One of
the odd things I remember about going to to Colorado is that we
wasted a lot of time stopping off at my mom's ex-boyfriend's house.
I know that sounds like it may be a little untoward or seedy but
strangely it was not, we visited with his wife and kids as well. At
the time I thought nothing of a guy, my dad, letting his wife load up
and go to another state to visit an old fling. They were okay people, I guess, but it is hard to connect with people you only see twice in
your life and they were a little on the crazy side when it came to
religion. We were religious but in a more northern way and it was a
more reserved, quite and unmentioned type of thing for us. They were
more of the southern type of religion talking about God and Jesus all
the time and saying loud prayers, which is fine, I don't mean to be
insulting towards them it was just not what we were used to. They were also
really, really involved with Boy Scouts, and once again we were into
Boy Scouts as well but we mainly just went on camp-outs and raised
hell and played basketball once a week for our 'Pack Meeting'. They
were a little more martial about it and were strict on the uniform
and did marches and drills and stuff. The one thing that made me the
most uncomfortable was when they would say prayers around dinner,
which, once again, we did as well, theirs was just a little less
subtle. In our house we sat around the table heads bowed arms folded
and one person said a quite prayer while everyone else listened. They
had everyone stand up in a circle around the table and hold hands and
one of the kids got to pick a song-prayer which they all sang with
gusto while swaying and we just looked around uncomfortably. The
prayer seemed a little non-sequitur to me as well it was called
'Johnny Appleseed' and it was about how by planting trees Johnny
Appleseed was spreading God's love out the across the world or
something. I just remember thinking that this is really weird, and
given what we got up to, that could be saying something.
