Unwanted Member TV

 Home Up Guest Book Contents Search

Real Beauty
Facing Difficulties
Happiness in Giving
Intelligence Pays
Compassion
Socrates - Triple Filter
Success follows failure
Unwanted Member TV
Key Person
Be Aware
Rise Again
Learning
Scolding

 

    A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small 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. 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, Morn, and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.

     The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Morn would quietly get up -while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places - go to her room, read her Bible, and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger should 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 long time visitor, however, used occasional four letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm.

     My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in the home - not even for cooking, but the stranger felt we needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He kept exposing us to beer and other alcoholic beverages. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished.

     He talked freely (too 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.

    Time after time he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and was never asked to leave. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.

    More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family. If I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a comer, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures,

        His name... We always just called him... TV.

    If I find that my morals, ethics, ideals and values have still survived, I believe, it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence me more.