Lenten Project: Seventh Fearless Friday (Good Friday)

One thing that missionary kids excell at is in reveling in their natural habitat. From swings to elaborate treehouses from which to launch on zip lines, we certainly created plenty of opportunities for thrills. 

Even when my family was on deputation, raising monetary support to go to Grenada, we had a nice wooden swing in the backyard of our house in Sharon, PA. There were some nice playgrounds in that area, too, and I have vague but fond memories of playing when I was a little girl. 

But it wasn't till we got to Grenada that our outdoor habitats got more awesome. At one house, an old plantation manor house with two and a half acres of land filled with tropical fruit trees, Dad built us girls a double decker treehouse.

This is one of the breathtaking views we had from that house.

We also had a little platform over some roots that was our hammock space. When Dad was putting up an even longer rope swing, he asked for a volunteer to test it with him. My sister Lizzy stepped forward, unafraid that Dad's knot tying might not hold. Sure enough, the rest of us girls had our doubts vindicated! On the backswing, the rope broke, and Dad and Lizzy fell to the ground, landing on some big above-ground roots. Dad landed on Lizzy, and Mom was certain he'd killed her or broken bones or caused internal bleeding. At first, Lizzy assured everybody she was fine, but when Mom continued to fuss and Dad kept acting so contrite, she began to ham it up, whimpering and letting her arms hang limply while she got carried with great fanfare into the house. She got to spend the rest of the day on a pile of cushions, eating the entire sent-from-America Tootsie Roll stash. With rewards like that, the rest of us girls felt sorry we hadn't volunteered after all!

At the next house we lived at in Grenada, we took it to the next level and had a four  storey treehouse, complete with super long rope swing. 

Come to think of it, we Schaefer girls haven't had much luck with rope swings, because Mary was swinging on this one once and ended up flipping over the nearby retaining wall to land on her back on some coconuts. Dad was so scared she'd broken her back that he drove the little red car down the hill to get her and drive her back up to the house so she wouldn't walk. But Mary was too good and honest to let our parents feed her all the American candy when she wasn't really injured.

Aside from rope swings and hammocks, the favourite contraption at MKs' houses was the zip line. A couple of our friends had great tree lines in their yards that were perfect for their zip line setups. We'd spend hours taking turns hurling our bodies from tops of makeshift ladders (slats nailed into coconut trees) while hanging on tightly to small metal pipes suspended from the zip line. Only be careful you don't slam into the tree into the other end!!

One missionary family lived right on the edge of the rainforest, so we'd go exploring and hiking whenever we visited them. There was a small quicksand pool that Darrell always told us we'd get sucked down into our deaths if we even stepped a toe in. Scared me spitless everytime he ominously warned us. If it was really that dangerous, I wonder at our parents for letting us go play around it! More likely he was just being his annoying self and teasing me (probably made all the sweeter for him since I swallowed it every single time!).

I grew up climbing mango trees and spending all day up there, reading. If I got hungry, I could always reach out a hand and pick a snack!

Growing up so close to nature is something I really appreciate about my childhood. While it's a miracle none of us ever got seriously injured, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.

Lenten Project: Day Thirty-four

I had a few pen pals when I was a kid.  Most of them were picked up while we were on our furloughs in 1994 and 1998, from churches and Sunday schools across the States.  I'm an oddball who keeps everything, and I still have a lot of those letters and cards I received. I'm no longer friends with anyone who wrote me, but I still remember the thrill of getting mail from my pen pals.

One girl in particular was a friend from a supporting church, and she was going to go to BJU the same year as I.  So we wrote and made big plans about how we'd be the best of friends and inseparable.  My dad, when we'd visited her church, had made a joke about she and I competing for the affections of the pastor's son who was also going to go to BJU with us that year.  We kept the joke alive and would banter about it in our letters sometimes. It was a humourous postscript in our correspondence.

When I showed up to the Bob Jones University campus in the fall of 2001, I was confident and sure of myself.  I knew I would not be starting off in the new place all alone--I had friends in the incoming freshman class!  I sought out my friend and was completely puzzled at her cold and standoffish behaviour.  The pastor's son, too, wasn't very welcoming, though he knew I'd only been in the States a short while.  There were a couple others from that church who snubbed me in the first few days before classes actually started, and I was totally confused and hurt.  I didn't know what was going on.

