A little about kyteman…why I don’t drink alcohol…Part 1

I was born and raised an orphan, in a land that once was free….oops, nope….that’s a Larry Norman song.

I teach grades 6, 7, and 8 Sunday School at Woodside Bible Fellowship in Elmira, Ontario.  Been doing that for 21 years now and I love it!  Every year I tell this little story….

When I was ten, actually 8 days before my eleventh birthday, my parents and my sisters and I moved to Port Carling, Muskoka.  I know, I know….COOL, eh!!!!  And to me, it was cool.  We lived just outside of town on Indian Cresent in a beautiful house facing Mirror Lake.  I didn’t know it at the time, but our family was kind of running away from life in Tillsonburg.  However, what did I care about that?  I was eleven and living on a lake in Muskoka with snow up to HERE!!!!  The only thing that was not cool about moving when we did was that the hockey season was already half over and therefore I didn’t get to play hockey for the rest of that season because I wasn’t registered in Port….but that’s for another story.

This is where I lived!!!!

The story I want to tell happened the summer I was twelve.  Having grown up on a farm outside of Tillsonburg and then moving to the outback of Muskoka, us Kyte kids were pretty sheltered.  We only got 3 or 4 channels on the TV in Tillsonburg, and only 2 channels in Port Carling…ok 3 channels if you count the French channel.  The point is, I was still a kid at twelve years old.  I didn’t know much about what was going on in the world.  My life consisted of hockey (of course), snowmobiling, and school, in the fall and winter…and swimming and canoeing to swimming lessons, in the summer.  What could be better?  I mean, really…I was living on a lake in Muskoka…playing hockey and swimming!  Life was great!

So, what happened when I was twelve?  Well, one Friday or Saturday night, my parents had a party.  My younger sister and I snuck out of the house to “watch” the party.  We went into the trees on the lakeside of the house so we could look into the huge windows.  Because it was nightime, we could see clearly into the house.  The party wasn’t anything rowdy that the cops needed to be called in….I mean, my parents were in their thirties with five kids…it was just a bunch of their friends hanging out having a few drinks and smokes (tobacco only!) and some music in the background.

Dea and I watched the “fun” for about a half a hour.  It was a very nice night and so we just sat there in the trees, watching.  I can’t imagine what Dea must have been thinking.  She would have been only nine years old…I guess hanging out with her big brother was cool…or probably she was just happy to be “up” instead of in bed.

I have no idea why, but I suddenly turned to Dea and said, “I’m never going to be like that.”  Plain and simple statement.  Dea looked and me and said, “Me either.”  She probably had no idea what my statement meant.  All I was saying was that I was never going to drink alcohol.  To this day I seriously have no idea why that popped into my head.  Believe me when I say that I was not judging my parents or thier friends.  I really didn’t know what they were doing, and I really didn’t care.  I just had this feeling come over me to say out loud that I was never going to drink.  I didn’t realize it at the time, however, I was making a statement that would make a HUGE impact on my life.  I didn’t say that comment to God, I said it to Dea, my little sister, but it was probably the first statement I ever said with conviction.  I hadn’t even become a Christian, yet….but that’s for another story, also.

We continued to watch for a while and then snuck back to our rooms.

I’ll continue with the rest of this story next time and I’ll explain why it was a life altering experience for me and why I tell it to my Sunday School class.

Leave a comment if anything like that has happened to you.

kyteman

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