More Different Somethings

If you remember, Carrie and I had to do an extensive autobiography for our upcoming adoption. So far, we've talked about my parents... Now for some thoughts about life as I grew older- Feel free to read this with a grain of salt- My memory is nowhere near 20-20.

Being the son of a minister created some challenges to making friends: first and foremost due to the transient nature of the role. My family moved during my first year of kindergarten, after my fourth grade year, after I completed sixth grade, and again between my junior and senior years of college. My father’s job between my kindergarten and fourth grade year was serving a church in a small town in south central Missouri where the local military base was the largest employer. However, we lived in the parsonage, which (like the church) stood alone on a strip of land surrounded by a cemetery, a bar, and a car dealership. The opportunities to connect with kids that were not my brothers was limited to Sunday and Wednesday night church events and time at school. However, in this latter, the majority of my classmates were only around for a couple of years, as their parents were stationed to other parts of the world.

In church, I became involved in music and sang as a part of worship services. Also, I began to experience life as the “preacher’s kid”- the higher expectations, the stereotype of a troublemaker, as well as hearing some of the difficulties that my father was dealing with among members of our congregation.

In school, what I discovered was that as kids tried to find their place in the social order of things, being a minister’s son made for an easy target of ridicule. In addition, I found myself isolated in many of my classes in first through third grade because I had been identified as ‘gifted’, and the school system that we had did not have a curriculum for advanced students. More often than not, I would be given individual assignments and then would work on them by myself while the rest of the class would receive instruction from the teacher on a different skill set. Essentially, I was skipped several grades without actually leaving my cohort. During this time, I was also diagnosed as having ADHD- although I’m not sure if this was an accurate diagnosis, or more of a description of my ability to rapidly work through any assignments given to me and then seek to occupy myself in other ‘creative’ ways.

Much of this changed in fourth grade, where I was not allowed to continue working above my grade level. While I’m not sure if this was due to lack of support on behalf of the school system, the result was very frustrating: I was re-doing a number of assignments and projects that I had completed a year or two earlier. Instead, my teacher chose to focus on controlling my behavior; my fidgety classroom actions, my proclivity to speak out of turn, my apparent carelessness with assignments as evidenced by sloppy handwriting. As I mentioned, it was an extremely frustrating time, educationally, and this was complicated with the “do your best… and we know it’s better than that” messages that I continued to get from my parents.

The summer after fourth grade my family moved back to Anderson Indiana, where my dad entered seminary. It was during this time that we first lived in a neighborhood and that I began to develop friendships. There were a number of my classmates who lived around us, I became involved in little league baseball, and our church had a much larger group of persons my age. Educationally, I found myself again ‘mainstreamed’ and struggling with turning work in that received poor marks not for content but for format (handwriting, not showing my work, etc.). This created some early frustrations, but I ultimately began to figure out ‘the game’ and found myself excelling socially and academically, even scoring among the highest in the state on one of Indiana’s standardized tests. There was a group of about 5-10 people that I hung around with, especially during the summers, playing basketball and just being a kids. Ultimately, though, my father graduated and took a job in Ohio. I was very frustrated with this decision and with having to leave my classmates and friends, and it took a while for me to warm up to the new location and opportunities that existed.

While we knew that we had moved into a situation for a longer term than previous situations, Urbana Ohio brought with it another set of issues to be negotiated. The county seat, Urbana is a town of about 10-11 thousand that is made up primarily of persons who either worked in one of the many factories nearby or who made their living on area farms. It is a small and insular town- people are born there, graduate from high school there, and if they go off to college the return to raise their families in the same neighborhoods that they lived in. The major lifeblood is high school football and baseball- I compare my experience to the characters in the recent film and television show “Friday Night Lights”, at a smaller scale. While I had enjoyed baseball and wanted to be involved in football, I had not experienced the level of intensity that this town brought to these pastimes: Little league all star teams were the pinnacle of summertime, and organized football began at the fourth grade level.

Additionally, because of limited facilities, all of the sixth grade aged students from the numerous elementary schools in the city school district are bussed to one school just for them. While this helps them build cohorts prior to entering junior high and high school, it also limits the ability of newcomers to join these groups following this time. Another factor of the community is that there was a well established ‘gifted’ program in the school system, and it funneled directly into the Advanced Placement classes in junior high and high school. Unfortunately, though, decisions about who was in these programs happened prior to sixth grade and newcomers could not be included unless they came from schools with other ‘gifted’ programs. Because our family moved so late in the summer, my test scores and grades did not arrive until a month into the school year, when I had already been placed in the general classes.

So on the first weeks of my seventh grade year I found myself in a new place, surrounded by people who had been friends since before kindergarten, with established social classes and roles based on intelligence and athletics, in a community that valued the outward appearance of wealth (the preppy experience was a huge part of Urbana Junior High, and was my first experience with brand consciousness). Into this I walked, a new kid whose father was a minister, who kept ruining the grade curve and talked too much in class, who had not yet found his place in the athletic pantheon, who didn’t dress right and ate reduced fee lunches. It is not too hard to see that I became an early target for several bullies, who enjoyed the fact that I was obedient to my upbringing not to fight.