After days of this, one of the kids from that church found me in the campus bookstore and mentioned, almost under his breath like he was revealing a secret, that the whole group had been told about the joke of my dad's that had been made a running joke in our letters.  Only, they didn't think I'd been joking.  They thought I was serious.  So they were all avoiding me and didn't want to be around me at all.

I'm not sure what they thought would happen if we all were friends like I'd envisioned.  I was flabbergasted and shocked.  And really hurt.  A friend who I had been exchanging letters with for years believed the worst of me and hadn't even bothered to try to talk to me about it.  What's more, she'd told everyone else about her concerns and they'd all agreed to push me away.

I told the guy who'd enlightened me that I did not actually believe I would be competing for anyone's affections, that I knew my friend liked the pastor's son, and I'd been hoping they'd get together.  (They did eventually get married.) He shrugged and said that people believe what they wanna believe and it's hard changing their minds.

How I ended up with a picture of his family, I can't recall.
Maybe my friend sent it to me as part of the banter.

The pastor's son eventually tracked me down and apologised for the "misunderstanding," inviting me off campus to a barbecue with the kids from his church and their parents who had brought them to the start of the school year.  I declined.  I had no desire to be made a fool of.  I don't think we ever spoke to one another again.

It seems so petty now that I'm all grown up, but I so clearly remember the cutting blow of suddenly discovering that people I thought were my friends actually didn't even like me.  It made me question every other relationship and friendship I had, and I became a lot more tentative about making new friends.  If people say you'll be friends, they were probably lying--that's the lesson I took to heart and kept close during my years at college.

But another thing this episode revealed to me was that my world was a lot smaller than that of these American kids.  They had lots of friends--friends from school, friends from church, friends from their neighbourhoods--and had many different interactions with different people every day, while I might have had one or two a week, not counting my family.  So every letter I received was precious and a big deal.  When my pen pals wrote, "Friends forever," in their cards and letters, I thought they meant it.  The focal point of my days were narrowed down to those letters from the States or interactions with MKs.  So I elevated my pen pal acquaintances to idealised friendships, believing my pen pals were viewing me in the same way.  But they weren't.

Lenten Project: Sixth Fearless Friday

My sister Mary has always been my best friend out of everybody in the world, probably because she's the person who I've been closest to the longest (by virtue of the fact that we're only 15 months apart in age).  She's been my foil, my sidekick, my confidant, my confessor, and my challenger.

From the very beginning, Mary has made me a better person, a better sister.  Even though I'm the oldest, she was always the designated "girl in charge" when our parents went out and left us kids at home.  It's because she's the most responsible kid.  And she has the gift of peacemaking, which is a good for being in charge of the rest of us rabble-rousers.  She's taught me through example how to love my sisters and respect my parents, even when I don't agree with them.  She perfectly bridges the gap between being her own person and being loyal to others.

As kids, we shared a room (along with all the the other sisters, of course), and got along the best. I frequently fought with my other younger sisters, but Mare and I rarely squabbled.  Even though I was the bad kid and she the good kid, we evened each other out.  I've been daring and liked to push the limits with our parents, and she's been safe and liked to quietly conform.  We meet in the middle to compromise and it works really well in our sisterly partnership.

One time, though, we both agreed to be bad together, and it was glorious!  Here's the whole marvelous story, in her own words:

One night Hannah and I were aching for pickles. We were only allowed ½ a pickle on grilled-cheese-sandwich nights. We longed for more. After the house was quiet and we heard dad march up to his room, we sneaked down to the kitchen. Hannah was the first to take the glass pickle jar from its gleaming pedestal in the refrigerator door.

“Quick! You’re letting the light out!” I said.

She sat down on the floor with the jar between her feet and tried to turn the lid. It was too hard for her. I had always been known as the jar opener. Even Mom sometimes came to me for help with jars of jelly that were to tight for her. I was proud of my reputation. I took the jar from Hannah and tried to open it, but it still wouldn’t open. Finally I gave in to the old knife trick. Hannah handed me a butter-knife from the silverware drawer and I banged its butt against the lid. After two or three taps the lid gave and I pulled it off.

The next minute we were indulging in the wonders of pickled cucumbers. By the time we were satisfied, the jar was empty. Hannah said that no one would suspect us if we just put the jar back into the fridge leaving the pickle water in it. So that is what we did. And she was right. No one asked us if it was us . . . specifically. Dad did ask a few days later, “Okay! Who put the pickle jar back into the fridge EMPTY!?” He hates it when we do that.

