Biscuits Evolved. He Didn’t.

A paper bag in my hand

I grew up poor and Mormon in North Carolina in the 1960s and 1970s. I went to a school ruled by rich kids and Baptists and attended a Mormon church full of doctors’ and lawyers’ kids, and Duke University students.

Fast forward to my mid-30s. I had moved to Utah and was working as the director of public relations for a hospital. One day, I got a call from an administrator at another hospital who needed a favor. When he told me his name, it sounded very familiar. I asked if he had gone to Duke University.

He said he had gone to Duke, and he was the person I remembered from my teenage years.

 In 1979, he was the Sunday School president, and I was a sixteen-year-old. He was always condescending and rude to my parents and me. If he saw me in the hallway at church, he would stop and ask me where I belonged. I guess he knew I didn’t belong there before I did.

In the 1970s, church services lasted three hours. Sometimes my dad would send me to Biscuitville in between meetings to buy him and my mom biscuits.

One Sunday, I was cornered by the Sunday School president.

“Where have you been?” he asked as I walked in holding my biscuits in a bag that said “Biscuitville”.

“Is this a real question?” I asked.

“Well, I’m going to tell your parents,” he said.

“Good. Can you give them their biscuits when you do?” I said, handing him the bag.

I hadn’t had many chances to confront the bullies in my life, but one of them had just called me at work asking for a favor.

I told him who I was and who my parents were. “You were so rude to me when I was a teenager,” I told him.

I thought maybe he’d chuckle and apologize.

Instead, he said. “Well, if I’d known you were going to grow up to be somebody, I would have been nicer.”

Interesting.

Still an asshole.