.png)
Leon
ALDRIDGE
A Story Worth Telling
“Never open the door to strangers.” — Uncredited, but excellent babysitting device
Conversation at the coffee shop last week centered around today’s kids who are captivated by electronic devices. How, in many households, they are a bigger influencer than parenting.
It reminded me of piece that has been around a while, but still very applicable today. I don’t know the original author. I borrowed it from a fellow publisher back then who admitted that he didn’t know either. And that he had borrowed it as well.
It’s called, “A Stranger in the House.”
A few months before I was born, it begins, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small 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 ramify. My parents were complimentary. Mom taught me to love the Word of God, and, Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller.
He could weave the most fascinating, tales. Adventures, mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening. He knew about the past, understood the present and seemingly could predict the future. The pictures he could draw were so lifelike that I would often laugh or cry. He was like a friend to the whole family.
He took Dad, my brother 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 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, from our friends or adults.
Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm.
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 (probably too much, too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive and generally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man and woman relationship were 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 was he asked to leave.
More than 30 years passed after the stranger moved in with the young family on Main Street. He was not nearly so intriguing to my Dad as he was in those early years.
But, if you were to walk into my parents’ den even today, you still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and look at his pictures.
His name? We always just called him “TV.”
Consensus of opinion among coffee drinkers last week was about how this generation’s electronic devices aren’t so very different than what someone penned about television decades ago. How kids are captivated by them. How, in many households, they are a bigger influencer than parenting.
And in worse cases, how they are substituted for babysitters.
They are just the new stranger in our homes.
