The Kiss Behind the Organ. (Part 1)

These Reputationally Pure teenagers are singing on the platform several feet from the purported site of the kiss.

So first this happened: 

Minnie VanderLaan told her friend Beth Spire that her husband Bob had seen Amy Morehouse kiss the preacher's son in the front of the auditorium behind the organ while Irene Fleagle was playing the prelude for the Sunday Evening service. Beth told her daughter who was also named Amy.   There were seven Amy's in the Lumbercity Baptist Youth Group so the story becomes a little confusing at this point.  Amy Spire told Amy Norton, but she also told Amy Norton that it probably wasn't true. Probably.  She hoped.  What did Amy Norton think?  Should she believe it?  After all, Bob VanderLaan has very thick glasses and Minnie loves to talk. 

I don't know what Amy Norton told Amy Spire, but I do know that Amy Norton also told me.  I should know, she said, because this was a rumor about me.  I was the preacher's son.  

I'll tell you the same thing I told her: I didn't kiss Amy Morehouse.

I didn't kiss her in the church or out of the church. I didn't kiss her that night or any night ever.  

But in order to understand the dramatic stakes in this story, you need to know that "kissing" in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church in the 1980s is not what you understand to be kissing. Physiologically it's the same, but culturally it's much much more taboo.  It's more like saying:  Amy Morehouse and the preacher's son were buck naked and aroused when they cavorted last Sunday Evening, behind the organ, played, as always, by dear sweet Mrs. Fleagle.

Of course I denied it and partly because it wasn't true.  But much much more?  My denial was focused on the most important virtue that a young fundamentalist has: 

Purity. 

(And when I say "Purity" I actually just mean reputational purity, since most fundamentalist teenagers are just like every other teenager that has ever lived -- delightfully, rambunctiously impure.)

I protested to Amy Norton, I protested to Amy Spire.  I insisted that Amy Spire protest to her mother, Beth Spire.  I really liked her mom, Beth Spire and I knew she liked me and I supposed that her opinion of me had fallen significantly in light of this apocryphal story.

And finally? I protested to my father the preacher.  

And then this happened: 

After three days of prayer, consultation and careful strategy, my father decided to take me to the VanderLaan's house and allow me to confront Bob and Minnie with my protest. 

And that's the cliffhanger, folks.  You'll have to rejoin this tale in progress later to find out what happens when the preacher's son, temporarily-reputationally-impure, comes face to face with his accusers: The VanderLaans.

*

Any names, facts, memories or incidents in this story have been so distorted by time, perspective and even intentional authorial liberties?  That I can say with assurance: 

This story is NOT true.  None of the stories on this blog are true. 

Unless they ring true to you in a way that makes you recognize the Universe you live in and are a part of.  In that case? These stories are completely 100% true.