I just read this thought-provoking story over at Five J's. I hope she doesn't mind if I post it here. The original author is unknown. Make sure to read the story all the way to the end.
A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee 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. In my young mind, each member had a special niche. My brother Bill, five years my senior, was my example; Fran, my younger sister, gave me an opportunity to play ‘big brother’ and develop the art of teasing; My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me to love the word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it.
But the stranger was our story teller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. His daily conversations with us were filled with adventure, mystery, and humor. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours. If I wanted to know about politics, history, or science, he knew it all. He knew about the past, understood the present, and seemingly could predict the future. He was quite an artist, as well; the pictures he could draw were so lifelike that I would often laugh or cry as I watched him.
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. My brother and I were deeply impressed by John Wayne in particular.
The stranger was also 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, not from our friends, not even from adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. But 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 often offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely, much too freely, about sex. His comments were often suggestive, sometimes blatant, but always embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of love and romance were greatly influenced by the stranger.
As I look back, I believe it was 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. He is not nearly so intriguing to my Dad as he was in those early years. But if you 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.
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Original image by The Paper Boat
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