Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

One of our readers, known in our house as “Kutztown,” tagged me with the subject of what was I doing 10, 20, and 30 years ago. Here goes (not that anyone should be interested):

In the year of 1977

I was 13 years old attending Catholic mass on Sundays. While my Southern Baptist friends made fun of our drinking, our Sunday masses included all the prettiest cheerleaders in town. It was around this time that I began questioning a lot of doctrine and driving the poor ‘ole volunteer CCD (Sunday school) teachers insane (the cheerleaders liked that). Rumor has it that the church put up a bounty for any class that I was in. Three years later the senior priest would tell me that I was in no shape to be confirmed.

In the year of 1987

This was a busy year. I attended Bible school in the mornings, college classes in the afternoon, and I worked at night. It was the equivalent of 24 or 26 college hours and I had a hard time convincing my university counselor that it was actually doable. I believe that it was this year that Oral Roberts stayed in the prayer tower and I was hounded on campus by Newsweek reporters.

In the year of 1997

In a group counseling session (I told my family that I would go just this once if they would leave me alone), I filled out some kind of life crisis inventory. The counselor, seeing all of my marks and checks, said, “No, no, no. You just mark down the things that have happened to you in the last three years, not for your whole life.” I responded by saying, “These just cover 1995 and the first half of 1996.” He was surprised that I hadn’t gone insane. Fortunately, the rest of the year was uneventful.