God Wants a Certain Kind of Socks
A lesson I learned years after the fact. Part 4 of…
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The older generations teach the younger generations, who in turn teach the young ones when they become old. That’s how humans have passed down knowledge and wisdom for around 300,000 years (give or take). Maybe we shouldn’t always do it that way.
When I was 16 or 17, my church started this youth leaders class on Wednesday nights. As I recall, the boys were separated from the girls so we could learn how to be men and leaders of men in the church. I have no idea what the girls talked about. Since I was still in my gullible phase and also fancied myself a burgeoning leader thanks to all the heroic novels I read, I was looking forward to that class.
It was taught by some of the old men of the congregation. They looked to be around 65 or so, which is pretty old to a teenager. Topics varied from how to dress to making analogies about how strict God was and therefore we had to be.
I must not have found much worth retaining from that class, because it’s mostly gone. I guess my brain chucked it out with the garbage. I do remember two weird lessons, however.
Wearing Tee-Shirts
When these old guys, who still wore 1970s polyester suit pants on occasion, tried to teach us how to dress as leaders in the church…it didn’t go well. Imagine some retired grandfatherly gentleman telling 16 and 17-year-old boys how to dress. Granted, they weren’t trying to tell us how to dress all the time, but rather how to look like an example of leadership by their standards.
We were all wearing tee-shirts in this class, as teenagers do (as adults do, too…I’m wearing one right now). This guy we had teaching the class told us that what we thought were tee-shirts were really undershirts. “This,” he said as he pinched his polo-style shirt, “is a tee-shirt.”
I side-eye glanced at my friend next to me, thinking this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. An undershirt…