When she joined me at Bob Jones University as a freshman in 2002, she became my roommate (along with two others in that tiny room).  We went to meals together, attended Artist Series programs together, reminded one another to brush our teeth and write to Mom.  Since, after Christmas break, classes often started on or around my birthday, she'd be the person who celebrated with me, who never forgot I was a older by another year.

She was a bridesmaid in my first wedding, and I've always been the tiniest bit offended that she didn't ask me to be in hers. I did have weird hair that year, though, so maybe that's why.  She's the only sister who RSVPed 'yes' to my sacramental marriage ceremony last year, the only sister who chose to come and celebrate my new marriage and new family.  Her van broke down on the way, but, dangit, she was actually trying hard to be there, and that counts so much in my eyes, since none of my other sisters even bothered to try (I don't count my youngest sister, who was there with my parents, because she's still a part of my parents' household, and when they changed their minds and decided to come to my wedding, she, by extension, was brought along).

Even though I'm the eldest Schaefer girl, she's the one we sisters all look to for leadership, the one who makes the wise decisions we can trust.  When Dad was busy and Mom was distracted by whichever new baby we had at the time, Mary stepped up and took the reins.  She's like a mini matriarch to us.  She's always been like that.  She's our mother hen.  Mother Mary.

Of course, now, she's all grown up, and she's a real mother.  Her husband and two sons are weeks away from flying away to Togo, West Africa, to minister on the mission field.  Second generation missionaries (both of them, since her husband, Andrew, is the son of missionaries, too), serving God and loving others.

Mary is the only sister who has intentionally set out to get to know my husband right from the start, to actively be a part of my life.  She's the one who has visited my family in DC, who has called, emailed, messaged, and texted when too long has passed between communication.  She's the only one out of my whole family who has met all my kids, who rejoices with me when new milestones are achieved, who drives for hours to come to birthday parties, who listens without judging when I whine about the tough parts of parenting.  She's the one who is willing to discuss theology with me, even though we don't agree on everything anymore.  

Mary is an encourager, a vibrant model of Christ.  She is compassion personified, a reconciler.  I'm going to miss her when she's gone, far away to Togo.  But I'm confident that doesn't mean she'll be out of my life, because she's the kind of friend who will never forsake, never abandon.  Mary is the one I want to be like when I grow up.

Join the conversation

Yesterday was National Siblings Day.  (I found that out after this post was planned, coincidentally.)  Tell me about your favourite sibling and why you look up to him or her.
If you're an only child, is there any one in your life who you wish was your sibling?

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-nine

In the hot winter of 1999, I went with a church group to Youth Camp.  It wasn't really camping, and the people who went weren't really youth.  What's more, my family didn't even attend that church.  But my parents said this would be a great way to meet people closer to my age (we didn't have any youth in our church at the time), and this could be exactly what I needed to cure my loneliness.

The "camp" was held in a resort hotel across the water in Batam, Indonesia, though the church group was from Singapore.  We took the ferry over, and that was really fun.  Most of the "youth" were college students, but two or three were still secondary students like me.  They seemed really young, so I mostly spent time with the college-aged campers. Mentally, or socially anyway, I was younger than the youngest kid there (13? 14?), but I admired the college kids and wanted to be like them, so I was thrilled when they seemed to include me in their group.

The daily preaching sessions weren't spectacular, but in between those were enjoyable events like billiards, swimming, visits to the local markets, eating out, and hanging around and chatting.  During one of these hang out times, I, still very new to Singapore, and trying hard to make friends, opened up and started talking in depth about some of my struggles with a handful of other campers.  One guy in particular nodded and smiled as I talked, making me feel like I'd possibly found a person who was interested in my life, interested in my struggles, would admire me and want to be my friend.  Every time he smiled like that, seeming to be understanding and encouraging me to speak, I opened up a bit more and kept sharing.

I told him how I struggled with my parents.  How I didn't understand a lot of Fundy rules. How hard it was to leave Grenada.  How my mind seemed to live wired all the time, and I was always thinking of five things at once.  What I liked to read.  How nervous I was about going away to college the next year.

After about 45 minutes of talking, he interrupted me and said, "Can I tell you something?"

I thought he was going to speak a word of encouragement, or make a comment on how things would get better and, yeah, being a teenager was really tough, but I had good things to look forward to.  Or something like that.

What he actually said destroyed me.  He said, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, "Your problem is that you are egotistical.  You think everything is about you, and you're really nothing."  He quoted some Scripture about making ourselves less to that Christ could be magnified, and then looked at me expectantly.

