Stranger
Posted by: tz8cy5 <tz8cy5@...>
A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small
Tennessee 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. 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
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-and 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 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 (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 by 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 called him TV.