I remember my Seventh-Day Adventist childhood at Avondale College through a dark lens.
The following paragraph is 100% emotionally true for me but not always 100% fair and 100% factual.
Breaking the Sabbath! Big sin! Whack! Listening to the Beatles! Big sin! Whack! Eating between meals! Big sin! Whack! Eating candy! Big sin! Whack! Chewing gum! Big sin! Whack! Playing cards! Big sin! Whack! Smoking cigarettes! Big sin! Whack! Swearing! Big sin! Whack! Drinking water with your meals! Big sin! Whack! Interracial dating! Big sin! Whack! Masturbation! Big sin! Whack! Girlie mags! Big sin! Whack! Everything fun in life! Big sin! Whack!
My teachers at my Adventist school would hit me so hard with rulers that they would sometimes break. Mrs….would hit me from out of the blue when it was about a week before her period and I’d go flying across the room, smashing into furniture.
I always get the big sermon before my spanking (for setting fires and telling lies and eating candy between meals) and then I have to pull down my pants to make the humiliation complete, and then I’m told to kneel, and then he’ll tell me that he’ll hit me longer and harder if I cry and then the whacks begin and I whimper and they don’t end until I can’t sit down for a day or two. But the most painful part of all for me is to look in his eye and to see how I have hurt him, let him down, and turned away from God. It’s for my own good. We can’t let the Devil win.
And you be the Captain
And I’ll be no-one
And you can carry me away if you want to
And you can lay low
Just like your father and if
I tread upon your feet you just say so
‘Cos you’re The Captain, I am no-one,
I tend to feel as though I owe one to you