I was flabbergasted.  I'd been sharing some of my most personal struggles and he dismissed me as being egotistical.  I knew, in that moment, that I'd never be close friends with anyone from that church.  I felt shamed, humiliated, worthless.

I stammered something and left, ran to my room, and sobbed for the next couple hours. The two girls who were my roommates wanted to know what was wrong, but I couldn't get a word out, and didn't want to tell them anything for fear they'd have the same estimation of me.

When it came time for the evening preaching, I cleaned up my face as best I could, but I imagined it was obvious I'd been bawling like a baby.  The guy I'd been talking to came over to me and was acting like everything was normal, as though he hadn't crushed me with his words a few hours previous.

I couldn't understand why he was even talking to me at all.  Why in the world was he asking me my opinion on the preaching sessions so far?  He'd said my opinions were self-centered!  He thought I was a disgusting, egotistical jerk!  So why did he act like my words mattered now, when they'd been worthless earlier?

I tried my best to avoid ever visiting that church again, though my dad worked closely with their American (BJU grad) pastor, and even served as an interim when that pastor went on furlough at one point.  I closed up and kept to myself, smiling on the outside, but counting down the days till I would leave for the States, for BJU. I made certain not to bare myself to any Singaporeans again.  From then on, I only pursued close friendships with other MKs, even though my mom said they were really bad influences and limited my time with them.

The look on Joanna's face is what is hidden behind my smile.

A couple months after camp, I discovered that this guy later asked my parents if I'd always been this way, so disrespectful of my parents.  I suppose one of the reasons why he was so cruel was because Asian culture elevates respect for and honour of parents, and there I was, not doing it, so he couldn't have respect for me.  But it still hurts, even today.  While I may understand in my head why it happened, in my heart, it still stings that I was so dismissed and misjudged. I have never brought up the incident with the person who hurt me, though I see him interact with my parents through Facebook occasionally. I wonder if he even remembers or if, for him, it was not something even worth remembering. I wish I could forget!  But because it was my first meaningful conversation with what I'd imagined would be my first Singaporean friend, I find I can't erase it from my memory.

Join the conversation

• Have you ever felt misunderstood in such a way that you withdrew or it affected you in a significant way?
• Have you ever experienced a significant culture difference in your conversations and relationships?
• How did you navigate repairing those misunderstandings/hurt feelings when pursuing reconciliation?

Lenten Project: Day Twenty-four

I was eight before it dawned on me that my skin was not going to turn black if I just stayed out in the sun more.  It was a pretty devastating realisation, since I'd been looking forward to the day when I'd look just like everybody else, and especially for my hair to look good in cornrows like my friends.  I'd imagined that I only needed a few more hours of sunlight baking time to get my skin to darken to a lovely mahogany, my hair to kink up into perfect puffiness, my eyes magically change to cocoa brown.

When it didn't happen, I was disappointed, to say the least.  I resigned myself to being white, but that didn't mean I really liked it.  We kids used to mock the American tourists who showed up on the cruise ships every week, laughing at their clothes, their mannerisms, and, yes, their skin colour.  It was just such an odd sight to us.  I really thought I was Grenadian, and people from my own country were "other" and alien to me. Visiting the States, which was very rare, was always a massive culture shock, partly because of all the white people.  It was strange for us to see more than two or three whites at a time.

We were American kids, yet not, because the culture we lived in and loved was Grenadian (and later Singaporean, and then Indian for my sisters).  But we weren't Grenadian either. We were Third Culture Kids.

I became more aware of the differences between me and my friends after that realisation. Despite being racist against white people, I also started to develop a prejudice against Islanders.  My parents never explicitly told us were were better than the people they were ministering to, but there was still this atmosphere of superiority, an air of, "we're better than you," that infected me.  I think it was because many Grenadians didn't have solid educations, and those that did weren't very respected by my parents.

I found a pamphlet of my dad's that he'd gotten while he was in seminary at Bob Jones University. It talked about the necessity of keeping the races separate in order to forestall the coming one world government, which would herald the End Times.  During this time period (the 90's), BJU was still staunchly against the races mingling, strictly enforcing their interracial dating ban.  The school's founder had preached vehemently against desegregation in the South, and that just spilled over into a lot of very evil teachings that the school and its constituents (like my parents) didn't give up till as late as 2001.

