hurt me.
After that, I began to pray. Alone in the dark, trembling quietly when no one could see. I prayed for the Lord to take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. I didn't cry, but...
I believed in the power of prayer; this particular prayer scared the hell out of me.
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quote:I would probably end up hurting a lot more people than the ones I intended to hurt, if I let my heart grow that hard. It would be careless disregard for everyone’s feelings, not just those who had hurt me.
I really liked this lesson you learned. It's one that I think we all have to learn at some point or in some way.
I enjoy your posts here Olivet. Many times I leave this thread with something to ponder about myself and the way I am living or the way I treat people. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
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quote:After that, I began to pray. Alone in the dark, trembling quietly when no one could see. I prayed for the Lord to take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh. I didn't cry, but...
I believed in the power of prayer; this particular prayer scared the hell out of me.
That's my favorite part of the whole thing, from the very beginning. I may carry that one around with me as a favorite passage of all time, coupled with the three passages I put in my last landmark.
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This has to be the most engrossing landmark I've ever read. You've quite a skilled writer, Olivet.
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sweetbaboo- I think you're right. I'm glad I learned it when I did, though I doubt I could have articulated it as succinctly at the time. (NO LAUGHING!)
jeniwren... I don't know what to say. Thank you for being so kind.
I'm glad (and a little puzzled) that you guys like it. I appreciate the encouragement.
Ketchup- I don't plan it that way. I just write until it feels like I'm done with a bit and try to end it in a fashion that doesn't sound like a page has been torn in two. This one had my favorite opener so far, though. It was really inspired. *giggle*
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I meant, of course, just the bit she quoted. In my earlier life I probably would have taken a page on just that part.
Yeah, I know I have NaNoWriMo going here (except the 'No' part), but I AM getting to the point a wee bit quicker than I did in my youth. My goal is to finish before I hit menopause.
I ain't gettin' younger. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I just went to my 20th reunion. Being there with all my old friends brought back a lot of good memories, but also some regrets of things I had done. I think I've learned from them and at least try not to repeat my mistakes, but...
It's funny, though. I brought up some of them to ask forgiveness and they barely remembered if at all. They had become bigger in my mind than they ever were in reality.
I really enjoy reading this and I'm glad you're doing it.
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Olivia, I'm so glad you are doing this, for us and for you. I've loved reading it! And you are going to be so glad when it is finally all down on paper and you have it to reflect on or share with others as you will.
Edit: Gee, I re-read this and it sounds all patronizing. I didn't mean it that way....
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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It may not seem like it, but I feel very close to the end here. Three-quarters finished, at least.
First, a few details I misrepresented that have been bugging me. Scott did not flee in the night until midway through the following fall semester. He had transferred in that spring, and didn’t get the Psych assistant job until the fall. After he dumped the other girl(midway through the spring semester), things were even weirder.
I felt really conflicted about that, because I had considered trying to warn her about him. In the end I did not. I didn’t think she would believe me and I didn’t want to encourage him. He was always looking at me when he was with her and I was around. I admit I looked back. I was trying to decide if he was being honest with her. Hoping he was. If he wasn’t, what could I say? “Hi, you don’t know me but I think your boyfriend is using you. Possibly to make me jealous.” Har-de-har-har.
Anyways, after that he was hanging around me a lot. Showing up at early breakfast on Sunday, walking around in a suit with a Bible in his hand. We talked a little, and he said he’d found Jesus.
Now, I was a person of faith and believed in conversion experiences, and knew they were sometimes miraculous. I talked to him mostly out of curiosity. I wanted to know the truth, and God help me, I knew how to get it. I’m not sure how much of it was me being consciously calculating, but in the interest of honesty… I knew what I was doing, more or less.
He would sit at my table to dinner and talk with me and my friends. Some of them were talking about a class they were taking, where you had to pair up like married couples and list your expectations for marriage, etc. I don’t know what all the class involved, as I could not have been less interested if I had tried really hard.
In any case, a friend of mine was talking about a birth movie they had watched, with several baby deliveries. This one girl went on about how beautiful it was, and how she was moved to tears by it.
O_O Well, now. I’ve personally given birth to babies at this point in my life, but my attitude toward such films has not changed. Birth is beautiful, if by beautiful you mean “powerful”. It’s one of those things that happen that really change your life. It binds couples or families, and sometimes exposes their weaknesses.
To me, one of the most amazing things about having a child—the birth experience itself—is that it is one time when the natural roles of men and women are somewhat reversed.
Men are bigger, stronger. The best men use their strength to guard and protect those weaker than themselves, build their home or what have you. Women are generally smaller and not as strong, so, generally, we are not as suited to do the “heavy lifting,” if you will. These are roles that have pretty much endured for ages. Not to say that men are only good for heavy lifting, but that nature has made man and woman different physically. Generally, sexual dimorphism makes us suited to different tasks. (I know a lot is changing in the modern world, but bear with me, please.)
Giving birth is one of those times where the woman has to be the strong one, physically. She has to endure, which is fine – most of us are suited to the task.
Meanwhile, the man is essentially helpless. He can give her support, love and encouragement, but he can’t do the work. This is what I mean by role reversal. In birthing, the woman does the heavy lifting (and don’t kid yourselves, it usually ain’t easy) and the man tries to ease her burden, and let her know he loves her and appreciates it. He gives what comfort he can.
It is a powerful, humbling experience to bring a life into this world. But beautiful, in the aesthetic sense? Not by a long shot; not ever. It’s bloody and usually somewhat dangerous. It is exciting and tense and horrible and wonderful at the same time, but not suitable for picture postcards.
In my opinion, this momentous experience is not enhanced at all by video cameras. Call me what you will.
In any case, he commented that it was really spectacular to witness the birth of a baby. The awed girl asked if he’d been there with his mother having a sibling or something, and he smiled and backed off the subject, saying “I’ve said too much.”
He came over to my room during open dorm. I showed him my sketchbook. He doodled a bit - intricate, inter-locking shapes that did not appeal to me. He confessed to me that he had made a habit of targeting and seducing young virgins. He might have been repentant, but my Spidey Sense still placed it in the “bragging” folder, even though he said it in a context of how he was trying to be a better person. Something about the way said those things…
*shrug* I just… didn’t buy it. Oh, I believed the “I made a habit of corrupting young virgins” part. Swoop down on a younger girl, then turn on the charm. Say the right things, make her believe. With the pressure of a girl’s budding sexuality and curiosity to help him, it could not have been much of a challenge. I made the logical leap that he had been present at the birth of his own illegitimate child, or else he wanted us to think so when he mentioned it. I was almost certain I had him figured out, but I wanted to be sure. Not sure why. Morbid curiosity, maybe. Perhaps I was testing my Spidey Sense equipment. Maybe I wanted to believe in his conversion experience as a way to ease my own doubts about the things I had been taught. I wanted to believe that people could change, so I wanted to believe this guy had changed. But I didn’t believe it.
In any case, I accepted his invitation to go for a walk. On the golf course. It was dumb, but I was certain I was in control. Truth is, I was, but it was only a feeling that told me I was, just as it was only a feeling that told me he was a big fat liar. I could have been wrong. Objectively, I must acknowledge that is possible I was (and am) mistaken about the whole thing, but I don’t really believe that is the case.
We walked a long time, and ended up lounging on the grass. He whispered in my ear that he could have me, if he wanted. I laughed. His statement was ludicrous to me, but I suppose he took the laugh differently.
He was actually pretty cagey about the whole ‘seduction’ thing. He didn’t put his hands anywhere that would get him slapped. He pushed the line and I stopped him, but I didn’t leave. In retrospect, I think that gave him the impression that he was actually getting somewhere. I know it was bad of me, but at the time I really didn’t understand very well how uncomfortable certain things can be for a guy. I had to be certain in my own mind whether he was still trying to play me; I’m not sure why.
If I had been convinced by my intuition that he was sincere, I think I would have given him a second chance.
I made up my mind, though. He was still in the habit of corrupting young virgins; I was just the one that got away. That perverse, power-mad part of me decided that I wouldn’t shut him down. I wouldn’t make it clear his quest was a lost cause – I’d just wait and see how long it took the slimy [person] to figure it out for himself.
