When you are a kid, especially a teenager, advice comes from everywhere. Because they think they're doing me a favor, I tend to be polite and assure them that I will certainly take their wisdom to heart. I consider every idea respectfully, but whether I end up ultimately heeding their advice is a different matter entirely. I guess I'm at the age where I know everything.
Though I'm now in my twenties, it still happens occasionally, at least with my family. These aren't all from my family, but they're the ones that are most memorable. Most of them, interestingly enough, are cautions not to do things.
One of my mother's cousins was getting married, after years of living "in sin" with her man. During a trip with my grandparents, we were discussing going to the wedding.
"I wonder why she would do that," my mom remarked. "She's been living with him for years already."
"I don't know," I shrugged.
"I'll tell you why, Baby," my grandfather said proudly ("Baby" is my nickname with him; I'm the only granddaughter). "It's because she's living with him without being married, and it's not right, and she's going to get saved, and God will forgive her."
"Oh." I had never been that certain when I was a Christian; it has always seemed so easy for him to believe. "I think my mom meant, why would she want to for herself? What would be her reason?" It was the only thing I could think of to say, but I knew that in my family, the phrase, "God can change their heart" is uttered a lot. (It sounds like mind control to me, and it always applies to someone else.)
One of my mother's friends once rolled her eyes at her husband, turned to me and said, "Never marry a man."
My mom laughed. "Yeah, go lesbo," she said.
"You should marry the baby," the friend continued, without sarcasm. She was referring to her own baby, the one whose diapers I often changed. "You'll both die around the same time." (I was twelve at the time.)
That idea left me speechless. I held my tongue, to prevent myself from saying, "Ewwww," and making an ugly face.
During an especially cold period last winter, I expressed concern for a cat I have who stays outside and never wants to come in. My grandfather reassured me, "See, Baby, when God made all the animals, He made them with fur and feathers to keep warm, but people are supposed to be smart enough to keep themselves warm."
As it was over the phone, I smiled to myself. Though my family does not even know I'm an atheist, some seem to think that my parents and I are "lost" because we don't go to church. I wondered if he was witnessing to me.
I saw a flaw in his logic. "But sometimes they aren't?" I answered.
He laughed. "Yeah, sometimes they aren't!"
During a casual conversation with my parents, a friend of the family suddenly turned to me and said, very seriously, "Don't do meth."
"Uh...okay," I said, trying not to laugh in embarrassment.
"Seriously," he said. "Don't do meth. You're going to be out at a party, and other people will be doing it, and you just gotta say no. Don't do meth."
I nodded. "Okay. I promise."
Even at that young age (maybe fifteen), I had known a methamphetamine addict, and had seen firsthand the paranoia, the delusions, and the filthy conditions this person had lived in. Even stranger, the family friend knew that I knew this person. Though I appreciated his good intentions, they still amused me.
When I was about thirteen, my mother and I met one of her old church friends during a shopping trip. She liked to talk, especially about "what God was doing in her life."
When she had to leave, she hugged me and said, "Don't you leave the Lord for nothin', 'cause if you do, He's going to find a way to get you back."
"Yeah, and when He does, it's often painful!" my mother laughed.
I was confused by that one, because I was a devout Christian at the time, constantly trying so very hard to get close to God and, as far as I could tell, had not said anything to indicate otherwise. In fact, that was what I most feared at the time: losing my salvation or "leaving the Lord."
But apparently the devil uses reverse psychology, because ten years later I am now an atheist. I wouldn't say, though, that I have "left the Lord." It's more like He wouldn't return my phone calls.
(In an interesting twist to all of these, the word count for this article, other than this footnote, came to exactly 777 words. I'm told that that's the opposite of the Beast's number.)
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