Furman

  During my freshman year at Anderson College, I was torn between being in a play and declaring myself as someone going into a church related vocation.  I was a member of a group on campus that had several students aspiring to the ministry.  My father was a minister, so it was only right to follow in his footsteps.  I was also a member of the Baptist Student Union on campus.  It was a Christian organization, and the group was pretty large, since Anderson was a Baptist college.

 One of the sub-groups in the BSU was the Deputation Team.  We would go out to churches in the area on Sundays and do a service.  We had preachers, singers, other musicians, and people who gave their testimonies.  I was in the last group.  One place we were sent to was the First Baptist Church of Honea Path, SC.  I was to give my testimony about how I was a preacher's kid who did a lot of bad things growing up, and then I found a group of kids in a church youth group who changed my life to being better.  In my testimony, I said that preachers' kids are notoriously bad, because the pressure of representing that family caused them to rebel.  I always hated these words coming out of my father's mouth:  "Remember who you are."  Those words caused me to rebel.  Almost all of the kids I knew, who came from those homes, had rebelled.  It really was a rite of passage.  In my case, I had smoked, shoplifted, watched dirty movies, and dabbled in drugs.  

 After the service was over, the members of the church thanked us for coming.  They were most gracious except for one little old lady who approached me.  She told me that her preacher's kids were fine people.  Then she said, "They go to Furman."  She was very proud of that fact.  I told her that was nice while chuckling inside.  I hoped she was right, but I knew there were probably some skeletons in that family, too.  When one is a preacher's kid, you kind of live more than one life.  The goody two shoes that the church sees, and the other one that your friends see.  The other thing I heard a lot from my father was:  "Straighten up and fly right."  I flew a lot.