Cybercolumn by Brett Younger: Walking in someone else’s flip flops

Posted: 7/13/07

CYBER COLUMN:
Walking in someone else’s flip flops

By Brett Younger

The camp newspaper’s list of “Rejected Camp Themes for 2007” included: “Discovering Your Inner Samson,” “Find the Meaning of Life in Your Own Pockets,” “Near-Death Experience Week” and “Old-Fashioned Week O’ Bible Sword Drills.”

The theme of youth camp for me is usually something like: “The Crippling Effects of Sleep Deprivation,” “Five Days without Dress Shoes” or “Much Too Young to Feel This Old.”

Maybe it was having both of my children at the same camp for the first and last time, but this year I kept thinking about what it’s like to be 13 or 18.

Ten minutes before the first worship service, Carol, my wife, said, “I need to go by my dorm room, but save me a seat for worship.”

When I got to the auditorium, my church group was sitting together. I saw an empty spot in the middle, but I needed a seat for my date. I found two empty seats two rows away from the Broadway group, took a seat on the aisle and waited for a cute girl to come and sit with me.

Guys at camp love it when attractive females sit by them. I knew that when other campers saw Carol sitting by me, they would think I am cooler than I actually am. I sat there by myself for a few minutes, then a few minutes more, and then began to feel self-conscious sitting by myself while everyone else was having fun. The guy who sits by himself at camp is often the object of pity.

Where was Carol? What was she doing? Didn’t she care that I not only wasn’t the cool guy with the date on the first night of camp, but was now the pathetic guy waiting for a girl who isn’t coming? Where was she?

That’s when I spotted Carol sitting right in the middle of the Broadway group laughing and giggling. Suddenly I was 13 again.

Like Carol—though not so much as Carol—Lorrie Bumpers was cuter than I. Lorrie, who’s mother is Hawaiian, was the most exotic girl in the seventh grade. She had jet-black hair, dark green eyes and knew all the words to Elton John’s songs. I spent much of junior high saving a seat on the bus, in the cafeteria, and at football games for an island girl who was laughing and giggling somewhere else.

Sitting alone in the crowd at youth camp, it was easy to remember what it feels like to be left out. The inadequacy we felt at 13 isn’t much different from the inadequacy we feel at 46.

Our insecurities lie just beneath our thin skin. When someone hurts our feelings, it doesn’t matter if we’re 18 or 68. We never completely get over the fear that the other kids are laughing and we’ll end up sitting alone.

Adults protect themselves with cynicism, suspicion and distrust, but we would be better off imagining what it’s like to be the other person. Most of the people we think of as mean-spirited are acting out of feelings of insecurity. Those—young or old—who are unkind to other nationalities, other races, the poor, or the left out are usually afraid.

I still like “Old Fashioned Week O’ Bible Sword Drills,” but the recurring theme for my week at youth camp was “What’s it like to be someone else?”—especially the ones who are sitting by themselves.

Brett Younger is pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth and the author of Who Moved My Pulpit? A Hilarious Look at Ministerial Life, available from Smyth & Helwys (800) 747-3016. You can e-mail him at byounger@broadwaybc.org.