My youthful introduction into religion

As a young boy growing up in Florida, my parents used to drag us to church on a regular basis.

We frequently visited our Grandmother on weekends, so we would attend her favorite church, or at least the one that was closest to her house.

The only time I didn’t mind going to church was to attend a Southern style funeral. I know this sounds bad, but everyone in the community would get together and bring a covered dish to share. 

Apparently, they had determined long ago that binge eating was a good way to send someone off to the next world. It certainly was a good plan as far as I was concerned.

I can recall attending one of these funerals to find tables of desserts lined up for a quarter mile down the road. YES! My favorite food!

My 10 year old arms hadn’t grown strong enough to carry all the tasty treats I was sure I could eat. My legs tired half way down the line of tables, so I just stopped there and sat in the warm Florida sand with a plate piled so high I could barely see over it. I figured I would empty this load and continue the trek in a minute. This would be the fist time I would understand the pain behind the phrase; "Your eyes were bigger than your stomach."

While I did a good job of scarfing it all down, I had little desire for more. The main dishes held no interest at all.

But those were my only good memories of Church and those Southern Baptist sermons we were forced to attend. Can you say Hell fire and brimstone?

Geez, I never knew I was such a sinner until I attended one of those southern Baptist sermons. There was this preacher that stood at the front of the church and he used to yell at me all the time, and he didn’t even know me!

"You will go to hell if you don’t repent your evil ways!" He would rant on and on about this, pacing back and forth, waving arms and pointing fingers.  How many sins could a 10 year old possibly have committed? I don't think I was even aware what they all where. He really seemed upset at how bad all of his parishioners were. 

I used to wonder if God sent all of us to him as his punishment.

I do remember there was some kind of pool built into the front of the church. It wasn’t there all the time, but sometimes they would try to drown people, saying something about Baptizing in the name of the Lord. 

There were times when I wanted to go jump in the pool and swim around during the sermon. We were not allowed to do this no matter how hot and humid a closed church in Central Florida got on a hot August day. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we were wearing our Sunday best clothing; hot suits tied tightly at the neck with nooses called ties. 

The stained glass windows only opened a little bit at the bottom;  Just enough  to let in wasps and bees, but no breeze. Nobody had air conditioning back then. The place was cooled, and I use the term loosely, by old osculating fans mounted to the wall. These were the old fashioned types with a decorative wire grid that wouldn’t keep an entire hand out, much less a kids fingers.

However, they were mounted high enough on the wall that nobody could reach them. They were also high enough so that you couldn’t feel any air movement. However, the bees and wasps would occasionally get caught in one and get mad enough to go look for somebody to sting to even the score. 

The upright wooden pews were like sitting on rocks. To me, Sunday church felt like I was already in Hell. I started wondering if I should sin now to make up for all the time I had already spent in church.

The really funny thing about all this? 

The church was in a small town with the ever so non sinning name of Fellowship!

What was your introduction into religion like?