I didn't understand why, if black people were good enough to save (through witnessing and open air crusades), they weren't good enough to marry.  But, even though I didn't understand it, I didn't question it.  My superiority to my friends was an attitude I picked up from my parents, and they were right about everything in my eyes (till they weren't).  We were there to save those people, but they'd never be our equals.  My mom, the largest role model I had, didn't have any Grenadian women as close friends or confidants, so I should keep Grenadian girls at arm's length, too, and focus on deepening my friendships with other (white) missionary kids.

Other missionary kids fell in and out of puppy love with native friends, but I never did. There were a couple boys that developed crushes on me and would call me, though.  I remember one, Che was his name, I met at a King's Kids Club we held in a village.  He'd call and promise that if I married him, he'd be the one to get a job and I'd be the one to stay home to watch tv and have babies. I just laughed at him because I didn't know what to say.

I knew, though, that I wouldn't be marrying any Grenadian boys.  I was destined to go to Bob Jones University and meet the man God intended for me, get married right after graduation, and we'd serve God together, maybe even as missionaries.  Because that's what my parents planned and prayed for me.

Lenten Project: Day Eleven

In the late 1990s, the Independent Baptist community in Grenada, West Indies, suffered a terrible split over the KJV Only issue.  And it was partially my fault.

In the States, Pensacola Christian College, my parents' alma mater, and Bob Jones University, where Dad went to seminary, were bitterly butting heads over the KJV issue.  In the islands, we IFB missionaries pretty much all used and loved the KJV, but didn't waste much time calling down hellfire on other versions (that is to say, we didn't have any Bible burning services for NIVs).

Dad, in his role as teacher at the Bible school we had connected to our church, wrote a paper on the issue for a student who started asking difficult questions about translations and inerrancy.  That student copied the paper and passed it around to his friends, who passed it around to their pastors, and all of a sudden, the country was embroiled in a fight.

Only, I didn't know about that student's stupid move at the time.  I only knew that Dad had written a paper, and, when overhearing my parents talking about it, asked for a copy and read it myself.  A lot of it went over my head, but the main points I gleaned were that the KJV had mistakes in translation, and that anyone who claimed that the English translation was re-inspired was an idiot.

I was pretty shocked that the Bible translation I used and memorised had errors in it.  I looked up the verses that appeared contradictory and problematic, and got more and more concerned.  If the KJV had mistakes in it, why were we using it?!

I tried talking to an MK best friend about it, but she didn't seem interested.  So I called my other MK best friend and spilled my guts and read verses and generally freaked out to her.  I made her promise not to tell her dad, because I was worried everybody's ministry would collapse if we didn't have an error-free KJV as our foundation.

As a side note, it's really interesting that Fundamentalist elevate Scripture to almost an idolatry.  It's always placed first in their lists of beliefs, before anything about God or Christ or the Gospel.  So it isn't that far out of the realm of possibility that Fundamentalism would collapse without the Bible, as though God's very existence is tied to a book.  That's the way we viewed the Bible, anyhow.

Well, my friend couldn't give me the reassurance I needed to shore up my shaken faith in the KJV, and instead got scared by my being scared. She went to her dad and asked him the same questions I'd asked her.  He figured out the source and called MY dad to berate him for letting me corrupt his daughter with anti-KJV propaganda.

I was even more scared after that, because I thought I was the cause and reason for the "discord between brethren."  Amazingly, I wasn't punished, but Dad admonished me to not say anything else about the issue.  He didn't bother to reassure me.  Maybe there was no reassurance to be had.

After a special evening meeting at a fellow pastor's church, people were gathered and chatting in the church courtyard when another national pastor came up and started yelling at my dad.  I was standing right beside him as this man ranted and raved and shook his finger under my dad's nose, accusing him of crazy things like dad's supposedly encouraging his students to quit using the KJV, and not preaching from the KJV anymore, etc.  Dad just stood there with a fixed smile on his face and didn't say much.  Meanwhile, my breathing was accelerating and a panic attack was imminent.  I couldn't understand why Dad didn't say something, anything!  He was letting this other pastor say hateful untruths about him, and he wasn't even defending himself, or, at the very least, moving the discussion to a private place.  I heard, "Get thee behind me, Satan," at one point, but little else.

Finally, I couldn't hold back my own fear-induced anger, and shouted at the pastor, "Who told you that?!" when he paused for breath.

I wasn't really looking for an answer, and I remember I said it at a point in the diatribe that didn't really match my question. But that's all I could think at the moment.  Who had told this pastor all these lies about my dad?  I knew it had been my best friend's father, and that he'd gotten his information indirectly from me, and somehow, it had all gotten twisted up and changed in the retelling, because now none of the accusations resembled anything I'd said.  I just knew it was all my fault, and that really, this pastor should have been yelling at me.

