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My dad’s church was really small and we had this tiny little youth group of about… I don’t know, there were about ten to fifteen of us? And we used to sing these lame songs about trains bound for glory and do these stupid hand motions where we would pretend to be yanking down on some train whistle and we’d all say,“woo hoo”. And what does a train have to do with going to heaven or whatever. Unless it’s a train that runs you over and sends you to heaven. “Woo hoo.”Splat! That’ll send you somewhere for sure.
Anyhow, corny as the songs were, I was in this stinking fish bowl. Stink! I was the pastor’s kid for crying out load. Man, you couldn’t fart without some lady in the church mentioning it to Mom or Dad.
“Hello, Mrs. Woods. The other day I was sitting in church when I heard someone pass gas right behind me. And who do you suppose it was? Your Randy. I don’t think that’s very reverent to be doing that during worship,” or something stupid like that.
Dude, I’ve got to hand it to my mom. One time I had been over heard saying dam, not the cuss word, but the kind that holds back water and makes a lake. In fact, it was part of a joke I was telling a couple of guys. I said that I had seen a documentary about beavers. Then I said, “It was the best dam movie I ever saw.”
Anyhow, there was this dude in the youth group named Ted Winchell. We used to call him Donut because he had the same last name as the donut place, Winchell’s. Not only that, but he was kinda shaped like a donut too. So Donut has this really stupid mother that is walking by just as I said the punch line and his mother hears me say it and then she runs straight to my mom like some snotty little girl on a playground to tattle tail and tells her that she heard me cussing in front of her little Teddy. She always thought her son was so stinking perfect even though he was always a smart mouth.
Then she asks my mom where the son of a pastor would learn such language. I tell you what, God bless my mom! Without batting an eye she says, “He probably learned it from your son.” I swear that’s the honest truth! My mom had starch in her underwear and refused to be bullied by all the stupid church ladies.
But it was like that all the time. I had to watch what I said, and what I did, or who I was friends with because it all reflected back on Dad, “The Pastor.” The pastor’s kid was supposed to be perfect, the model kid, a “shining example for all the other kids to strive to become”, and who would never fart out loud! How stupid is that!
I didn’t want to be perfect and I sure as hell didn’t want every thing I did, or every thing I said, or every stupid burp to be analyzed for how godly it was or wasn’t. You know what I wanted? Freedom. Plain and simple. Freedom to be, to do, or to say whatever the stink I wanted!
Every high school is exactly the same, at least I’m thinking they are. What I mean is that they all hang out in their stupid little groups. Call them what you want-stoners, jocks, geeks, pretties, uglies, harries, or whatever the stink you want to call them. At youth group we were always being preached at about“cliques”, that’s what the church called them. And the youth group was always talking about how cliques were bad and all.
You know what, that never quite made sense to me. First off, wasn’t our little youth group a“clique”? It had all the stinking earmarks of one. No one new ever became a part of it, and we had our own little secret insider behavior accompanied with train whistle blows. Then the youth group leader preached to us about never belonging to a clique. So I remember asking our youth group leader one time if I needed to stop coming to youth group.
“Why would you ask that?” He was all confused and thinking I was trying to trick him or something like that.
“Aren’t we a clique? I mean aren’t we just like one of those groups that we aren’t supposed to be hanging out with?”
He went on to tell me that I was missing the point and all this other stuff about being open to others and junk like that. But it was too late as far as I was concerned. I knew it was all a joke and twofaced. Even if I was the pastor’s kid and was expected to be at church and all the other little stupid events, I knew it was time to get some elbowroom. I knew that school was my only opportunity to break free.
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