Adam's Apple
C October 1, 2006

My story begins many many years ago. Specifically, it begins in Mr. Anderson’s junior algebra class at Clay High School in October of 1999, during what I like to refer to as my age of innocence. Maybe there was something to that millennium stuff after all.

The irony does not escape me that the young man to evict me from my blissfully ignorant life, during which I was perfectly content with myself and my world at the same time, as I was sheltered from it, was named Adam.

If you remember the story of the Garden of Eden, the real story and not the one taught to you in pre-school, you’ll know that there were two trees in the original garden. Only the second was the Tree of Life, from which Adam could eat to live forever. The first was the Tree of Knowledge, and when Adam ate from that tree he began to see things as they really were, and as a result, he no longer owned a place in the garden.

The current Adam was a pimply red-headed kid with thick glasses and an unnatural talent for math, a stereotype I’m sure all of you can appreciate. Yet what he did involves more than math. What Adam did was to put the Fruit of Knowledge in my mouth and shoved it down my throat, and after that nothing was ever the same.

On this particular day, which was the Friday before Halloween, although lacking Adam’s mathematical talent I cannot tell you the exact number, Adam approached me at the end of math class. His request seemed simple enough: “Would you like to go to a haunted house?”

There have been numerous articles on this subject, but I love Halloween. I love laying around pretending to be dead, then jumping up and surprising little kids. I love looking at people out of the corner of my eyes so the back of their brain tickles with unease. I love sneaking around and scaring people, frequently surprising them even during the other 11 months of the year. I’d like to think the spirit of Halloween lives on through me.

And yet I had never been to a real haunted house. To me, terror has always been best delivered with needlelike precision. Anyone can flail a chainsaw around and make you uncomfortable, but does it cause that icy patch at the base of your spine and the sinking sensation that you’d rather be anywhere else? Nevertheless, I had a feeling I was missing something. Maybe, by participating in a real haunted house, this would open up a whole new dimension of possibilities to my sick and distorted genius.

In one of the most poorly thought out decisions I have ever made, I said yes.

Later that night, Adam and a van full of kids picked me up at my front door. It had not yet sunk into me that they were playing Christian music in the car. In the back of my mind, I believe I had had a few insights into Adam’s religious fanaticism, but why should that bother me? We had grown up not really seeing religion as something to take too seriously. Church was something to do on Sunday… or not, if you didn’t feel like getting up. For the past five years I had not felt like getting up, and I didn’t see why that should affect anyone one way or the other.

Adam’s father drove us over the bridge and into the parking lot of a scary looking building called Hard Rock Ministries. The name in particular meant nothing to me, I may even have laughed that it sounded a little odd. Because I was still naïve as to the effects of religion, it never even occurred to me that someone claiming to be “solid as a rock” might be trouble. But that world was about to come crashing down.

The place, as I remember, was packed. There was even at least one relatively good looking girl, and I fancied I might score in that innocent schoolyard way you scored by holding someone’s hand. I can hear you laughing at me now, but please do remember I was 16, and had never been outside the suburbs. The fact that all these people seemed to be religious fanatics never once occurred to me.

Then came the moment when it was time to enter the “haunted house.” I expected to be deluged by wax dolls of scar-faced killers and weapons of all shapes and sizes dripping gore. As I made my way through the line, I was quite surprised to see none of this. Instead, there was a pair of twins sitting behind a glass screen moving a Ouija board around. Hey, at least that looked a little scary.

But there were other things. The magic cards that lay spread out on the table. The music posters plastered to the wall. The minister praying over people before they went in. Nonchalantly, I leaned over to Adam to ask him what was the deal.

“This is a different kind of haunted house than any you might have seen before. This is a Christian haunted house.”

“Oh.” I said, because “oh” is always what I say when I am completely and utterly confused by something.

Finally, it was time to go in. I knew this was a church, but I’d been to a church haunted house before. They converted all three levels into a kind of aisle running between pumpkins. It was lame, and I was with my grandparents and was too young to remember most of it, which is why I don’t count it. Still, I remembered enough to know it wasn’t like this.

Rather than heads on sticks, or bones or knives or anything scary, the sanctuary seemed no different than that. It seemed a funeral was in progress, and a casket sat at the fore with two or three people sitting in the pews weeping uncontrollably. Perhaps it was meant to be unnerving, but I for one wasn’t scared.

I stared at the casket for several minutes, trying to figure out the trick. Was he going to spring up at us? Was he disfigured? This didn’t seem to be following any of the customary guidelines.

Maybe I should be embarrassed by being fooled by such a simple trick, but I was so engrossed in the casket that I completely missed the black robed figure walking up behind us. No one noticed him before he started talking, and then no one could look away.

“Oh, yes, it’s so sad.” the skeleton-looking guy said, mockingly, “But what you didn’t know about this poor soul, is that he was GAY!!!”

The crowd gasped.

“These few people that mourn for him call it a ‘lifestyle choice.’” he said, “That almost makes it sound as though it is proper. He told everybody he couldn’t help it, that he was born that way. Well, now he’s in hell where he belongs!”

I was quickly beginning to see the direction this haunted house was taking, but before I could protest, we were escorted into another room.