He finally made his excuses and waddled off in the direction of his dorm. I wasn’t completely aware of the subtleties of the game he was playing, but as I watched him walk stiffly away, I knew I had won.
That was it. I had my answer. His confessions were part of the same old game, not part of a new leaf. Even though he had not repeated racist remarks and the like around me recently, he had let a few prejudices about various groups kind of slip through. I just wasn’t comfortable around him.
Wenchconners may remember the rambling hot tub story about the guy who asked me for gum and tried to get me to go for a ride in his BMW. That was this guy.
So, it wasn’t until the fall that he slipped off in the middle of the night to escape beatings he had brought upon himself by being [donkey] to everyone.
This all happened before my prayer. It was part of what made it clear to me where the path I had begun to follow might lead.
That is as ugly as it got. Turning the tables on that guy, however slight the retribution might seem, was the worst thing I had ever done. I console myself that he was a jerk, and perhaps the fact that he came my way at that time in my life was my good Karma, and his bad. Good for me, because I got to see the kind of person I could become if I kept to the path I had chosen.
I learned from it. I rejected that potential Olivia, and groped in the dark for a better way. A better me. Not sure how THAT turned out, but I guess we’re all works in progress. At least I’m not a sociopath. The really scary part is that, for me, it was a choice – I really, truly believe that I could have become something monstrous.
Maybe I’m fooling myself, and that was never really a possibility, but if I hadn’t honestly believed it was a possibility, I don’t think I would have changed the archetype I idolized. I take things to extremes, sometimes. I saw past “saucy, man-eating wench” right into the heart of “amoral monster” and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
Sociopaths are supposed to be people who cannot empathize, but I don’t think that is necessarily true. I was always hyper-empathetic, growing up. I think my ability understand just what people were thinking and feeling made it easier for me to manipulate them, once I had hardened my heart. I think that would have made me much more dangerous than any Scott Whatsisname (who couldn’t fool me because he had no concept of how I saw the world).
That, my dears, is the ugliest, most horrible secret I have to share. Funny, that. It’s funny because this story isn’t really about me. It’s just that you can’t understand the story of Ronnie Ellis, the way I experienced it, if you don’t understand some things about me.
I think some people go through life looking out only for themselves, concerned only with their own needs or desires and willing to abuse and deceive others to gain their objectives. They are scary because they are often charming and polite for long periods when it suits their objectives. I think we all do a little bit of this when dealing with co-worker or bosses we don’t really like, but the extreme is monstrous.
Other people (perhaps those with too much experience with the first type) go through life with a sort of social rabies, expecting everyone to take advantage of them, growling and guarding their interests with self-deceiving moral certitude. Those are the people who will fight for parking spaces and give looks of disdain to anyone who doesn’t defer to them. Because they believe they are Good, they have a sense of entitlement and a belief that most people are Evil and out to screw them. (This may be true, but you wonder if it is cause and effect.) I can sympathize with this, too, but it’s a little harder for me to swallow. I think I’m personally a little more willing to accept it when I bring stuff on myself.
This is one of the lessons I learned from Ronnie Ellis: Sometimes people are jerks; you can’t help what other people do, but expecting the worst of them only hurts you. Sometimes people love you but are not able to give you what you need; the reverse is also true, but that doesn’t change anything.
Because it’s not about getting what you want, or giving people what they want. It’s about accepting who and what you are, and accepting others without regard for personal agenda. I think that is what love is, at least, the kind of love people mean when they say, “God is Love” or "Love your neighbor."
Next time, I’ll tell you about Carolyn Soto and the World’s Tallest Dwarf.
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I should probably clarify that, while I think it was once possible for me to become someone as monstrous as I have described, my path has diverged significantly from that one.
Writing this story has helped me see the overall picture of events in my life much better than I ever have before. I tend to get hung up on the details of memory and experience.
They say the Devil is in the details, but I don't think he's the only one.
Anyway, I think our choices make us who we are. Not neccessarily just the big ones, either. The small choices we make every day have a lot bigger cumulative effect than I think we realize.
I don't believe I could choose that path now if I wanted to with all my heart. I'm too different from that relatively unformed, sheltered eighteen-year-old.
It wasn't only my decisions then, my prayers for a softer heart, etc. but the people I have chosen to be with and the overall life I have chosen.
In short, just as memory isn't what it used to be, my potential for serious mischief is also considerably lessened. The less than serious kind, however... Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:I should probably clarify that, while I think it was once possible for me to become someone as monstrous as I have described, my path has diverged significantly from that one.
I thought it was really interesting because I think Porter went through a very similar self-revelation. He used to be fairly amoral in a lot of ways, and at some point he looked at where that path was leading and decided it wasn't where he wanted to go. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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I don't think you ever had it in you to become a sociopath. Ever. I'm glad you figured that out, though.
As for birth videos being beautiful, while I'm generally in agreement, I dunno, A Baby Story has some pretty good editors...
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I think the camera changes the dynamic, though. The men that would ordinarily freak out and say, "Call me when you're done" (I had a doctor tell me about a guy who did that, and he was *dies from the un-shock* not in the family picture for very long) are a lot less likely to do it on camera.
I do agree that the show is interesting, but I think the film in question was a series of up-the-barrel shots of mothers screaming and pushing and babies coming out. *winces*
I think if I'd seen that sort of thing back then, I'd have gelded any man who even [i]tried[//i] to get busy with me.
And, uh, thanks for the non-sociopath vote of confidence. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:a series of up-the-barrel shots of mothers screaming and pushing and babies coming out.
If I couldn't visualize it before, I sure can now.
My wife had a c-section, so I ended up at the other end. Not that I wouldn't have been down there, of course.
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pH, I know! I sometimes feel that way when reading your blog. Not a lot of identical experience overlap, but a lot of the same manner of seeing/relating to/being related to. We're ... similar. *giggles madly*
On with the story... I guess I'm kind of touching on my relationships with a few people. I'm not sure how relevant they are, but they feel relevant. Reading over it, I wonder.
At least I know Carolyn is a character in Ronnie's story, however briefly.
Carolyn Soto was a Senior when I was a Freshman. One night early in the year we had a hall meeting in the dorm office. I’m not sure what was going on, but our RA and the Head RA met with our hall in this little room right off the lobby. I it had one chair, but we didn’t care because we were hungry and there was Crazy Bread.
This was my first ever experience with crazy bread. *tummy rumble* I ate it whenever I could in college, and it never stuck to my thighs. *rueful sigh*
Carolyn Soto was on my hall, and she was late. One of the Seniors talked about her being weird, somebody asked questions and soon they laid the juicy gossip on us. As a Freshman, Carolyn had left her dirty clothes in the hall bathroom for quite some time. She didn’t realize that she had to wash them herself because at home her housekeeper had always done it. She had come to King from the U.S. Virgin Islands, where middle class people on up often had servants, and boarding schools had laundry service.
Someone had had to teach her how to use the coin-operated machines in the basement, and the laundry room became a standard part of the Freshman tour. This had been hanging over her for her whole time at King, whispered about and speculated upon behind her back. This really pissed me off.
You encounter this almost anywhere you go. High School. New work environments. Whatever. Why is it that people who Know How Things Work Around Here are often so smug to the new people? They’re better than them because… they know where the bathrooms are?
My mother had taught me how to do the laundry at home, but there were a lot of things about living on campus that were new to me. Everyone was always nice about helping the Froshies find their classes or whatever, but now I wondered what was being said in private. They had told us that the school had a “very fast, efficient grapevine” and that if you’ve been seen walking with the same person three times around the oval, people would congratulate you on your engagement.
Anyway, she showed up and had some crazy bread with us. I could tell she was a little confused about eating it with her hands. I joked with her about it, and we talked a bit. Emily and I took a liking to her. Rumor had it that she never hung out with anybody much, though she had dated a fellow named Wade that graduated the year before. They were not still in touch.
One night shortly after that, Emily remarked to me that she had heard Carolyn had no plans for the weekend. She suggested we knock on her door and drag her over to our room for a party. I was all for it.
When she opened the door, I burst in, sliding past her in my bunny slippers. We forced her into sliding-down-the-hall-in-your-sock-feet races, and generally tried to jolly her up. She was a bit shocked at first, and more than a little wary, but we were persuasive and convincing, mostly because we were entirely sincere. She and Emily both played piano (Carolyn went on to get a Masters in Music, at least – I lost touch with her after that), and I set my goal to make her laugh every time I saw her.
