Egads…Start ramping up for a birthday party for your 14-year-old and suddenly you’re five days out from your last blog entry. That, and some evenings just saying "I really don’t feel like my brain is firing on enough cylinders to do this justice." Like I’ve been doing it justice anyway. I really want it to have "Walking Tall" justice though. You know, the kind that says "You’ll respect this topic because it deserves it and I say so."
Yeah, the kids are all gone at Brokeback’s place and I’ve been watching some cable television.
But before watching The Rock* dispense justice this evening, I was at a single adult committee meeting for all the congregations of my church in this area. I wasn’t really looking forward to it. Much. At all. Truthfully, I was completely dreading it. At thirty-eight I am by far the youngest person on the committee, and after my daughter’s party I was feeling even younger. I was just sitting by and letting her and her friends goof off and have fun when a boy she invited started asking a bit about my computer setup. I started giving him specs and talking all the tech talk. Then they all started digging in my MP3 collection with lots of "oohs" and "ahhs" over the music I have. I had suddenly achieved my life-long goal of being cool with all the middle school kids, albeit twenty-five years late. So the prospect of meeting with a group where the median age is somewhere in the mid-sixties was an incredibly un-appealing follow-up.
Making the prospect of the meeting even less attractive was the knowledge that we were to begin planning the January event. A night of singing and music. All performed by other people so that we, the singles, can sit and listen politely. Much like a service activity where a group of youth go sing to shut-ins at the home. Something that people not having personal ownership of either a walker or a shawl would be remotely interested in. In short, I was going to participate in a meeting where I would not only be peering in upon, but also personally helping to architect one of my own personal levels of hell.
I was not stoked.
The meeting began much as I had expected. Some pleasantries, followed but some meandering thoughts to open the discussion. Then a period wherein my thoughts mostly centered on how hard I would have to beat my head on the table in front of me before blood would start trickling out of my ears. That thought would then turn to an internal debate over whether it would be possible at all to inflict that level of damage to my head since this was one of those long tables with fold-out legs made mostly of platic with a thin metal frame. The kind they use for stunts in pro wrestling. They crash through them and blood never comes out of their ears, so I’d probably just make a lot of noise and never be able to beat myself into unconsciousness as an escape from the begginings of conversation over refreshments for an activity four months in the future.
At about that point in the meeting though, the second-youngest person on the committee (missing me by something around a decade) interjected something from a telephone conversation he and I had a couple weeks ago. "With some of the things we do I really think we’re missing the ‘middle’ group of singles. The ones thirty to forty-five." I was not about to miss this opportunity.
"You know, I have to say that while I do appreciate all the effort that goes into this activity, I’m not interested in it. At all. I won’t be coming, and neither will anyone else in my age range." Talk about a conversation turner. This is my third time being part of planning this particular event, and while I have put some voice to this concern before, I’ve never done it so directly. And to the group’s credit, discussion quickly turned to questions of why I wouldn’t be interested and what we could do differently.
Answer to first question: Because I can’t think of anything more boring or soul-sucking than feeling I have to import people to make me feel like I’m not a social outcast.
Answer to second question: Plan something that I can do sooner than four freaking months from now.
Now, while I may not have put my thoughts in exactly those terms, I believe the point did make it across. People in the thirty to forty-five demographic have different interests, and would like to be social with each other so as to, perhaps, meet someone new with whom to spend their lives. It’s a novel concept, but as a church we are terrible, bad, awful at supporting our singles in having a social life with other singles within the church. We’re so worried about making sure that they don’t sleep with each other outside of marriage that we give them nothing to come to so as to insure that they sleep with people outside the church instead. As surprising as it may sound, that approach is not being met with a terrible lot of success, with the end result being that many of our divorced or never-married singles leave and never return.
All of this dicussion seemed to be making sense to everyone, and some good ideas were starting to be generated. Then at one point, someone interjected, "We should get someone from that age group here as a representative."
sigh…While it may not be perfect, at least it’s progress
* You didn’t think I’d be talking about Joe Don Baker, did you? And…yep. Right there, you’re too young for me again, aren’t you?
So I notice that there are lots of single people around at least in their twenties. And I’m pretty sure that there were others there in the “acceptable dating age” range. But with all the icky married people there, sitting with the single people they’ve taken under their wings, it was impossible to tell them apart. They were utterly, socially camouflaged. Conference in itself was enjoyable enough, sure. But knowing that Sasquatch were out there, hiding and likely not even knowing they were so completely invisible, was a frustrating experience.