I have done things that I am not proud of. Some things I did, I did because I thought it was funny. Sometimes those things backfire on you. This one has.
When I was in college, or at least after I got married, I
took it upon myself to “corrupt” two bandmembers every year. My sophomore year, the first year, was the
most successful. I didn’t do a whole
lot, or go to extremes, usually. First
off, you have to understand the environment I was in. I went to a very small, conservative Christian college where many
of the students had grown up in very conservative, very sheltered homes. I, on the other hand, grew up in New
York. Yes, my father is a preacher, and
yes, my mother was a teacher, so I did have a strict family. But they didn’t try to shelter me from what
went on in the world, just tried to keep me from doing it myself.
It started out pretty innocently, with me giving a ride down
to the practice field after classes to a couple of freshmen. Let’s call them K & J. K played the clarinet and J played the
flute, but they were both on the flag line during marching season. Each afternoon I would pick them up, and I
would stop at the student center to check my mailbox. I would then hand my mail to whoever was sitting in the
passenger’s seat. Every once in a while
there would be a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, or some other catalog
that I would insist they look through.
I played Dr. Demento CDs in the car constantly. It was fun, a lot of fun. I talked about sex almost constantly, after
all, I was a newlywed, I was allowed to, right?
The piece de resistance, though, was when they came over to
our apartment. We have, and have had a
very extensive library, averaging about 700 books or so. Both girls liked to read, so I would tell
them they were welcome to look through our library and borrow a few books if
they’d like. Oh, and while you’re in
there, could you grab the Grimm’s Fairy Tales for me? The reactions…..sometimes they would say
nothing at all (though their faces would be red), sometimes they would freak
out, sometimes they would be quite calm and ask questions. (I did the book
thing to almost everyone who came over, not just my select two) What was so bad about Grimm’s Fairy Tales,
you ask? Nothing. But behind it….. Our copy of the fairy tales is a fairly large hard cover volume
which I would artfully display with the cover facing out so you could see the
picture. And so it could hide more
books behind it.
Our “collection” started with Sex for Dummies, then
we added The Kama Sutra, and progressed from there. There were books on Creative Loveplay,
and several books of Erotica that I added to the mix. It was enough to embarrass most people that picked up the Fairy
Tales and chanced to look.
It didn’t take too long to warp their little minds to the
point that it was irreversible. And it
was fun. I had a real feeling of
accomplishment for once. Unfortunately,
things don’t always turn out the way we plan.
Unless we don’t plan, and then they still don’t turn out the way we
expect them to. Actually, my idea
worked so well with the first crop of coruptees (or at least one of them) that
I didn’t do much after that. I still
tried to take a few freshmen flutes under my wings each year, but for mostly
non-corrupting purposes.
As for K & J……you will be hearing more about them
shortly