swaggarty

i grew up going to church every sunday, pretty much out of the womb.  that's not different from the experience of a lot of people, but not only was i in church every sunday, i watched church on tv every sunday before we actually left to go sit in church for a couple or three hours.

just as well i guess, until i was about seven, we went to a church that was spanish-speaking and my spanish wasn't as awesome then as it is now, so i probably got more out of watching church on tv in english than i did actually being there and listening to it in spanish.  so in the story here, i was four and my parents, my mom specifically, were huge fans of a guy named jimmy swaggart.  at the time, the guy was the biggest preacher going, no doubt a household name all over the country and likely the world, i don't really remember mostly on account of i was four.  my mom even had designs on sending me to JSBC, jimmy swaggart bible college in shreveport, la.  for real.  it was nuts.

so anyways, it's some sunday morning and we're about to go to church.  my parents had gotten me ready first and sat me on the couch to watch jimmy swaggart while they got dressed for church themselves.  so i'm watching, mesmerized, cause the guy was absolutely captivating and he starts talking about how people better come to Jesus cause we're all sinners and there's room at the cross and all kinda stuff like that and somewhere in my four-year-old brain i get to thinking "this swaggart clown is right, i better come to Jesus."  so he starts to say the sinner's prayer and i figure i better say it too if i want to go to heaven and stuff, so i get down on my knees in front of the tv and repeated the sinner's prayer after jimmy swaggart.  i didn't have a choice, i was a sinner, a dirty, filthy, four-year-old sinner.

looking back on the whole thing is funny, because i'm not at all diminishing what happened, the theological nuts and bolts or a relationship with Jesus in any way, that'd sort of be silly given that i've stuck with the whole deal since then.  in fact, i used the story for my application essay to wheaton and i'm pretty sure it put me over the top and cinched my spot.  but if you know anything about the story of jimmy swaggart's life and ministry after that point, you know that he ended up being disgraced as a hypocrite who enjoyed the company of women who had sex for money, a pretty significant occupational hazard when you're trying to lead people in the paths of righteousness, i'd say.

it'd be a hell of an excuse to give up on the whole thing, but that's another entry entirely.

standby

part of the trouble of a project like this is trying to reconstruct memories from a couple dozen or more years ago.  the whole thing is compounded when you realize that you don't have a long-term memory before the age of four.  it's even worse when the most reliable source for stories from that part of your life only seems to remember stories that make you look like a dumbass.  even worse when they seem to relish that fact.  even worse when it's your mom.

i guess that's tempered by the fact that you were like three years old when the stories happened; and when you're three, almost everything you do makes you look like a dumbass.  

so when i was a lil kid, right up until i was about seventeen or so, i was terrified of thunderstorms, so whenever one came around, my nerves were always super on edge and i'd be yelling at my mom to tell me right away where she and my dad hid the stuff i'd smell on their breath when they'd tuck me in.  k, so that last part may or may not be true.

anyways, so there was this one time the big weather was coming and the weather guy on channel 8 was breaking in every so often to tell everybody how absolutely screwed they'd be depending on where they lived.  so once i guess the weather got to the transmitter tower and took down the broadcast for a few minutes which meant that the tv went to a test pattern or something for a few seconds and then came back with a "technical difficulties, please stand by" message.  so of course, i get up and go stand by the tv.  mostly on account of the fact that they told me to stand by.

so my mom sees me standing by the tv and says, "why are you standing next to the tv?"  and so, naturally i tell her, "it says please stand by."  i was like four.  and probably a bit of a dumbass.  both of those things may or may not have changed.  i'm not saying one way or another.

noisy

i wasn't really what anybody would call "quiet" as a kid.  

from what my mom tells me, one of my favorite things to do between the ages of two and four was go into the kitchen take a out a bunch of the pots and pans, scatter them all over the floor and just bang the hell out of them.  she says i did simply for the sake of making noise.  she's probably a saint, because i'm almost certain that if i had a kid like that, i'd tie his hands up to keep from doing stuff like that.  maybe she did that to me after a while and just left that part of the story out, it's not like i'm gonna remember.

imagine her surprise when, from what she tells me anyway, one day as she was doing stuff in the kitchen and i was playing on the floor behind her (whether pots and pans were involved i don't know) i suddenly got all quiet and disappeared.  it was summertime and we were po' and lived in crappy apartments, so it was hot *all* the time.  and i guess to my two-year-old brain, sitting in the fridge seemed like a way better idea than kicking it on the kitchen floor where it was about a billion degrees hotter and a thousand times sweatier.  so what i ended up doing was opening up the fridge door and standing on the ledge in there to keep cool.  i was small enough that the door was able to almost but not quite shut all the way.

my mom, realizing i'm not where she thought i was, panics and searches the entire apartment, even going outside to see if i wandered out there.  coming back into the kitchen she sees the refrigerator door cracked and opens it to find me in there, quietly, eating a tomato.  or a plumb.  or something, it's not really important i guess.

introductory

the summer of 1980 was unbearably hot.

it was in dallas, texas anyways.  i, of course, accept that on the authority of trusted witnesses, mostly on account of i wasn't even around for about half of it.  plus i didn't develop a long-term memory until sometime in 1984.  august 3 was the exact date and i tried looking up stuff that happened that particular day and it seems like, in 1980 anyways, there really wasn't just a whole lot going on.  it turns out that i do share a birthday (day and year) with people named dominick moore (a hockey player) and brandan schieppati (a rock and roll singer).  besides those guys, i share august 3 (same day, different year) with james hetfield (metallica, 1963), tom brady (the football player, 1977), john landis (director of animal house, 1950) and brooklyn decker (the model, 1987).

none of any of that is to say anything except that that's the day the story begins.