I think her personality wore on Emily a little (or maybe it was my personality), and Carolyn and I ended up being buddies while Emily fell out of the picture. I invited her to a weekend lock-in with the youth group at my church, and she agreed.
Ronnie was there, and he had brought Chris Range. It was a hoot. Everyone else pretty much left us alone. They had gotten there early enough to have some fun with the peel and stick nametags. Each had taken a defining characteristic and paired it with something close to its opposite.
Ronnie’s read, “The World’s Palest Nubian” and Chris was “The World’s Tallest Dwarf”. We hung out a while, and they made Carolyn “The World’s Shortest Giant.” They kept trying to come up with one for me, but each was more offensive than the last.
“World’s Fattest Ethiopian?” Chris suggested. “Er, Anorexic!”
I blanched.
“Skinniest…”
“No, thank you.”
Ronnie looked dubious, but gave it a go anyway. “Smartest… Moron?”
I think they finally came up with ‘World’s Prettiest Hag” but somehow I never got around to putting it on.
Range, Ronnie and Carolyn discovered a mutual love for Monty Python movies, and amused me for the remainder of the night with their reenactments of various scenes from memory. I was mostly unfamiliar with the material, and thus became the audience.
I laughed until I hurt, and kept laughing. You know you’ve had a good laugh when you’re short of breath, your eyes are watery and the muscles in your cheeks feel like you’ve been through G-force testing.
It was a great time. I had brought Carolyn partly to get her out a bit and partly as a buffer between Ronnie and me. I had heard that he made jokes about my “frequent flyer miles” from school to church, because I hadn’t been at church as often during the week when I was at school. Though I often got rides for Sunday services, sometimes I just went with people at school to churches that were closer. It was tough to see him.
Carolyn had a good time, but there was no love connection for her, either. It didn’t matter, because we got what we needed – a chance to be ourselves around people who were real. Yeah, Chris and Ronnie were geeks, but so were we. It may have been the first time I ever saw her get excited about doing something with people in a group like that. She knew they weren’t privy to the school gossip, and wouldn’t harsh on her behind her back, I guess. I suppose I shouldn’t presume to speak for her, but that was my impression. I could be wrong.
Not too long after that, I noticed Carolyn on the hall phone with a phonebook on her lap, making several calls to get rates for taxi rides. She didn’t drive. I had a driver’s license, but no car. Actually, I did have a car that my brother had picked out for me, which I bought with some money from my trust fund. It was junk, and they didn’t want Freshman to have cars on campus anyway. There was a tremendous parking problem for commuters.
Anyway, I couldn’t offer her a ride. I didn’t know where she was trying to go and found it more difficult than you might think to ask her. She was a very private person, and I think we were friends because I didn’t push. I let her tell me stuff when she wanted, and I made sure she knew I didn’t judge her (which I think was a big a part of her being so private – that history she had on campus).
Later that day, I was sitting outside reading, and she came up. I greeted her and we talked a bit, but she seemed like she had something on her mind. Finally, she started to get around to whatever-it-was.
“We’re friends, right?”
“Yes.” A cold chill ran through me, wondering where this was going. I covered it with a bit of goofing. “Of course we are. Duh.”
She smiled, but didn’t laugh. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
I put my book down. “Of course you can. What is it?”
“Do you wash your own hair?”
(O_O)
I will not look shocked. I will not look surprised. Normal question. Perfectly normal.
“Why, yes. Yes I do.”
We got into it a bit. Her hair was very coarse, thick and curly. She kept it short, but really had no clue how to get it into the proper shape after washing. She had always had to go the hairdressers a lot, and her mother wasn’t paying for it anymore.
I loaned her my shampoo and told her pretty much how I usually did it with caveats that she might find other variations worked best for her, since my hair is fine and straight. For the styling, I suggested a small round brush and a blow-dryer, possibly with a small curling iron is some part of it wouldn’t cooperate.
She continued to look great after that, still very well-groomed and pretty. She had this flawless milky skin, straight white teeth and a prominent smile. Her eyes were large and dark, with thick lashes. I doubt she ever had to wear any make up besides a little lip color for a special occasion. It isn’t the kind of beauty that shows up in photographs, because in photos you can’t really tell about the details of complexion and the like.
Near the end of the school year she came up to me and turned her head, posing her arms like she was a hairspray model.
“You did your hair again? It looks good.”
“I didn’t just wash it! I CUT it myself!”
I was impressed. I still am. It looked good. All I could say was, “Wow.”
I was planning to visit my old Spanish teacher from Christian school over the summer. Her mother had become ill, and she went back to Puerto Rico to care for her, and had written asking me to visit. I bought the tickets months in advance, and was excited about it. So I blabbed, because that is what I do.
Carolyn gave me her phone number and address in Saint Thomas, and said I should call her when I got to Puerto Rico and we could plan a visit. The island-hopper flights were cheap. She was about to graduate; the end of the spring semester was a flurry of activity for everyone.
I was in the play, Shenandoah. Just the chorus, mind you. I dated the lead, but he was 26 and finishing school after a stint in the Navy. He made a good go of being as innocent as the majority of us, but I bugged when he got grabby. I had a great time on the show, though.
Once, one of the guys in the chorus (whose starting point was behind me before the curtain went up) got it into his heat to pick me up under the arms while Mrs. Mattice, the director, introduced the play. She’d read us the riot act for being too loud backstage, so I tried not to shriek while he swung my around over his head. Geez, I had fun on that play.
I saw Carolyn that summer, and we stayed in touch off and on for years, though I lost touch about the time she was getting serious about a guy and trying to cope with sharing living space with her weird brother.
I had met Wendell when I went to visit her on Saint Thomas. He came to dinner with his pajamas stuck to him like a six-year-old who doesn’t know how to dry himself, and kept a running narrative (of events around him, or his fantasies… I don’t know, because I stopped trying to listen when I heard my name).
They were each other’s only friends growing up because they weren’t allowed to play with kids of mixed blood (or something, I don’t know for sure), so when she went to college, he was all alone and became … the way he was. I don’t know. I hope he was able to integrate into society better in college, but I never heard for certain.
I think Carolyn did just fine. I hope she did. She was pretty, and became really bubbly once she was out of her shell. Her music was beautiful and soothing - - it sort of reminded me of Enya.
She was also the only person to ever beat me at trivial pursuit. At least, the only one I didn’t marry.
I met my Beloved that Spring, when he was visiting as a prospective student. He glowed – I couldn’t take my eyes off him. *sigh*
I hope you’ll understand that there is much about my relationship with my Beloved that I won’t go into here. It’s mine, it’s sacred to me and not something I feel like sharing with a lot of people. (I know that most of you reading and posting here are friends and well-wishers, but it just feels wrong to give some things away.) I will say that he got inside the wall I had built around my heart. I’m not sure how he did it, but my love for him and my association with him have saved my life.
Next time, those moments when everything is clear, and a little bit about the life that happens in between. We’re very close to the end, my dears.
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Thanks guys. I have another segment to post, but I need to fiddle with it a little and my writing time was eaten up by emergencies today. Bleh. But thank you. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Olivia, I had a night where two friends who had more or less just "met" recited Monty Python for hours, and i was the one who didn't know it. Lovely night.
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Busy weekend for me, so I'm only going to post the next little bit (I have more written, but won't have time to read over it until next week). I feel very close to the end, here. I'm itching to finish. It's like a scab that is almost ready to go, but you know it still might bleed a little. It's a little painful to scratch it off, but satisfying at the same time.
On with it, then.
Times when things are clear. Moments when something clicks in your head or your heart and everything seems simple. Very little of my life made sense in that way when I was younger, but there were times when I was close, during prayer or meditation.
I suppose I called it the Holy Spirit, when I was a practicing Christian. It’s kind of indescribable. Like that thing in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series where Douglas Adams describes seeing the universe with a “You are here” showing how insignificant you are. Only, instead of being scary and making you suicidal or crazy, it makes perfect sense. It’s really quite comforting.
I find it to be a place that is more and more reachable as I get older, though it’s still fairly rare. A drink of cold, cold water on very hot day; a chat with a friend who really understands you – those are the things that compare.
