Not sure if you remember that about a month ago I found myself laying on the couch, watching "Ice Princess," a Disney movie about a high school physics whiz who finds out that she's also a beautiful and talented figure skater.
It's on again.
However, in my defense! I changed the channel. I feel no need to watch that movie twice. Instead I am watching the first episode of "America's Next Top Model," which I DVR'd last night. Is that better?
...
OK, I lied. I did watch ANTM, but then it ended. Now I'm watching an old re-run of "Designing Women." I really do like Annie Potts.
...
So I came up with the title of today's post without really thinking through exactly what story from my past I would share. I know that real writers write outlines and plan out their stories, and hey, that works for some people. But I'm not kidding myself: I'm no Philip Roth or Jane Smiley. The writing on this blog is meant to amuse and entertain me.
Now that we've got that straight...
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago to my friend Paul, sort of in passing and while we were being silly, that my mom had once taken me to a faith healer. We were at the theater and there were other people around and also talking to us, so I didn't go into it. Now I've been thinking about it for a while, and maybe I can tell the story now, in a hopefully slightly amusing way.
It is amusing, though at the time I was mostly mad, and embarrassed. After my mom decided to quit Catholicism, she started going to a whole range of new churches. They were mostly Baptist, and some of them didn't even have a building. My mom's friend Shirley Baker used to host a service at her house, and me and Shirley's daughters Emma and Kim would hide in their room, waiting for the moment when Shirley would call us in to help pass out the cookies and punch.
Then Shirley decided to move back to England with her daughters, and my mom was on her own again. It was tough for me, too: Emma was my best friend.
After that, for awhile we went to this church that was upstairs from a vacuum repair shop. I hated going there. There was something about it that I just couldn't get past. Yes: that something was the fact that it was upstairs from a vacuum cleaner store. Yes, that something was the fact that I was afraid people from school would find out about my mom's weird church. I know this sounds terrible, but I was just a kid. I didn't want to go to church - any church. And I'd spent nine years in Catholic church where not much had been expected of me. Now there was a lot of really enthusiastic singing, a lot of fire and brimstone, and a lot of speaking in tongues. I was a bit freaked out.
Every once in awhile they'd bring in a guest speaker. Sometimes it was someone who was just visiting, to share their testimony with us. Sometimes it was a visiting pastor, there to share the pulpit (there was no "pulpit." Nor were there pews. There were folding chairs arranged in a semi-circle). Sometimes it was someone who could "heal."
I'd seen a bit of this on TV - my mom watched Praise the Lord all the time, and Shirley Baker knew people. I'd seen the whole, "by the power of the name of Jesus! I heal you!" business, and thought it was weird. Maybe it scared me a little. And then? My mom decided that I needed "healing."
See, I'm pigeon-toed. Always have been. When I was little, I wore the ugly brown shoes, but other than that, my being pigeon-toed didn't really affect me much. Lots of kids are pigeon-toed, it's no big deal. Erica Heckman, my best friend in elementary school was more pigeon-toed than me, and she was the fastest runner in school. Oh sure, Chris Schaffer, Clint Love, and Brett Manuel made fun of the way I walked, but Chris, Clint, and Brett made fun of the way I breathed. I'm pretty sure that had I been graceful and beautiful as a child, those three would've found something to make fun of. As it is, wearing glasses and funny shoes just made me an easy target.
I guess I should be glad that my mom found something physically "wrong" with me that needed healing; I'd seen some crazy exorcisms on TV, and I'm very glad my mom hadn't decided that it was my soul that needed healing.
So... one Sunday the church had a visitor who specialized in the "laying on of hands."
I'm not exactly sure how it all happened. I just remember laying on a table, with some man looking at my legs, and he decided that my legs were two different lengths. Nobody had ever examined my legs, and I'd never noticed a problem - I'd never noticed a problem because it wasn't true. I'm not saying this man's heart wasn't in the right place: I don't know who he was or what his story was. But that guy decided he knew what was wrong with me, and he thought he knew how to fix it.
Besides him, there were other people standing around me, including my mom. Following the healer guy's lead, they all started praying - in English, and in "tongues."
Look, it's not my thing. I don't believe it is what they say it is, but I don't know. It doesn't scare me, and I don't really think it's funny. I'm not making fun of it. I don't know what it is. But I do know that my legs are perfectly the same length now, and they were then. I know that I'm still pigeon-toed, and I know that other than embarrassment and a strong desire to be someplace else, I didn't feel anything that day. Was I healed? What do you think?
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