Freshman Follies

As a mentioned before, when I came to college in the summer of '97 I was pretty naive. Austin seemed so BIG to me (pop. 700,000). Everything there was different. Driving and parking was a nightmare. In my hometown (pop. 10,000) you could drive anywhere within 5 minutes. If you drove longer than 5 minutes then you were outside the town. In Austin, you would spend 15 minutes alone driving in a circle looking for parking. Sometimes, I would be on UT campus and someone would drive me to some part and we would circle looking for parking and then finding none we would have to go back to the dorm, park there and then walk to where we were trying to go, only now we were late.

However, my freshman year, I tried not to drive as much as possible since I was terrified of it. I had so much anxiety about driving that I simply would not go some place if I had to drive. People tail-gate in Austin and run red lights like it's nobody's business and each road has 2 or 3 different names so every time I drove I was not only freaked-out but lost.

But driving was the least of my problems. I arrived in August and by September my highschool sweetheart of 2 years broke up with me. This was a good thing since our relationship was really shallow, but at the time I thought it was the end of the world. I responded by immediately trying to get another girlfriend. I did this because I now realize that I was trying to get my self-worth by dating girls or feeling like I am really somebody if an attractive girl likes me. The unlucky victim was a girl who sat by me in one of my classes. Her name was Melissa.

In short, I spent the next year walking her to class, giving her poems and flowers and basically being a pathetic loser waiting by the phone. I think she was flattered but I could always sense a kind of anxiousness she had when I talked to her which I now think was her trying to find a way to lose me somehow as nicely as possible. But I was so infatiuted! I thought that if I could somehow win her heart then I would be happy. I overlooked the fact that we didn't have a lot in common, and I didn't really know her, oh yeah, and she didn't like me.

One time when I was talking to my Mom I mentioned that there was this girl that I really digged and her name was Melissa. My mom was very excited that I was meeting girls at college (since she wanted me to marry and give her grandkids) but then she started asking me questions.

"Is she a Christian?" she asked.

"Uh no, she's Muslim." I said. "Her family is from Egypt."

"What! Oh, Barry, can't you find a good Baptist girl? I am sure that UT has a Baptist Student Union there where you can meet a nice Christian girl."

"Mom, we talk about God."

"Oh Barry, they believe in Allah, and besides her family would probably kill her if they found out she was dating a Christian."

"Well, we're not dating yet..."

"Just go on down to the BSU and I'm sure there's a [I tuned out at this point]."

In addition to pursuing this girl I also grew out my hair and joined a Christian cult. The two are not related, I just decided to grow out my hair. The only requirement to join the cult was to be gullible enough to accept an invitation to a Bible Study by some really zealous people on campus. Of course I wouldn't have joined had I known it was a cult. I thought it was legit. But first, the...

HAIR
One morning I looked in the mirror and I was disappointed. I always had an image in my mind of what I would look like when I was 18 and in college. I expected myself to look older, cooler. But what I saw was that I looked exactly the same as I had in 6th grade. So I grew out my hair and some side-burns. I went for the Beatles look.

This worried my parents who thought I had started doing drugs. I would say something about a Beatles' song I liked and my mom would say, "You know they did a lot of drugs..." and then she would just trail off in a serious tone. My dad would say, "When are you gonna get a haircut?" I could tell he was seriously irked because he had been in the military and had since then kept his hair short with trips to the barbershop every 2 weeks. When I came home for Christmas the first thing my mom said as she greeted me was, "Get a haircut, Santa Claus." I still don't know what this means, but I swear she said it. Then there's the...

CULT
I had attended a college orientation for a week in the summer before I started classes in the fall. While I was on campus, a person who was handing out flyers jumped in front of me as I was walking and handed me a card. It said "Christians On Campus" and had a spot on it to fill in your information if you were interested in a Bible study. I thought, "I'm a Christian, I'm on campus, why not?" So I filled it out and dropped it in the mail and promptly forgot about it. On the day that I moved into the dorm, as soon as I plugged in my telephone it rang. "Hello?" I said, thinking that the phone was broken. "Hi, this is Neil with Christians on Campus, we're having a Bible study downstairs if you want to come." And that's how I joined.

When you first join a cult they "love bomb" you, telling you how great you are and what not. I didn't mind this at all. Also, cults tend to isolate you and monopolize your time. Christians on Campus met everyday and for long hours. Once, when I went to a meeting I was there for 2 and half pretty boring hours. We were meeting in an empty classroom and the bell rang to show that classes are changing. I had an afternoon class I had to go to so I got up and tried to quietly leave. The guy who was speaking stopped and turned to me and said, "Hey brother, where are you going?"

"I've got CLASS, I've got to get to." I said it this way because I had kept thinking, "when is this thing gonna end?".

"Oh are you sure you can't stay?" he said, with 40 other people looking at me. "No, I have to go to class now." I was, after all, a college student unlike some of the 30- to 40-year- olds I saw in the meetings. I later found out that this group was part of the Boston Church, (aka International Church of Christ) who believe there is only one true church per city, which of course would be theirs. Because of this, everybody in that local church had to attend meetings, college student or not. They also have a misreading of Matthew 28:19-20 where they believe you must make disciples first before you can be baptized yourself and thereby saved. All I knew at the time was I got some weird vibes.

PUNCHLINE
My freshman year was a very difficult time with lots of soul-searching. But I wouldn't trade it for anything because a lot of important questions came out of it.
* Would I let fear [of driving] rule my life?
* Did I need someone [Melissa] to make me valuable?
* Did I care too much what people thought of how I looked [hair]?
* Did I really know what I believed [cult]?

In case your wondering, I did learn to drive fearlessly, Melissa lost me over the summer, I cut my hair eventually, and I left the cult after a couple of months and one shakedown from the leader. Since I was shaped by these things I will probably talk about them in more detail later. Or just drop me a comment if you are interested in a certain part and I will talk more about it.