You might get the impression that I lived in a very religious household,from the fact that my mother read us bible stories at bedtime,and from the fact that we went to church a lot.But that was not really true.Or should I say,it may not have been as true as things might have appeared.
For one thing,we really didn't go to church all that much.Not even every Sunday.We wouldn't go in the summer time,because there was no Sunday school classes,and my mother would have had to bring both my sister and I up into the main part of the church with her.It was often hot up there,sermons had an adult orientation,and both my sister and I were a bit young to be expected to sit through an hour's sermon.So we went to church over the course of the school year,September to June,when there was Sunday school.And not even every Sunday.My father worked shifts,and we only had one car,so we only went on days when he was at home,or on autumn or spring days when it was nice enough to walk.
You wouldn't have found a lot of Bibles or anything else of an overtly religious nature laying around,or hung from the walls either Those children's bible stories were about the most obvious indication of a Christian home,and we still heard those stories every night.I didn't realize it at the time,but my mother was being somewhat selective as to what stories she was reading to us,because,even though I didn't realize it then,the Bible was a very grown up book.My mother,as it turned out was doing a bit of textual editing of those stories too.
We were told about Adam and Eve,and the apple,and I couldn't figure out how an apple caused so much trouble.She read to us about Cain and Abel too,but she wouldn't say just what the word"slew" meant.But it seemed like an important idea,because not only did Cain do whatever it was to Abel,but Davis also slew Goliath.For such an important concept,it seemed to put my mother somewhat ill at ease,and she wouldn't explain what it meant.
My mother read to us the story of Moses too,and that was a story that especially appealed to me.After all,I was four years old,and tended to be impressed by things like burning bushes,and waters that parted,and food falling out of the sky,not to mention locusts,frogs and a host of other plagues.Then we got to the part about The Ten Commandments.The problem then,though was that I'd actually learned to count to ten,and so,when my mother was reading the story,I could only count nine.Don't steal,don't lie,only one God,no idols,respect your parents,don't covet,don't witness falsely,don't swear,and don't kill.Yes,only nine! It turned out that my mother was holding one back.She actually explained all of the others in language that small children could understand,but I was sure there was one missing.
Sometimes,not often,but sometimes my father would read us Bible stories too.When he got to The Ten Commandments,his count was true.It seemed maybe he'd remembered one that my mother had forgotten about,or maybe never knew in the first place,and he let it out.No committing adultery.When I added that to all the others,there were ten,just like there was supposed to be.So,what was adultery? Turned out my father didn't see the necessity of explaining it either.
Now this turned out to be a bit of a problem,because I really did want to obey commandments.I knew it was important,and I remembered Hell.Avoiding Hell meant you had to obey commandments,and I didn't really have a problem with that.There was nobody I wanted to kill,or steal from,and one God seemed like more than enough.But then there was that adultery thing.If I was going to not do that,I needed to know what it was I wasn't supposed to do,only no adult I knew wanted to talk about it.So I had to imagine what it was I wasn't supposed to do,and that could have been almost anything.Could it be running out into the street,or being mean to your sister,or maybe not eating all of your carrots? Could it mean not doing what my mother or father said to do?Well,no,that seemed to already be covered by one of the other commandments.Maybe it was getting into rock fights.Could it be that I had committed adultery with Karen,and we were both bound for Hell,not to mention that Santa Clause certainly wouldn't be visiting next Christmas? No way to know for certain.So,after a while I got the idea to ask one of the Sunday school teachers what adultery was.He told me"well,you really don't need to worry too much about that one." So I guessed we were back to nine commandments.If I'd only understood enough Pig Latin to realize what the root of the word "Adultery."was,I could likely have realized that it was something that children need not worry about,at least when they were four and three years old respectively.
We read more than just Bible stories too.There were a few books in our house.There was this old book that my mother had,and it had something to do with a lavender colored crocodile,though I don't recall much of what it was about.Just that it was in an old,falling apart book,and my mother couldn't always find all of the pages.
There were a couple of books that do stand out in my mind though,because,when I grew up they had grown out of favor,and I wouldn't read them.It's hard though to impose today's morality or political correctness on that earlier time though.One of these books was about a fox who was trying to catch a rabbit,using a lot of different tricks.One of the tricks he employed was to put this thing,called a tarbaby out in the road.The rabbit came along and got stuck to the tarbaby,but in the end he got away.The picture of the tarbaby looked like exactly what the word implied-a baby covered in tar,or,to be more exact,a black baby.The other book that my mother read,and we had it around our house was a book called Little Black Sambo. It was a story about a little African boy who liked to eat pancakes,and his mother,an enormous black woman.I got the idea that I would like to have pancakes sometime,after my mother read that book to me.So,as it turned out,we had pancake mix in the cupboard.Not only that,but the bag had a picture of Sambo's mother on the outside.She looked exactly like the woman in the book.Now I wasn't really certain what all was going on here,but I knew that the story about the tarbaby,and the one about Sambo and his mother,the woman who was both in the book and on the bag of pancake mix,was a lot bigger that met my four or five year old eyes.To my mother,though,it was just a story,and there was no real inconsistency with telling those stories as opposed to Bible stories.I guess it's just the way things were back then.