I had a moment of clarity like that when I visited the campus at King. I simply knew it was where I should go. I had no word on the scholarships I had applied for, and I would have to turn down a full ride to the local state college that I was offered from my High School. (It was offered to the top students and offered to me only when the four valedictorians and my sweet acquaintance Terese refused.) I had to act on faith, and it worked out.
Not sure why I was meant to be there, other than the obvious. Which brings me to another moment of perfect clarity. The weekend of my Beloved’s graduation (he was a year behind me, but also finished his degree in three years) I had been on my own for a year, and had had serious doubts about commitment. I was a child of divorce, you know. I wondered how I could be sure that my Beloved was a better choice than the almost infinite others who were always circling.
Some time ago there was a “Last first kiss” thread here. I didn’t participate, because I kissed several other boys after the first time I kissed my future husband. I had promised my grandmother I’d play the field, after all. There was the guy I made out with backstage when I was in the play The Crucible (*shrug* he was cute… it was a nervous thing), a few other boys when my future husband and I were still casual, and one guy at a SciFi convention when I was newly engaged and as terrified of the idea of marriage as a child of divorce can be. *facepalm* A SciFi Convention (talk about shooting fish in a barrel) .
I was confused. I was afraid my mother was right and my Beloved would turn out to be ‘like my father.’ I did not know exactly what she meant by that, but I knew it couldn’t be good. My head was spinning, and everything had been over-analyzed to the point that nothing made sense. I almost made the biggest mistake of my life.
Just before Ron’s graduation, I was sitting with him quietly, not thinking of anything. Suddenly, it seemed to me that the ceiling disappeared and the room was filled with infinite stars. Tiny points of light in an immense velvet darkness. Just like that, I saw where I belonged. It hasn’t been any easier a journey than my time at King, but was right. Simply meant to be.
I think we all have a path we are meant to follow. Not that fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it means that it will be easy. Usually, some parts of it seem quite difficult; you just have to trust that what you need will be there when you need it, because this is the Universe and You Are Here. This is where you belong, this is what you have to know, what you have to do.
It was fate that I met the people I did. The [rudeword] hymen-hunter, the people who made assumptions about me, the people who didn’t. I met Tsventanka Radev, and she was inspired to mentor me so much more in life than in voice training. I knew I would never be a great singer, and she had to know it, too. But she gave me the best advice I ever had, and showed me, by example, how to live life with passion and take each moment as it comes.
A love for an unworthy person is like a cancer – you must cut it out of you want to live.
She told me about her conductor, a good communist, who had pursued her after her husband escaped to the West. She had divorced her husband, and had pretended to be angry and surprised that he had defected, even though they had planned it. Two years passed before the conservatory was performing in Greece, and she escaped. But before she left, she told the conductor the truth, that she still loved her husband and was going to the West to be with him. He could have turned her in, but he did not. He let her escape to the West, to be with her true love.
This, she told me, was a man worthy of her love, though she had not been free to give it.
I have been blessed to have been loved by a worthy man, and to have made a life with him. I would not do it differently.
Next time, I’ll tie up some loose ends, and fill in a few gaps that have to be fixed before I can wrap it up. Thank you for your patience.
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I've had several of those "meant to be there" experiences in my life as well. It is a very powerful and compforting assurance, because there is a peace and security that comes from knowing that no matter how difficult the path may be, it's the right one and leaving it is not an option. More than that--I didn't want to leave it.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Thank you all for saying such nice stuff and sticking with me. It's such a relief for me to get some of this stuff out.
Uprooted- I've been thinking about this idea a lot lately, and I think this must be true of most people when they follow the path that they are meant to follow. It may be hard, but if it's right, then the hard doesn't matter so much. It gives me an idea that death itself is not so fearsome, being itself a part of the path.
Onward!
Gaps. I was trying not to tell my whole life story, so I left quite a bit out. Lots of people, relationships, interesting stories. I tried only to use the ones that made sense in the context of my relationship with Ronnie Ellis. Those things that shed light on what comes later, or at least on how I experienced it.
So I guess it really is about me after all, since I doubt it would have been the same for anyone else. We are all unique little snowflakes (I know that is a myth, heh) and all that. Snowflakes? Freaks, maybe. Scot-the-jerkwad’s mother had three kidneys, mine was missing a vertebra... some people can feel and taste things that others cannot. We're all unique little freaks, bundles of strengths and weaknesses, experiences and assumptions.
This thing (story?) is just my way of trying to share how something felt for me.
Now that I am close to the end, I realize there are some things I left out, partly because I’ve shared them on Hatrack or other places in the past. Some old timers might remember my “spirit of inappropriate laughter” story, but I have to tell it again for this to make sense.
I had a hard adolescence. I mean, “easy adolescence” is an oxymoron, but mine was much harder on the inside than the outside. I felt alienated in Christian school, to a degree I never really expressed here. No one ever really knew when I contemplated suicide, though my mother knew I was having a bad time of it.
During that time, my mother and I were asked to come to a special prayer group. The purpose had something to do with the Shawnee Prophet’s curse. Our family lore said were descended from him, my great-great-great grandmother supposedly having been his daughter. I have never verified this, so I don’t know if it is true. I want to make that clear, because my relatives were fuzzy on the specifics, and I personally doubt it (though there is a definite resemblance in some older photos – Shawnee/Southern Iroquois features (broad cheekbones, slanty, hooded eyes) are fairly unique).
In any case, they wanted us to pray with them as a scion of the shaman. I think, looking back, that that was probably only a secondary reason, possibly an outright excuse, but I cannot say for certain. The small group included our pastor and his wife (he was also our optometrist, oddly enough), our family doctor, his wife and the associate pastor and her husband (he was a veterinarian).
When we finished with the prayers on that topic, the group asked to pray for us. Not that unusual, either. They all knew that our family had a history of polycystic kidney disease, and they all believed in divine healing, the laying on of hands and, well, 100+ year-old curses. *shrug*
I was sitting in a wing-backed chair, and everyone prayed for me first. It was the tradition in that circle to touch people when you prayed for them. I had never had a serious problem with the practice, though it was not always super comfortable for me.
No one touched me inappropriately, mind you – knees and below, arms shoulders and head were the usual places. Upper back would have been okay, too, but the chair didn’t allow that. Most of them were essentially on their knees around the chair where I sat.
It was pretty standard until one of them said something like, “Spirit of fear, I bind you in the name of Jesus.”
I say “something like” because my memories of the entire evening are very dim when compared to other things that happened around the same time in my life. This is typical, for me, of highly emotional memories. Emotional distress is like a fog, and over-exposed piece of film. Washed out and vague.
What they were doing was a thing they called “deliverance” in Charismatic circles. Not a possession/exorcism thing, but the idea that spiritual influences can attack people when they are weakened. You get sad, a spirit of depression can latch onto you. That sort of thing. Frank Peretti’s first big novel basically fictionalized the concept.
Anyway, they started naming things, binding them in the name of Jesus, commanding them to leave me alone. I was pretty okay with it at first. I figured they were trying to help me. They were grown ups I respected, so I figured they knew a lot I didn’t.
“Spirit of fear”… well, okay. I was afraid of a lot of things. What the kids at school would say about me if I wore the wrong thing, afraid to speak up about anything… Yeah, I was pretty fearful. It would be good not to be afraid. That was all they were saying, right?
“Spirit of depression…” Okay, sure. I had been depressed. There had been times my life was so miserable I’d prayed to die (it passed pretty quickly when I escaped Christian school, but… teen angst is an awful thing). Adjusting to my parent’s divorce and still very resentful of my stepfather (I was a total bitch to him, and he loved me like his own anyway – I’ll think of him as my true father until the day I die, but it wasn’t always that way) it had all been hard. They just wanted me to be happy.
Then one of them said, “Spirit of Matricide, I bind you in the name of Jesus!” They were all praying out loud, all at once. Sometimes in a form of tongues they called a “prayer language” (I think it is actually quite similar in function to the nonsense mantras of meditative practice) sometimes not.
Anyway, it got loud, and everyone was binding this mother-killing spirit by the blood of Jesus, and it kind of scared me. I’d been depressed. I’d been afraid. I had even said I wished I was dead, or that my parents would die, as angry 13 year-olds will sometimes do. But I knew I never really wanted my mother to die. That was just… crazy.
