A Friend?
A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our
small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting
newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was
quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months
later.
As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to
love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our
storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures,
mysteries, and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole
family spellbound for hours each evening. He was like a friend to the whole
family. He took Dad, Bill, and me to our first major league baseball game.
He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements
to introduce us to several movie stars.
The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes
Mom would quietly get up.....while the
rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway
places......go to her room, read her Bible, and pray. I wonder now if she
ever prayed that the stranger would leave. You see, my dad ruled our
household with certain moral convictions.
But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for
example, was not allowed in our house-not from us, from our friends, or
adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four letter words
that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was
never confronted. My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his
home-not even for cooking. But the stranger felt like we needed exposure and
enlightened us to other ways
of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made
cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked
freely (too much, too freely) about sex.
His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally
embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman
relationship were influenced by the stranger. As I look back, I believe it
was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time
after time he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom
rebuked and never asked to leave. More than thirty years have passed since
the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I
were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting
over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him
draw his pictures. His name? .....
We always just called him... TV.
http://www.exchangedlife.com/humor/humor.shtml
Click Here to submit a joke or story!