growing up adventist
if you grew up adventist, then you probably share a lot of cultural experiences with me… and this email forward makes you laugh…
but last night, merv and i were trying to outdo each other with our “i was sooo sheltered...” stories, and MAN! looking back on our lives, it’s actually rather funny to think of the stuff that we went through as kids.
for example, my brother and i weren’t really allowed to watch tv. neither was merv. but if my brother and i were allowed to watch tv (only shows such as “jeopardy”, “family ties” and “the cosby show"), we had to turn off the volume on the commercials because we couldn’t let the “bad music” enter our house. yeah - i’m not kidding - and that’s exactly how they said it.
on the other hand, merv’s parents had a “tv allowance box” which allowed merv and his brother to watch 2 hours of tv each week. so they ended up not watching commercials either, but only because they wanted to save their 2 hours of tv watching time.
the funny thing was that merv’s brother actually figured out the parent code - the one that allowed unlimited tv usage - and they would watch tv while their parents weren’t home and then turn off the box and dive outta the living room when they heard the garage open. if that’s not funny enough, get this - one time, the code was actually 1844!
can anyone out there beat these stories? there are so many more i think we could both pull from, but i thought i’d give you a chance to participate before i wow you with the conservativeness that was our parents raising us to be good little adventists.
what type of weird little quirks did you go through as a result of being raised adventist? i’d love to hear that i wasn’t alone…
I can’t remember any particular practice except perhaps counting down the minutes to sundown Saturday nights so we could watch TV. And figuring out how to watch Robotech after sundown on Friday nights when they switched it.
Just in general I remember that growing up Adventist instilled in me an unhealthy sense of fear of just about everything non-adventist. I had no idea how deeply this fear was ingrained in me until I moved away from adventist mecca (Loma Linda) and began to experience healthy Christian culture outside of Adventism.
Not saying being Adventist is bad or anything. Lots of wonderful, healthy Adventists out there. But my experience growing up gave me a lot of unnecessary fear and apprehension that just has no place in the life of someone who claims Jesus as their savior.
Posted by Les on 08/21 at 09:55 AMIt was a shock to me when, upon my first sip of alcohol, I wasn’t immediately fall-down drunk. That’s the way it had always been spun!
I also remember this one story from Insight or one of those Sabbath School magazines that talked about a kid who went to a party where they were serving *gasp* wine coolers.
I finally had a wine cooler in college and I have to say I felt more apprehensive about that drink than any other in my lifetime, simply because of the impression that one article had given me! LOL. (Incidentally, it would take a lot of wine coolers to get you drunk, and you’d probably get sick first from all the sugar. They are good, though.)
I agree with Leslie - mostly it was just fear of the Other.
Now that I am an Other, it’s amusing to look back. But really, it defines many an SDA. It’s sad.
P.S. I’m more hardcore than you guys in the TV department - we didn’t even have one!!!!!.
Posted by laura on 08/21 at 08:17 PMMy TV was PBS only. And theaters were verboten but for some reason the IMAX screen at the Boston Museum of Science was ok.
Friends that lived on my street couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to play on Saturday and I didn’t understand what exactly made Jesus upset if I swam on his day.
Buying stuff was not allowed on Saturday either except for gas. When we moved out to Loma Linda suddenly eating out is what we did after church.
And Adventists are actually serious when they refer to Loma Linda as the Harvard of the west. I’m like, wouldn’t that be Stanford or Berkeley?
hmm… in MA when Taco Bell opened up in Worcester, about 30 minutes away, everyone was so stoked about veggie fast food that when you went you were guaranteed to see auc people.
Church friends, school friends and pathfinder friends were the same people.
Yeah it was sheltered but in my church we had home school kids and even we thought they were weird… so it could have been worse.
great post!
I’m going to sleep now :/Posted by Johnny on 08/23 at 02:59 AMNational Geographic for hours on a Sabbath Afternoon. Why wasn’t the Crocodile Hunter around when I was eight?
And of course, the quintessential Adventist staple: HAYSTACKS!
Posted by Larry Thomas on 08/24 at 01:42 AMYou know you grew up Adventist ....
... if you think soy can be used for everything from making substitutew meat to launching a space shuttle.
... if you felt like a doofus explaining to your non-SDA friends why you couldn’t play or hang out with them on Friday nights and Saturday mornings and afternoons.
... if you ever ordered a burger with no meat in a fast-food restaurant.
... if you feel slightly sheepish about explaining that your church was founded by some chick who got hit in the head with a rock.
... If you’ve ever felt like you had to apologize for not being married and having kids by age 23.
... If you spent half of each year’s camp meeting ducking old boyfriends/girlfriends.
... If your parents tried to sell you on the lie that carob was just as tasty as chocolate.
... If you were ever late to Sabbath School because somebody penny-jammed you inside your dorm room.
... If your mom freaked out and grounded you for a month when she found an empty bottle of Pepsi under your bed.
... If you lost 15 pounds sweating over whether you’d get asked to the Christmas banquet ... or whether you’d have the nerve to ask someone.
... If you ever had a pen pal from the back pages of Guide magazine.
... If the first song you learned on guitar was “Pass It On.”
... If you were too afraid of what everybody would think if you ordered anything more than cheese on your pizza.
... If you and your siblings played “Surprise Package Company” after reading that Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Story.
... If you were shocked to find that the Bible is a lot gorier and more intense than “The Bible Story.”
... If you know that “HMS Richards” is NOT the name of a ship in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.
... If you still feel the slightest twinge of long-buried guilt every time you go bowling or go to the movies.
Posted by on 03/24 at 09:53 PMwasn’t raised adventist but had a friend on my wrestling team that was...heard some pretty crazy things as well, but he denied them.
Posted by mmo on 03/17 at 05:33 PM
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