For one thing,we really didn't go to church all that much.Not even every Sunday.We wouldn't go in the summer time,because there was no Sunday school classes,and my mother would have had to bring both my sister and I up into the main part of the church with her.It was often hot up there,sermons had an adult orientation,and both my sister and I were a bit young to be expected to sit through an hour's sermon.So we went to church over the course of the school year,September to June,when there was Sunday school.And not even every Sunday.My father worked shifts,and we only had one car,so we only went on days when he was at home,or on autumn or spring days when it was nice enough to walk.
You wouldn't have found a lot of Bibles or anything else of an overtly religious nature laying around,or hung from the walls either Those children's bible stories were about the most obvious indication of a Christian home,and we still heard those stories every night.I didn't realize it at the time,but my mother was being somewhat selective as to what stories she was reading to us,because,even though I didn't realize it then,the Bible was a very grown up book.My mother,as it turned out was doing a bit of textual editing of those stories too.
We were told about Adam and Eve,and the apple,and I couldn't figure out how an apple caused so much trouble.She read to us about Cain and Abel too,but she wouldn't say just what the word"slew" meant.But it seemed like an important idea,because not only did Cain do whatever it was to Abel,but Davis also slew Goliath.For such an important concept,it seemed to put my mother somewhat ill at ease,and she wouldn't explain what it meant.
My mother read to us the story of Moses too,and that was a story that especially appealed to me.After all,I was four years old,and tended to be impressed by things like burning bushes,and waters that parted,and food falling out of the sky,not to mention locusts,frogs and a host of other plagues.Then we got to the part about The Ten Commandments.The problem then,though was that I'd actually learned to count to ten,and so,when my mother was reading the story,I could only count nine.Don't steal,don't lie,only one God,no idols,respect your parents,don't covet,don't witness falsely,don't swear,and don't kill.Yes,only nine! It turned out that my mother was holding one back.She actually explained all of the others in language that small children could understand,but I was sure there was one missing.
Sometimes,not often,but sometimes my father would read us Bible stories too.When he got to The Ten Commandments,his count was true.It seemed maybe he'd remembered one that my mother had forgotten about,or maybe never knew in the first place,and he let it out.No committing adultery.When I added that to all the others,there were ten,just like there was supposed to be.So,what was adultery? Turned out my father didn't see the necessity of explaining it either.
Now this turned out to be a bit of a problem,because I really did want to obey commandments.I knew it was important,and I remembered Hell.Avoiding Hell meant you had to obey commandments,and I didn't really have a problem with that.There was nobody I wanted to kill,or steal from,and one God seemed like more than enough.But then there was that adultery thing.If I was going to not do that,I needed to know what it was I wasn't supposed to do,only no adult I knew wanted to talk about it.So I had to imagine what it was I wasn't supposed to do,and that could have been almost anything.Could it be running out into the street,or being mean to your sister,or maybe not eating all of your carrots? Could it mean not doing what my mother or father said to do?Well,no,that seemed to already be covered by one of the other commandments.Maybe it was getting into rock fights.Could it be that I had committed adultery with Karen,and we were both bound for Hell,not to mention that Santa Clause certainly wouldn't be visiting next Christmas? No way to know for certain.So,after a while I got the idea to ask one of the Sunday school teachers what adultery was.He told me"well,you really don't need to worry too much about that one." So I guessed we were back to nine commandments.If I'd only understood enough Pig Latin to realize what the root of the word "Adultery."was,I could likely have realized that it was something that children need not worry about,at least when they were four and three years old respectively.
We read more than just Bible stories too.There were a few books in our house.There was this old book that my mother had,and it had something to do with a lavender colored crocodile,though I don't recall much of what it was about.Just that it was in an old,falling apart book,and my mother couldn't always find all of the pages.
There were a couple of books that do stand out in my mind though,because,when I grew up they had grown out of favor,and I wouldn't read them.It's hard though to impose today's morality or political correctness on that earlier time though.One of these books was about a fox who was trying to catch a rabbit,using a lot of different tricks.One of the tricks he employed was to put this thing,called a tarbaby out in the road.The rabbit came along and got stuck to the tarbaby,but in the end he got away.The picture of the tarbaby looked like exactly what the word implied-a baby covered in tar,or,to be more exact,a black baby.The other book that my mother read,and we had it around our house was a book called Little Black Sambo. It was a story about a little African boy who liked to eat pancakes,and his mother,an enormous black woman.I got the idea that I would like to have pancakes sometime,after my mother read that book to me.So,as it turned out,we had pancake mix in the cupboard.Not only that,but the bag had a picture of Sambo's mother on the outside.She looked exactly like the woman in the book.Now I wasn't really certain what all was going on here,but I knew that the story about the tarbaby,and the one about Sambo and his mother,the woman who was both in the book and on the bag of pancake mix,was a lot bigger that met my four or five year old eyes.To my mother,though,it was just a story,and there was no real inconsistency with telling those stories as opposed to Bible stories.I guess it's just the way things were back then.
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