Now, I know a lot of you would have jumped to the “just crazy” conclusion a few paragraphs ago, but this was the environment I was in, the people I had trusted with my life, my health, my sight. My mother was there, too, just praying with them like before, but not with the same conviction. It’s really hard to reject a religious community that you’ve been a part of, with your family, for so long. I didn’t do it until years later, and it was very hard, even then.
What I DID do at that moment was laugh. I started giggling. It was crazy. Besides, I’ve been known to giggle in surprise, giggle when someone jumps out from behind a tree at me. I even giggled once when part of piano fell on my leg. (It was a smooth transition – giggle-tears-crying, and after the pain faded, giggling again. Maybe it was all those loony toons. Piano falling on somebody = funny. I don’t know.) I’m a nervous laugher, too.
So, I giggled.
Immediately, someone shouted, “Spirit of inappropriate laughter. I BIND you in the name of Jesus!”
O_O
I am NOT making this up.
By this time, they were pressing me into the chair pretty firmly. It was loud, and I was scared. I wiggled a little, but they only pressed harder and prayed louder, like they thought I was manifesting a demon. I think that is exactly what they thought. It scared me, and I struggled harder.
When I realized I couldn’t get away from six adults holding me down in a chair, I stopped fighting. I was crying and doing some praying of my own. I knew they thought they were casting demons out of me. I respected them; I didn’t want them to be wrong, because it would call the whole of my beliefs into question.
Therefore, I came to believe that they had cast demons out of me. Or, “spiritual influences,” which is different than possession, supposedly. Whatever. Seems like some really wack [poop]. I guess it is. It was just really, really hard to make that judgment when you had nothing to compare it to.
At some point, they did the same thing to mom. I don’t really remember if it was before or after me. I think they cast a "spirit of lust" out of her, which pisses me off to think about it. My mother was gorgeous. She rarely wore make up or dressed up. She was always modest. But she could go to the grocery store in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt and (I kid you not - - I saw it happen) the guy delivering Sodas with a hand truck would stop and hold the automatic door for her. O_O She didn’t need a ‘spiritual influence’ to turn a man’s head, but she was a faithful wife and a modest woman. “Spirit of Lust” my pasty, dimpled [rudeword].
Must've had a roomful of monkeys working overtime to come up with THAT one. *smirk* Or maybe they were right, and my mother turned heads because of a "demonic influence". You could make the case that I am deceiving myself and they were right all along. I could fictionalize it either way and still fit the facts.
I went around in a daze, wondering if my mother hated me, or thought I was planning to kill her. It was nightmarish. The real world took on a dreamlike quality, and I wondered if I might pick up a demonic influence if I listened to the radio. It’s hard to even think about, but it is relevant to what happened later.
That whole experience left its mark on me. After I was away at college I became less and less comfortable coming back to that environment. The Associate Pastor had moved on to other things, and my doctor went to different church, so I only saw him if I was sick. Saw the Associate Pastor’s husband when my cat needed shots, off and on over the years. I don’t hold it against them, but at the time I was … very raw.
The pastor left to lead another church – one that was larger and apparently more prosperous – only to discover that their pastor (who had also left for greener pastures) had left the church a few million dollars in debt. Also, there was some scandal with a woman in the church trying to pursue him. He found out his daughter (who had always tormented me – was, in fact, the worst of the lot) had been molested by his father. Last I heard he was back in optometry. His nephew, who always led the worship services, took over the church. He and his wife are true believers, and the church is, as far as I know, doing fine under his more moderate guidance.
But the optometrist was still the pastor until well after I stopped going, sometime in the early 90s.
I took my Beloved to church several times there. He hated it, but didn’t dump me. It was kind of a boyfriend litmus test -- see if they could stand my crazy church. Jeanette caught my eye the first time I brought him and gave me a big thumbs up. I don’t know why it mattered to me – but she was still something like a friend. Ronnie met a few boys I brought from college to visit my church…I remember one in particular, before my Beloved came along.
I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he had a black belt in Tae Kwon-Do. He was short with strawberry blond hair and mustache. It occurred to me (only when mom pointed it out) that he was similar in appearance to both Ronnie Ellis and my stepdad (I called him “Papa” by then).
One time mom and I swung by to pick up Ronnie Ellis for youth group. He told me about his time at ETSU. He said he kept dating tall, skinny brunettes until he realized he was still trying to date me. I had no idea what to say to that. It was the last time I ever spoke to him in his top floor room with the slanty ceilings. I think I was afraid he’d tell me he still loved me if I was alone with him.
So I was never alone with him again.
Mom would run into him in town, and pass me news. He left ETSU and worked at Pizza Inn for a while, saving his money. Mom and Papa tended to hit Pizza Inn’s Sunday buffet, so she saw him a lot. She always told him what was up with me, and always told me what was up with him. We still had a friendship, but it had to pass through my mother first. It was easier that way.
Eventually, he went to film school in Wilmington, and I didn’t see him much after that. There are not many gaps left, but I do want to tell you one more story that will give more context to the religious sea change that most of you know is coming.
quote: I have spoke with the tongue of angels, I have held the hand of a devil. It was warm in the night; I was cold as a stone.
I did a little more than hold the Devil’s hand, but not much.
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it's getting there, you realize you have to write the last part in July right, you have to hold it out till then.
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While it made me sick to my stomach and gave me the chills. Would have sent me right into my shell to never come out again. Especially from people you respected. Did your mother ever say anything about it? I assume she continued in the church?
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The "Spirit of inappropriate laughter" thing would have made me laugh harder. Which would probably not have been good.
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pH - Exactly... I not onlyhave one, I'm a carrier.
breyer - So I'll have been at it a year? I don't think I can do that...
Christy, my mom was kind of mum and supportive. I think she felt obligated to not make a stink about it at the time because I was in school there, and she was working there to pay my tuition. But, I think she gave some weight to it... I don't know. She was very active in the church, and I think she weathered the fads pretty unflappably. She was best buddies with the wife of the man who eventually took over (not so long after that) and the former leadership was somewhat out of favor. I think they blamed it mostly on the Associate Pastor, since she was the one who brought the concept to the church. She didn't last long and things blew over. I never heard my mother badmouth people. If she was upset or had nothing good say, she would be quiet.
She was seldom quiet, but after that night, she was playing things close, I guess.
I should probably point out that the focus wasn't on the idea that we were bad, it was just seen as a way to be free from our fears or whatever. As a thought exercise, I can see how it could be beneficial, symbolic of spiritual changes. But, "Spirit of Inappropriate Laughter" came straight out of somebody's nether regoins.
kq - I might have, too. Maybe I did, at first, I don't recall. But they got louder and more forceful with me, and dang if that didn't kill the funny.
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The Devil. Capital D + evil. That is the name we gave a guy who was briefly at my old church. I think his given name was David, which seems to be the name of at least 30% of men my age. I have also known a disproportionate number of Scot(t)s, but when in doubt, go with David.
This was during my last year at college, during the Holidays I believe. I was home for Thanksgiving, or Fall Break, and went to a Youth Group meeting at my church. It was kind of a prayer meeting, and when they got down to the praying for everybody bit, I slunk out of the sanctuary. There were a lot of people there that were new. Most of my friends were married or attending elsewhere by then. Jeanette’s younger sister Jennifer was there. I had always gotten on well with her. One summer we had done several skits together at various youth functions.
I was uncomfortable having them pray for me (note to self: I keep misspelling “pray” as “prey” and it seems oddly appropriate), but I wasn’t sure why. I think now it was because I didn’t want them touching me, but at the time I refused to acknowledge that particular quirk of mine. It just wasn’t normal to be so stand-offish in that context – people would assume I was troubled or something. Maybe try to cast a demon of Unsnuggleness out of me.
I think that was it, partly, but mostly it was because I was no longer comfortable with the church, its beliefs or its people. Many reasons for that, but the biggest was this: I was in love with a man who simply would not fit into this religious box with me. I hadn’t liked the box all that well for some time, but it is really hard to leave what you know, I guess.
