I remember 1978 when I was on a spring break trip with 240 high schoolers...mostly juniors and seniors....and two of us who were sophomores. We were spending one week on the East coast checking out all of the typical tourist sights and learning about our country's heritage. It was my first time there and it made a huge impact.
Our first night there, we were in Williamsburg, Virginia, in a Best Western motel. There were four of us in each room, two to a bed. I got no sleep the entire week. Wanting to get down and dirty with the guy in the bed with me and, at the same time, totally afraid and paranoid that it would happen. Nothing did. What did happen was that I watched Saturday Night Live for the very first time. You see, we didn't ever get to partake in that type of show at home (nor did we get to stay up that late). I remember feeling so much like I was doing something that I shouldn't be doing. You know, really living on the edge of something "adult." The rest of the week brought me even further that direction with drinking beer in the hotel room with other kids, seeing all of the adult shops in Times Square, and watching other people my own age go ape shit at being away from home by themselves for the first time.
I remember listening to my AM transistor radio, with the antenna pulled as far up as it would go and angling it just right for the best reception. I heard songs like Smoking in the Boy's Room and Chevy Van, among others, that I just knew were not in sync with my Bible-believing, church-going upbringing. They just didn't fit together very well -- we were supposed to be "in the world, but not of the world." Every time I'd hear them, I'd think that this was a long way from the lessons I'd heard in Sunday School.....and that this was probably what it meant to be doing things that would taint my good behavior and turn me into another one of those "worldly individuals."
Then, The Streak came out and became a horribly popular song. It was played over and over on stations everywhere. Every time I'd hear it, I'd almost get embarrassed to think of a person running with no clothes on in front of others. Never! How uncomfortable it made me feel. Almost like I shouldn't be doing or listening to this song.
A world away, that was. Thankfully.
9 comments:
Two to a bed? That was either a very progressive or very cheap school you went to. ;-)
P.S. My "cheesy song" recollection of that era was "Disco Duck" (1976).
I often forget how similar AoG is to JWs, tending to think that mine was the only crazy, backward, isolationist, repressive religion out there. While it's disheartening that such organizations continue to thrive to mess up another generation of people, in some ways it's comforting to know that I wasn't the only one.
"KUNG FU FIGHTING" Yep.
Your post reminds me of watching "Latter Days" on LOGO Network last night. I always cry. Wuss, here.
it feels liberating, to be this much beyond and away from those confusing days, no?
Ahhh but you turned out alright...A damn fine man in fact...Thankfully you developed your naughty side...St Lewis would not be the same without that 'STREAK'...*winks*
You are so cute and so silly! Such a silly boy!
Yes, Keep one eye on the here and now, and the other on eternity. That, is me.
Damn I had free reign from age five or six and basically did my own thing. My dad forced me to be bartender for armies of drunks at age six. I knew how to make tons of drunks. Sampled everything and hated all of it.
So...I probably had the exact opposite upbringing as you in many ways. I certainly did not have the loving dad that you had, though an awesome mother more than made up for his endless shortcomings.
Sorry 'bout the deleted comment -- when I pasted it in, it was actually the text of what I posted tonight on my site about Viola. (copied the wrong thing).
Cheers!!!!
You are a source of relief - that even through a strange and wild upbringing, opposite to how anyone might imagine, a man can still, eventually, grow into something wonderful. The results of the bleak and flattened can sometimes be an adaptable person, a survivor. I believe in you and people like you. You give the world hope.
mate..I had a very similar experience in high school! LOL
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