The pastor stopped yelling for a moment, and our fellow pastor's wife came and dragged me away.  I suppose it was obvious to her that this sort of fight shouldn't be taking place in front of children.  I was never more thankful for her in my life.  She recognised my fear and flew to the rescue, assuring me that my dad would be okay and that everything was all right.  I so desperately needed to hear those words.

The result of that confrontation was that a clear divide emerged among the island's IFB congregations and pastors.  Those with my dad, and those who remained KJV-Only.  Of course, Dad was still using and clearly preferring the KJV as well, but that didn't matter to these folks.  One had to be KJV-Only to count.

One way to identify KJV-Only churches is to notice if they refer to their Bible as the 1611 version.

After that, our missionary friends had to choose: were they with us or against us.  One fellow missionary's mission board instructed him to to have nothing to do with our family, to cease participating in joint church services and ministries (like my baptism), to go to the other side of the street if he saw my dad, to urge others to shun us.  But he refused, because he knew we'd done nothing wrong.  (To illustrate in how small a world the Fundamentalists live, that same mission board chairman later officiated my first wedding, not remembering the sordid past associated with my last name.)

The furor eventually died down, but when the dust settled, I'd lost my two best friends to the KJV-Only split. Their families were on the opposite side of the line in the sand.  The father of one of those former friends wrote to my parents' alma mater and told them we were wickedly burning KJVs or something, and the Campus Church dropped our support. That really devastated my mom.  She wrote a long tearful letter to the Hortons, but as far as I know they didn't deign to reply.

As a result, another missionary family became a lot closer and dearer to us, since we really had no one else. We kids needed our MK friends, and this family had seven kids!  Thus, my two best friends were now boys, because that's all that was available.  Good thing they were pretty awesome.  To this day I still think of them as brothers.

Michael and Daniel are a lot less weird than they appear.

As for me, me trust in Fundamentalists and their Bible remained shaky, and I'd lost all respect for the national pastors and other missionaries.  I realised that questioning discrepancies in the Bible was as off limits as questioning ridiculous unBiblical rules, and that the safest policy was keeping one's head down in compliance.

Lenten Project: Second Fearless Friday

In Grenada, my family's relationship with the other IFB missionaries was vital. There we found fellowship, abiding friendship, and support in our ministries. We kept each other sane through the hardships of missionary life.  For we MKs, that's were we found our best friends.

My sister Mary, MK friend Michelle, MK friend Miriam, me, MK friend-I-didn't-like-very-much Anna, sister Lizzy, and sister Lydia at my eighth birthday party

Before the KJV-Only split that caused a rift between our two families, one of my best friends was Miriam. She was the sole daughter in a family of seven kids. Her two older brothers, David and Darrell, delighted in tormenting us with teasing, which we bore with little grace. 

One particular time, I went for a sleepover at Miriam's house. All night we oohed and ahhed over dated Sears catalogs, ogling the male models and envying the female, as adolescent girls are prone to do.  They all looked so happy! And so white (living in a country with 100% black population made white people a curiosity--we Schaefer kids would frequently make fun of the white tourists who flocked from cruise ships in the harbour).

When we finally put the Sears catalogs away and fell asleep, my dreams were filled with worldly clothing and a licentious desire to be kissed by a boy that looked like one of the catalog models. 

1991 Sears catalog

At breakfast the next morning, David and Darrell came swaggering into the room with big mocking grins on their faces. Darrell was waving a tape in his hand, laughing like he had a hilarious secret. 

And boy, did he! Turns out, he and David had hatched a daring scheme to record us girls' conversation the night before. They'd bugged Miriam's room and had, from across the hall in their loft, been listening to our Sears catalog induced raptures. 

The boys bragged, to our utter shock and shame, that they'd heard every word, and now had recorded proof of our silliness. It was mortifying. 

My parents tried to tell me that boys tease girls they like. But I was skeptical. After all, I thought Darrell was a jerk. David I could get along with when there weren't other pesky siblings around to make fun of us while we tried to discuss books. But Darrell? Nope. Nothing but a meany-head. 

I survived the humiliation that day, and my dad later comforted me by saying he'd paid Darrell to destroy the tape. 

Looking back now, I kinda hope it was true. And I hope Darrell, now a dear friend with his own famous blog, made bank!

Friends now, but still awkwardly adhering to the six inch rule