Some time that year (before my mission trip to Brazil, I think, but possibly after) My Beloved and I had been together, just sort of quietly thinking. Out of nowhere I had muttered (half to myself and half to him), “Are you my husband?”
I know this is a bizarre thing to say and the tense doesn’t seem right, but that was exactly the right way to say it. He blinked once, smiled and said that he was. Then he asked, “Will you marry me?”
“Sure. Next Tuesday good for you?” I made it a joke, you see. Deep down I think I knew the truth of it, but it scared me. It became kind of a running gag between us. He would send me cards or letters, leave me little notes about whatever, all with the closing “Will you marry me?”
I taped a few of the prettier cards to my door next to the message board. People would read them and gasp, “You’re engaged?!?” And I would always laugh and say, “That’s just the way he signs everything.”
OBLIVIOUS. Deliberately oblivious.
He was so absurdly perfect for me. He was kind and thoughtful, eager to please me and incapable, it seemed, to pressure me to do anything. Eventually I realized that I wanted to make him happy, too. I loved him, and it scared me. So I tried to weasel out of it. I tried to make an issue of religion. He bent like a reed; he wouldn’t fight me. He’d just respond with cool reason and get me to examine possibilities I had not considered.
My mother saw that he was smart, and feared that he was manipulative (the words, “like your father” always slipped into the comparisons). Papa just smiled and said, “She’s not gonna get rid of that one so easy. Heh.”
I just want to pause here to say that my stepdad (“Papa”) is the wisest most loving father I could have had. He loved me, even when I corrected his grammar and made fun of his manners -- he wouldn’t even let my mother punish me for it. He just loved me, and I came around. It’s because of him that I was able to recognize a good man when I found one (though it was a near thing). I am truly to have a man like my papa in my life. The voice of reason and practicality, tempered with love.
So, there I was, hiding from the youth group’s prayers, thinking about the meaning of life, and terrified by the idea that it was either more complex or far simpler than my religious education had led me to believe.
The youth group had gone weird. The youth leader had moved away and the church had made David the Devil and his best friend Associate Youth Ministers, even though they were teens themselves (my age at the time, 19-20). Attendance was up, because girls thought they were cute (especially the Devil, with his long blonde hair and big brown eyes). He sort of looked like John Malkovitch in Dangerous Liaisons, if Valmont had been a blonde.
His best friend, whose name entirely escapes me, had more of a Richard Simmons feel to him. His hair was longer and curlier, he was taller and thinner, too. There was quite a bit of that vibe, though. The kind of guy that you just want to shake and say, “Freakin’ admit you’re gay, and get on with it!” But I would not have articulated it that way at the time.
The Devil found me sitting in the kitchenette just off the back of the sanctuary, and asked me what was wrong. I said that I just wanted to be alone, to pray by myself for a while. That was what I was doing, more or less. My prayers were more like desperate pleas for guidance.
We talked a bit, and I admitted I was not comfortable with the youth group any more. No sense in lying. He was pleasant and friendly enough, but I was not comfortable seeking spiritual guidance from some guy my own age, whom I had just met. My mom had talked him up quite a bit, but I was leery.
Skip ahead to Christmas Break. The Youth Group went caroling at nursing homes, then to a Christmas party at the Devil’s house. His younger brother was also in the group, not that he enters into the story at all. Their father wasn’t home, and everyone went to the basement to play Nintendo and gorge on snack foods and sodas. We had all met at the church and gone on the rounds in a couple of cars, so I was stranded until it was over. The combination of so much sugar, starch and video games was making me queasy. I felt so old for that youth group stuff. My contemporaries were essentially gone.
I asked if I could use their phone and slinked off upstairs to find it. Mom didn’t mind me being late, she said. Plus, she didn’t know the way to his house and couldn’t pick me up. “Just relax and have fun.” *sigh*
I sat on a little love seat and held my head in my hands. I felt sick and tired and out of place. We were supposed to keep the party in the basement so the house wouldn’t be wrecked, but I wasn’t wrecking anything; I was having a sugar-low breakdown. I hoped it would pass if I could stay still and quiet.
Of course, the Devil found me. We talked a bit, and he somehow managed to turn what I said about my crisis of faith into guilt about having a non-believer for a boyfriend. Was that what I said? My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
We prayed together, hands touching. I started to cry, and he comforted me with a hug. But he didn’t let go. I pushed away a little, and looked up at him. I was dizzy.
I don’t know if many of you are as sensitive to blood sugar crap as I am ( I’m not that sensitive now, but back then I was between 5’7” and 5’8” and weighed around 115 lbs). I didn’t really see what was going on, at the time. Even now, it’s a bit muddled.
I was emotional, yes, and the boohoos had a slight physiological component, I’m sure. But the big deal was that I was going through a very typical young adult thing, where you’re trying to reconcile what you grew up with what you’ve grown into. I think so, anyway.
So, yeah. I know you already know what happened. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. I was just *lost.* I imagine if you hit someone hard enough in the head and then kissed them, they’d be about as addled as I was.
The party wound down and the Devil took me back to my car at the church. He had to go in for something (he had a key) and I needed the restroom so I went in, too. I don’t remember why, but I called My Beloved on my calling card from the church phone. I tried to tell him what had happened, but mostly he guessed, I think. I wasn’t super articulate. I was confused, but I promised I wouldn’t let him kiss me again that night.
I drove home and cried myself to sleep.
The funny thing is, that it is all so ridiculously clear to me now. I was upset and hurting, and had been somewhat taken advantage of by somebody who should have had my spiritual best interests at heart. At the time I was caught up in questions of right and wrong and guilt and so forth, but clearly he was in the wrong to have kissed me. I probably should have slapped him and ratted him out, but it was quite murky at the time.
We saw each other a few times over that break. I went with him to a nursing home to visit his grandmother with Alzheimer’s, the youth group went to some concert or other as a group.
We had talked a lot about matters spiritual and our own testimonies before the Christmas Party Incident. He had told me that his mother had molested him on the day she left the family, when he was thirteen or so. He had told me about how his best friend had been afflicted with a spirit of homosexuality, and how he had been delivered after saying something along the lines of “If you love me, David, the why won’t you [rudeword] me.” (Side note: the best friend ended up marrying Jennifer, but they split up after he kept bringing in young boys off the street, calling it God’s work. I don’t know the details, but I’m angry that misguided religious beliefs put my friend in such an unpleasant marriage. I heard all this second hand from mom, who didn’t know the guy had ever been afflicted with a ‘spirit of homosexuality’, but I connected the dots. I admit I could be wrong.)
It was also raw and open, discussing those things in a context of spiritual meaning, that I had begun to trust him before the kiss. I admit that. I also admit that he was kinda hot, so I’m not saying I was as clean as the driven snow.
I talked with Jennifer and asked if he had ever gone out with other girls in the youth group. She said he hadn’t, though many had tried. *shrug* I had been disinterested, so maybe that was it. I don’t know. Jennifer seemed shocked when I told her, and it DID undermine him as a youth leader.
He loaned me a Frank Peretti book because I had said I wanted to be a writer. He said we needed more good Christian writers, like Frank Perreti. I made it less than a hundred pages into the thing, and was very disappointed. I told him so, which took the shine off the apple a bit. Later, he put his hand on my chest over the clothes; he didn’t move or anything just kind of cupped me. I stared at him. “What are you doing?” I should have known better than to be alone with him, but I think that was after we visited his grandmother. It took me by surprise. *sigh* At least I was dressed in layers.
He said, “Don’t you like it?”
“That is not the point.” I stared him down until he removed his hand in shame. *giggles* I admit it was kind of a power trip for me to make him take his hand away instead of me pushing him off. I had the impression that he thought he could try stuff with me because I had a “worldly” boyfriend. I wanted him to be embarrassed, and I was a little afraid I’d end up beating the mother-@#2# if I touched him at all.
He gave me a cd for my birthday, which I returned for store credit, unopened. My Beloved gave me a new stereo. Nyah. (Allow me my pettiness, children—I so seldom feel the right to be catty, yet I am unrepentant of the preceding paragraph.)
Long story short, that was pretty much it for me and that church. The Devil stayed on, but I don’t really know how long. Mom ran into him some years later; he was engaged and going to another church. My Beloved and I were married over a year by then, and living in Chicago (land ).