This one looked a bit more like I might have expected a haunted house to look. Slimy jars lined the walls containing semi-human forms with expressions of utter horror. Two figures in surgical masks stood in the center of the center of the room over a woman strapped down onto an iron table. The doctors held something that looked vaguely like a band saw, and they were torturing the lady.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed, “Don’t hurt my baby! I don’t want to do this!”

“It’s just tissue, ma’am.” one of the doctors said, nonchalantly.

The skeleton demon turned towards us with a snicker. “I love that line, I invented it.” he confessed, “It’s so… dehumanizing.”

Then the band saw whirred and the woman howled in pain.

“Um… is that realistic?” I nervously tittered, but no one heard me and we were in another room.

Over the next half hour I would see young boys tortured by the Magic: the Gathering cards in their rooms, children calling to their parents from the grave “Why didn’t you teach me about Jesus?” and other haunted house elements that were almost, but not quite, appropriate.

Finally, we were led into a room that was set up to look like the fires of hell. Souls twisted and writhed in the flames, and in the center of it all, a man in devil horns laughed at all of us.

“You have all fallen short of the glory of God!” he called, hysterically, “There isn’t one of you that doesn’t deserve to be here with me. I will… wait! NO!”

Another door opened, one we hadn’t seen before, and from within poured a blinding white light. I hate to admit it, but after such a lengthy build up, I was almost relieved to see the angel stride forth and point his finger at Satan.

“You have no power here!” he said, or something quite like it, “These souls have been paid for by Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, and they have an appointment with their maker.”

The crowd before me followed the angel into what I presumed was paradise, while Satan screamed and cried behind us. I spared one last look at him, feeling more than a little sorry for the people left here to burn. What kind of God would do that, I reasoned? Well, I was about to find out.

We were brought into a small room, which might on other Sundays have been some sort of children’s room. The pastor circled us up and began speaking to us of love and life and what we just witnessed. My brain felt a kind of repulsion, as to the smell of ammonia, for somewhere deep down in my reptilian brain I knew there was no going back from this line I was about to cross. So, in a desperate bid to reject the information about to be imparted to me, I scanned the room for something to distract me.

And my eyes fell upon… a comic book.

In big bold letters on the front it read “Somebody Goofed,” with pictures of tiny cartoon devils snickering at the viewer. I had never seen its likes before, a tiny pamphlet with entertaining drawings. It raised a lot of questions, but mostly I just wanted to read it right there.

It wasn’t until years later, during the war, that Chris first introduced me to a website we have all come to know and love. Upon looking at it the first time I had to say, “Oh my god, I think I’ve seen one of these before!”

It was, of course, the first Chick tract.

But back to the moment, when I was enthralled by this new discovery of a comic book. My mind could not wrap itself around what it was or what it might say, but the first few panels seemed to involve a guy in a leather jacket pointing out how ridiculous Christianity sounded. “Of course.” I thought, seeing the immediate parallel to my situation, “This is a book about how mainstream Christianity has goofed. They’ve got it all wrong.”

It was I who had got it all wrong, though I had yet to discover my error. For at that moment, it suddenly dawned on me that the entire congregation was staring at me. Slowly, guiltily, I slid the comic book into my coat pocket and looked at the pastor.

“What about you?” he asked me. “How do you know you’re going to heaven when you die?”

I stuttered for an answer. It was, in all honesty, not a question I had asked myself before. The mere fact that it was posed to me now ruined everything.

“Because… I know that’s where I want to be?” It sounded like the kind of B.S. my language arts teacher would buy.

The pastor just looked at me sympathetically. Nuts, I thought.

“But have you made that kind of commitment to Jesus Christ?”

I had been so absorbed in the Chick tract, I had completely missed the first part of that question. I know it sounds absurd now, but I was a junior, and still seconds away from my fall from grace. I didn’t understand what kind of commitment he meant.

“Um… I’m not sure.” I said, hoping he would explain.

He looked at my sympathetically again, tilting his head as though to say: “you moron.” The entire room was now looking at me, holding their breath.

“You don’t know whether or not you’ve invited Jesus Christ into your heart to be your Lord and Savior?”

“Oh, yeah.” I lied, “I’ve done that.”

“Then how do you know you’re going to go to heaven when you die?”

“Because…” I started. At this point I was just eager to get out of there, and I knew what the correct answer was, “because I’m saved?”

The entire room, pastor included, let loose a sigh of relief. Several older boys rushed up to me to give me a hug, and somewhere I think a girl started crying. I grinned and walked out of the room, because I knew I had guessed right.

On the ride home, I was deluged with even more praise. I was told this was the beginning of a whole new life for me, and how they would all be there to help me through this transition. I did good, I thought. Everyone seemed pleased with me.

Everyone, that is, except for my good friend Chris Zasada. While the Christianity actually began to take hold of me, for a little less than a week, I was fortunate to have such good friends to ask me spiritually penetrating questions I did not have the answer to, and to examine my belief system logically, from an outsiders' perspective.

That was the first of at least four times I’ve converted, each taking hold of me for anywhere from a day to negative twenty seconds. And though in each case the result has come back to my intelligence and critical thinking skills, I suppose in another light you could always blame Chris Zasada.

This way I know, when I am burning in the pits of hell, I will be thinking of him.

Thanks, guys.