[CS-FSLUG] NI: The Stranger

[Fred A. Miller]

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our 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.  Mom taught me to 
love the Word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it, but 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, Bill and me to our 
first major league baseball game.  He was always encouraging us to see the 
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 
Mom 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 would 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 
longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned
my ears and made Dad squirm.  To my knowledge the stranger was
never confronted.

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

As I look back, I believe it was because of the grace of God that the stranger 
did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my 
parents, yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave.

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

His name? 

 

We always just called him TV.



~Author Unknown~

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