That had not been the only time someone in that church had shown a willingness to blur the line between friendly, spiritual touches and the less spiritual kind. There was a father of one of my friends in the youth group who would kiss me on the neck instead of the cheek, and put his hands inside my coat when he hugged me after church. *shudder* My mom finally asked why I didn’t put on my coat until we were outside, and I told her. She helped me run interference.
I later learned that the guy was volunteering at the Girls’ Group Home (the new youth ministers, a husband and wife, ran it at the time), and I got the woman to herself and told her about what he had done to me. She said she was sure he was free of those spiritual influences, if he’d ever had them in the first place. I was fallen, see, because I didn’t go to church anymore; my word was suspect.
I told her that I only told her to clear my conscience; if anything happened, it wouldn’t be my fault for keeping quiet. I have no idea whether anything happened or not.
The whole church was kind of exasperated with the guy. He would “speak in tongues” during the service, and do other stuff “under the influence of the spirit” that made folks roll their eyes. People talked to him about it, because no one bought that his little shenanigans were of God. Eventually they went somewhere else, but I was long gone by then.
Not that the church was bad. It was really full of good, earnest people. Most of them just wanted to know God and to do the right thing. But every church has its slimebags, or its people who are so proud of their righteousness that you want to slap them in the head with a week-old perch. But I digress.
Church was a big part of my life. When I was in high school, I was asked to help prepare and serve communion because they saw me as pure and devout. I was. It was painful to leave that behind, but my path took me in a different direction.
You could make a case that they were right about spiritual influences; I think it is close to the truth, a way of distilling basic human truths into spiritual language of that particular section of Christianity. But some of it is, quite obviously, utter crap.
Ronnie Ellis was in film school, and the youth group was just plain Not For Me anymore. When I finally made the decision to leave those beliefs behind me (I had left the people and the church behind me quite some time before that) it was not with a heavy heart at all. My path simply didn’t go that way.
I still believe there is divine power in the universe, and I still hope to follow the path it puts before me. I don’t know where it will lead. I mean no offense to those who walk paths of different faiths (I have a faith, I think, but not a religion). I respect people of true faith, and I find they have several key traits in common, even when they do not belong to the same major religion.
This is only important to the story in a secondary way. I want you all to get my approach to events, and how events have changed that approach.
Next time I plan to tie up a few loose ends I left hanging from earlier installments, and tell you how my mother came to love my husband almost as much as I do.
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The spirit of inappropriate laughter thing made me laugh. It also reminded me of when I had my blessing after I was baptized when I was 9. I remember the weight of the hands on my head, trying to pay attention to what was said, but finding it drifting. Nothing strange about it that I remember, I just don't recall finding it very moving. 'Course, I was only 9.
Second impression is that a sr pastor must be some serious kind of dumb to make a teenager a youth minister. Seriously.
I love how you write about your husband.
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I don't know if you've read Lightning, by Koontz, but you remind me more and more of the protagonist in it. Although I haven't read it in a few years, so maybe I'm reaching.
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quote:Originally posted by Olivet: I was emotional, yes, and the boohoos had a slight physiological component, I’m sure. But the big deal was that I was going through a very typical young adult thing, where you’re trying to reconcile what you grew up with what you’ve grown into. I think so, anyway.
So, yeah. I know you already know what happened. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. I was just *lost.* I imagine if you hit someone hard enough in the head and then kissed them, they’d be about as addled as I was.
You describe that cotton-woolled, WTF? mental state very well.
quote:and tell you how my mother came to love my husband almost as much as I do.
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Loose ends. Hmm. I’m going to tell the last bits of Grady’s story, what I know of it. We didn’t speak much in the rest of college. He asked me once of I had stolen David’s notebook “as a joke.” But I had not. There were a rash of thefts of notebooks left in the cubbies outside the cafeteria near the end of my last year.
Mine was stolen not long after his. It was annoying, because it was right before finals week and the notebook had my notes for Man and the Arts, Philosophy and Lewis, Tolkein Williams (taken for Religion credit, SCORE!). Luckily, I didn’t need my notes. The act of writing them cemented the information into my brain well enough (though I planned on trying to forget the Philosophy after the final). Man and the arts… I mostly needed to listen to enough classical music to identify particular pieces, which the notes would not helped with anyway.
Lewis, Tolkien, Williams (Sayer was added to squeeze a femme in, though she wasn’t an Inkling) was a great class. I LOVED it. It was a class I shared with my Beloved, but, sadly, also with Grady and his roommate, David (who was still pissed at me for not falling for him, I think). I liked him well enough, but he hated me. Or at least felt the need to giggle when I was the only one in the class willing to admit to knowing what a “succubus” was. :rolleye: I got over it.
The thing about that class was that we had a choice about our final paper. We could do the typical lit/crit thing, standard format, standard length OR we could write something creative. A short story (at least 2000 words) or 5-7 poems. I was beside myself.
I had been taking an independent study with the female Dr. Woolsey (there were two, a married couple, both English profs). It could have been better. My writing was very rough. I was trying hard, but maybe too hard. I don’t know. Anyway, she liked my poems. I was embarrassed by them, truth be told. They rhymed. *wince* How unfashionable was that? But I enjoyed writing them, fiddling with meter and so forth.
So I wrote poems. My Beloved took me to the park (where we would often go to lounge on blankets and read assignments or play catch with old pillows, whatever) and there I sat next to a stream called Steele’s Creek, and wrote my unfashionable, heartfelt and truly enjoyable poems. I turned them in to Dr. McDonald (we later named a son after him, we both thought so well of him). He had been my faculty advisor from the beginning, and he was the faculty member over the school newspaper (I was co-editor) and generally a phenomenal teacher. He was a man of true, living faith, as well.
His tests were never easy, and he never cut anybody any slack on stuff, though. Once, when I had to do a presentation for Shakespeare while I had a bad urinary tract infection, he offered to let me present it after fall break. I said I just wanted to get it over with. I was greasy and shaking with fever, maybe not thinking through that decision clearly. Heh. I tanked. If my notes hadn’t been really good and detailed…Anyway, he knew I was a good student, but he didn’t play favorites.
I shuddered at the thought of him reading the poems, even though the grade on them would be a basic 0-10 scale thing, with a +5 meaning it got full credit and anything above that counted as extra credit points. There was also a little matter of the class reading. The class would meet off campus at a pizza place, eat and read our work aloud. It was voluntary, of course, but I was determined to force myself to do it.
I’m great at forcing myself to do difficult things. Or I used to be. I think I still do it. I’ll discover I have reluctance to do something, and if I cannot find a good reason why that thing should not be done, I make myself do it. Sometimes I go much farther even than I need to, like I’m grinding my reluctance under my heel. *shrug* It’s just one of those things I do.
I was thrilled when I got the poems back, with positive notes (and full points), but horrified at sharing them. Especially where Grady and David could hear them, because I just sensed that David would find a way to laugh at them. I had hurt his feelings and all, but man! They say women hold a grudge.
Everyone showed up, everyone seemed excited to participate. That was fine. There were many more short stories than poems, so it was a longish exercise. Most of them were enjoyable. I remember Grady’s was an interesting metaphysical thing about a guy in a car accident going to hell with loud music playing. Or something. It sounds dumb when you say it that way, but I was impressed. I didn’t think he had it in him.
Me, I was waiting for the crowd to thin. It did. The restaurant got ready to close, so we met back in a classroom (and lost a bunch of people in the process). Grady had already read his, and I was hoping he’d fade. No such luck. I can’t remember when David read, but I had the sense that they were waiting me out. I was scared of reading the stuff, but it would have been easier without them. The group dwindled to less than ten people, most of them my fellow English majors. One was named Debbie, and her husband Gray, who had graduated a year or two before and wrote absolutely hilarious short stories, was there, too.
Debbie and I were buddies, but I was intimidated by Gray. He was going to be a minister and was very comfy with public speaking; his campus short story readings were always great. People would talk about them for days.
I read all but one of my poems. (I had one that made no sense even to me.) People asked me questions about them, even Gray. Two of them were kind of related poems with opposing themes of day and night, each with a central human character. Gray asked me why I had chosen a child for the day poem and a woman for the night poem. It was a good question, and I surprised myself by having an answer.
