Today, I fucked up... by thinking my friend was Satan for several years
Ok, so this fuck up actually occurred between 5th and 6th grade. I’m 25 now and this is still easily the biggest fuck up of my life…so far.
When I was in elementary, I made friends with a boy on the playground named Stan. Stan was a good kid. He was smart, loved to play, listened to his parents; you know, all the good stuff. Well right around that time, the Catholic church my family had been going to for several years brought in a new priest. This guy was one of those fire and brimstone type guys. You know, the kind of guy that would stand in the quad of his local state college screaming at the harlots and Jezebels walking by. This priest pretty much rewrote the Sunday School curriculum to put the fear of God into his children. Needless to say, my education in faith changed from learning about the Golden Rule and being kind to others to learning what Satan would do to me if I touched my ‘Holy Place’. That is the first time I had heard of this guy, Satan. I had learned about the Devil, lucifer, Adam, and Eve, but not this mean guy Satan. Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself “The Devil, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub - they’re all the same being!” Yes, you are right. But to a very young child who’s only interaction with any of these names is in the antagonist of stories, I didn’t make the connection they were the same. Keep in mind, my previous priest was amazing. He understood that you can’t put fear into children and worked diligently to help us find the beauty within our own faith. This new guy was different. He wanted you to know early and often who and what Satan was. Unfortunately for me, I apparently had some sort of ADD/ADHD/Dyslexia (I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention) and confused the word Satan with Stan.
As you can imagine, I was very confused. How could Stan, such a good guy and friend, hurt people? The thought terrified me. From that moment forward I feared any wrongdoing in front of Stan as I thought he would punish me. I actively avoided him at school, to the point in which we stopped being friends. I kept my eye on him from a distance…just waiting to see what horrible things he would do to people. I never told my parents about why Stan and I stopped being friends and I assume they didn’t notice. This continued for a few years, until the summer between 5th and 6th grade. Stan and I ran into each other at our local pool. As I walked through the front gate our eyes met and I went white. My parents recognized Stan and his family and immediately went over there to socialize, forcing me to actually talk with him. That’s when it happened: Stan asked me why I don’t play with him anymore. So many emotions exploded at that moment and I shouted, in front of his family, “Because you hurt people who do bad things!” My parents, his parents, hell half of the pool just stared at us. All was quiet until my mother cleared her throat and asked me where I had heard that. “Mom, Reverend Endofdays said Stan punishes people who do bad things!” Everyone just stared at me, blankly. “Honey…[Long Pause]…I think you mean Satan.” It took several minutes, but I realized the extent of my fuck up. For several years I had been operating under the assumption that my friend was the King of Hell.
Fast forward a few years, Stan and I are still pretty close friends. Though he moved away after highschool, we still joke about this incident.
TL;DR: I thought my friend Stan was Satan for several years. I was wrong.
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