In high school, things seemed to even out a bit. My involvement in football helped me to fit in and was instrumental in my identity through college. I was finally able to assert myself against many of the people who had picked on me in junior high school, when they had already had their growth spurt. Once mine arrived, as I mentioned, things evened out and swung my way.

I became involved in music and drama, taking the lead in several school musical productions. Thanks to several caring teachers, I also became involved in a “Peer Listener” program, and became a listening ear for fellow students during the ups and downs of adolescence. I was involved in school and class government, and was elected president of my senior class. Ironically, one of my ‘campaign promises’ was “I am not planning a class reunion, ever.” So far, it’s been the one that was most successful, something that brings me pride to this day. I graduated in June of 1987.

My role as ‘the pastor’s son’ continued in the small church where my father served. I also helped lead worship on Sunday mornings and evenings, and was active in our choir and in our youth group. I would say that my peer and friend group through my sophomore year in high school was primarily the people in youth- most of whom were at least a couple of years older than me. I was the clown, and seemed to have been appreciated for my abilities and personality. However, there were several things that occurred that changed much of that.

First, many of my church friends began to graduate from high school and head off to college. While this was great for weekend visits, it left me as the oldest person in our youth group. While my involvement in our state youth board continued, I did not find that solace and companionship that I once had at church. Second, it was around this time that I obtained my driver’s license. Urbana Ohio, even in the late 1980s, still had a vibrant car and cruising culture; so most of my free weekends were spent driving around with classmates or on dates (more on that later). Finally, there was significant controversy at our church that changed the way that I looked at my relationship with that body of believers.

For some history, most small churches have one group that are the powerbrokers of the congregation. Our church was no different, and this conservative group was additionally impacted by the fact that the pastor prior to my father had left his wife and the church to pursue an affair. To this day, I believe that it was the echoes of this unresolved issue that shaped what happened next.

When my father first arrived, our youth group had just found a new leader; she and her husband were a dynamic, caring, hard nosed, ‘go the extra mile’, couple with four children. Her personality and love for young adults grew the group from around 5 or 6 to a group of close to 50; one that won three consecutive “youth group of the year” awards for our movement. What we did not realize, though, is that this woman’s love sprung from a desire to be needed and important that stemmed from an abusive childhood. These issues also lead to her embezzling a large sum of money from both our youth funds and her place of employment in order to purchase and provide for those around her- so that they would love and appreciate her. This all came to a head during the summer before my senior year in high school, and resulted in my father relieving her of her position and mandating that she receive counseling. I still am amazed at the grace that he showed to her, given the cost to him.

As I mentioned, there seemed to be some tremors of ‘unfinished business’ in our congregation, and many people wanted her to be condemned and dealt with before the congregation, and there was even talk of criminal prosecution. When my father continued to hold to the plan that he felt was right, rumors started about his having an affair with our former leader. What was a vibrant congregation of 250 dropped to a congregation of 35-50 by the time my father resigned (four years later). Again, I am amazed that he and my mom were able to bear with the accusations and innuendos, with those who had been nurtured during the roughest times of their lives now the most vicious in their attacks against my family. The only reason that they decided to bear through it was my father’s decision to allow my brothers to graduate from high school before they sought a different place to serve. And so, following the morning service on Easter Sunday of my junior year in college, my father both announced his plans to take his allocated two weeks of vacation and also gave his two week notice. When I drove home from school four weeks later, it was to Illinois and not Ohio.

This was the first of many faith crises that emerged for me as relationships fluctuated and changed. I came to see Christians as flawed and bitter, that their issues and personalities were not always consistent from Sunday to the work week. What was the point of faith and worship if it didn’t change things? I also began to see the impact of counseling and pastoral care; from my cousin’s therapy while she staying with us, my role as a student counselor, and from the growth, grace, and redemption that my youth pastor experienced.

Another positive aspect of my time in Ohio was my growing appreciation for people whose cultures are different than mine, especially as I developed relationships with African American classmates, fellow athletes, and people who were active in our community of faith. Being a county seat, ours was the most ethnically diverse city in our area, and the friendships that I had were across racial lines in ways that I would not have experienced had we stayed in Indiana or lived in any one of the other surrounding towns. While I can’t say that this completely disabused me of some of the misconceptions that I had about ‘others’, it did 1) match a theology of unity that I heard from my family and 2) provided me with people who would let me know when I had crossed lines.

I had a number of ‘dating’ relationships in high school, as I discovered that my listening ear made me sought out by young women who wanted to talk. Unfortunately, this was not always the healthiest situation, and there were a number of dating relationships that I had which existed merely for the sake of providing me with another identity. There were at least two women, though, that I invested enough into that our eventual breakups were the source of a great amount of teen angst.

It’s difficult to talk about friends that I had in high school, because it has always felt as if they were more invested in the community of Urbana Ohio than the people that they were classmates with. A majority of my graduating class still lives there, still works at the factories that their parents did, and still finds themselves tuning cars and going to Friday night games. We stayed in touch during Christmas and summer breaks, but at no time did they ever come to visit me in college (2 hours away). I have always felt that, either through my choices or circumstances, I have had a large number of acquaintances but very few true friends. When I told them that our family was moving, the lack of response should not have been surprising to me- and yet there was a bit of a loss on my part, as I still consider Ohio to be my home.

Next in this series... College and beyond.