Daytime is bright and open – you can see so much, and what you see is what you get, mostly. Small children are often just like that – guileless. Night is more mysterious, and the moon is often a feminine symbol.
I hadn’t really thought about it until he asked, but it made sense in retrospect and sounded like I knew what I was doing. O_O
People came up to me after we broke for the night, and gushed about the poems. Some expressed profound surprise that I had written something “like that”, which I decided to take as a compliment. Even the next day, people who had not been there came up to me and said, “I heard you’re this fantastic poet.”
Now, I didn’t let it go to my head. I knew that the people who judge such things would sniff at rhyming poems, especially ones about frivolous things, like bees (that one was my favorite, as I recall).
The year after I graduated, though, the faculty put together a chapbook of animal-themed poetry, and I was the only contributor who had never been on the faculty, which was kind of cool. My (by then) fiancé was taking a printmaking class, and got to do a woodcut to go opposite my poem. That was neat.
Anyway, even Grady broke his usual rule of not speaking to me unless he absolutely had to, to congratulate me on the poems.
Just before the end of school, I was eating a bit late (breakfast, I think) and was shocked to find that he had joined me at the table. He was engaged(or soon would be – not certain of the timeline there), to a very sweet education major named Becky. She had lived across from me in the dorm the year before, and I liked her well enough, though Grady’s inability to be friendly with girls he had dated in the past made it difficult for our interactions to be anything but awkward. Funny, that.
Anyway, it was weird for him to sit with me at breakfast. No one else was there – I had barely made it before they stopped serving. I recall he asked me about the future, what I planned to do after graduation.
At that point I was not officially engaged, but I would be within the month. Anyway, THAT was none of his business. I told him that I didn’t know what would do, but that I thought I might like to go back to Brazil. There were so many homeless, orphaned children there. I had seen it first hand, and I wanted to help. I thought I might take a year off and then go to graduate school. I still wanted to be an academic, back then.
We chatted a bit. He still had a year to go before he was finished with his degree, but then he would probably go to seminary.
It was awkward, this friendly chat, but I have never really figured out why. I guess it was just so very strange for him to speak to me, that I just knew he had to have some hidden motive. Closure? A determination to show “no hard feelings” maybe?
Maybe it shouldn’t have seemed weird at all, but… when someone seeks you out and asks pointed questions about the future when they have been deliberately avoiding you for two years? *shrug* I was puzzled, and amused.
Graduation Day had many festivities before the actual graduation. There was a chapel service, and a meal for families at the student center (they even used tablecloths!) before the main event. There had also been a senior dinner the night before, so after the Chapel service, my family decided to go off campus for lunch. I had to make a pit stop in the Student Center ladies room before we left, though.
My family waited by the main doors, but before I could get to them, Grady and his father entered my immediate path. His family was there for Becky’s graduation, since she and Grady were engaged by then. He stopped me. “Dad, you remember Olivia.”
We greeted each other politely. I was holding my cap and gown over one arm, carefully. I had spent a good deal of energy getting the wrinkles out. His father noticed.
“You’re graduating? I thought you were the same year as Grady!”
I glanced down and counted to three. I will not be smug. I will not be smug. I will not be smug. I looked up and smiled my best self-deprecating smile.
“I was.” I saw past them that my family and my fiancé had seen me, and were coming over. “I just took some extra classes and worked really hard.”
That wasn’t even really a lie. It HAD been hard to keep up with my classes and edit the school newspaper, too, especially while I was auditing the second year of koine Greek (it conflicted with a class I had to take to graduate, but only on one day a week, so I got permission to sit in on the other two classes).
We made the other introductions as my family and my Beloved came up, and Mr. Davidson suggested I check out UVA’s graduate program (I did, but decided I didn’t own enough black turtlenecks). Gradually, it became obvious that he thought we were going into the dining hall for the family meal, but we were not.
“Nice to talk to you! We’ll see you at the graduation.” Both true.
Last cool thing… I didn’t know if I was going to get honors or not. The registrar had had to call the CLEP people to get my score on the Psych 101 test, to see if they could give me credit. If they couldn’t, I couldn’t graduate because it was a core requirement. (The whole Scot thing had made me leery of taking the class. Besides, my sister had an M.S. in Psychology, and I had borrowed and read all of her basic textbooks in prep for the test). I believed I had nailed it. I had technically “passed” it in the summer, but my school required a score a few points higher for credit. You had to wait at least six months for re-testing, and the results took a few months, too.
If I wasn’t actually graduating then, they would let me “walk” but not give me the degree until December. Also, whatever honors I had earned would not be announced. It was a smallish private school, only one graduation ceremony a year.
I had found out the day before that my CLEP had been a full ten points higher than the school required, this time around, so I knew I would graduate. What I didn’t know was how I had done on my finals, so I did not know if I had done well enough to keep my standing.
She was a very inspiring speaker. We were outside, and it looked like rain. The “outside” thing had been good when it came to the entrance march, led by Dr. MacDonald on the bagpipes (in his full academic regalia – his doctorate was from Aberdeen, I believe). As I have mentioned before, Bagpipes outside = good; Bagpipes inside = temporary deafness/possible permanent hearing damage.
I had to sit next to E. Roy. He was the last of the Gs and I was the first of the Hs, in the B.A. in Liberal Arts and Humanities section. My luck.
I was the first person to cross the sate to have honors announced. Summa cum laude. My knees felt weak. I was blinking away tears as I shook Dr. Mac’s hand. My brother-in-law whooped. I heard Mrs. James say, “wow.”
There were only about five summagraduates total, maybe less. I was a 3.98 by then, not a 4.0 (a got a B in choir for being late too many times, and B in Prophetic Lit for not turning in something in that I did actually turn in, but fixing it would have meant talking to that lecherous professor again, so I said WTF, smell ya later, dude).
I wonder if it’s healthy to remember that sort of thing. *shrug*
I was so happy, and proud. It was the happiest day of my life until my wedding day, and has been bumped down the list a few times since then.
Only in writing about this have I considered what the family of my former beau made of that. Looking back, I’m sure they thought I was brainless, or nearly so, when they met me. Book by its cover, and all that.
Anyway, I still visited campus occasionally, since Ron was still there. I had a job in the same town, working for the federal government, before the ink was dry on my diploma (figuratively speaking).
Grady graduated, and married Becky. Someone said they had a daughter or two. I think they were house parents at an orphanage in my hometown, for a while, but I never ran into either of them. I may have been in Chicago by then, I don’t know. I worked with a fellow who had gone to high school with Becky, and he ran into them in Wal-Mart once. Said her husband was going bald. *shrug* It happens.
I suppose I’ll have to wait until next week to tell you about my mother coming to terms with my true love. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Today is the first day of spring break, and I will be busy with the fam all week so I will not be posying anymore until next week.
It slipped my mind because I kept thinking it was the week before Easter, not the week before the week before easter. My bad.
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quote:Originally posted by jeniwren: Second impression is that a sr pastor must be some serious kind of dumb to make a teenager a youth minister. Seriously.
The church I was at had a youth pastor who was in his twenties. But at the time, I was dating a guy who was either a youth pastor or the leader of a youth group who was twenty. So it probably happens semi-often. The having a teenager leading a youth group, I mean. Not the youth group leader dating the youth. Although...that probably happens a lot, too.
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My B-i-L's sister dated her youth pastor. She was only 14 or 15 at the time and he wasn't a teenager, so it didn't go over too well.
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quote:Not the youth group leader dating the youth. Although...that probably happens a lot, too.
It's happened in practically every youth group I've seen, except for those few that specifically chaperoned all events and/or required a certain age of their youth group leaders (for, I presume, exactly that reason).
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Before that (and after) that particular church always had a married couple as youth leaders, and married couples or individuals teaching the tean Sunday School classes. I'm not saying they planned it that way, just that that is how it worked out.
Also, I'm a little creeped out that no one has said anything about the last post. Was that whole graduation thing just too creepy, or something?
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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I meant, of course, just the bit she quoted. In my earlier life I probably would have taken a page on just that part. ![[Taunt]](graemlins/taunt.gif)
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It was nightmarish. The real world took on a dreamlike quality, and I wondered if I might pick up a demonic influence if I listened to the radio. It’s hard to even think about, but it is relevant to what happened later.
