Re-Enchanting the World Spring 2003

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I waited. I didn't get anyone pregnant or, for that matter, touch anyone. I followed the rules.

The rules were simple. You kept a ring on your finger, or a chain around your neck, that always reminded you, and not so quietly told everyone else, that you were one of the good kids. That you were not going to have sex until you got married. That if you had screwed up before you would never do it again. Then all you had to do was not screw up.

There was even a little chart, kind of like the one at the eye doctor. The steps to doing the wrong thing were all right there in front of you: from holding a girl's hand to stripping down to your birthday suit and going all the way, just in case you were confused about how you got from one step to the next. The reason for this little chart was to make it perfectly clear when you had screwed up. It was right after kissing on the lips and right before hands below the hips, if I remember correctly.

If you did happen to go into the fine-print area of the chart, you were to stop. Then you could call someone and they would tell you to go home, or tell her to go home, or tell you to put your clothes back on and go to the prayer service that was going on upstairs in the chapel while you were screwing around in the church kitchen. I sincerely couldn't understand why so many of my friends couldn't just follow the rules. They seemed easy enough to me.

Maybe I heard it wrong, and maybe I taught it wrong, too. It still seems to me that what parents and pastors and most everyone else wanted was to make sure none of their girls got pregnant, which seemed to still happen with some regularity anyway. But not me. I didn't do anything wrong, except for everything that wasn't part of the rules.

The rules definitely ...

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