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new family


johniam
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Last year my daughter wanted me to take her to a movie called Whip it. Movie is about a 17 year old girl from Texas whose mother was always getting her to enter beauty contests and live that whole lifestyle. The girl, however, had different aspirations. She wanted to do roller derby, although that term was never used. She got herself on a girls only roller skating team called the 'Hurl scouts' and did just fine. These girls would skate around in a circle and kinda rough each other up and at the end of the competition one team would win and the other would lose. She fit in quite well.

Eventually her mom found out and there were hard feelings. Near the end of the movie there was one key scene where the girl was with one of her skating teammates, a thirty something single mom played by Drew Barrymore. Drew's character was explaining to the 17 yr old about how she never went to the parties after the games because she didn't think it would be best for her 8 yr old son. At one point she said, "just because you find a new family doesn't mean you have to throw out the old one".

After this, with give and take from both sides, the 17 yr old reconciled with her family without having to give up roller skating. Good flick, I thought. But that statement about a 'new family' stuck with me.

TWI was definitely a new family for me, but not the first. The drug culture was my first new family. It seemed like such a refreshing change from the scene the adults were always trying to cram down everybody's throat, plus you didn't have to be a jock, an A student, or any of the other prerequisites for participation in a "legitimate" clique; all you had to do was participate and you were accepted in the drug culture. But this did not last. By the time I left the drug culture it seemed like just another way to CONFORM or be cast out. Enter TWI.

I have an older sister who moved to NYC in 1969. She started going to meetings of the 'Women's liberation movement'. She went to all the meetings she could at first It was a safe haven. She could openly discuss her dissatisfaction with being a second class citizen in a male dominated world and receive encouragement and reenforcement. After awhile she stopped going to meetings. During a 1998 phone conversation with her, she told me she still considers herself a feminist, but that it wasn't a safe haven anymore. She saw too many instances where young women would be talking to older more cynical feminists and the attitude was..."oh, you made THOSE mistakes? Well, you must be really stupid; don't even talk to ME". This was disturbing to my sister.

TWI is still a new family to me. I don't go to (THEIR) meetings anymore, but the meetings I do go to are a safe haven like before. I'm also glad that I didn't throw out my "old" family. They're still all liberals and we don't have much contact, but at no time have I not been speaking to anyone in my biological family. I think GSC has been a new family for many of us.

The world doesn't care about people like us. This is poignantly revealed in one comment on the link to the 'Talk soup' clip. If you click on 'What hath God wrought' you can see comments on the E channel's website. The first few comments are about the dancing skills of TWI, or lack of them. Then some GSers get on there, then some TWI people, and comment #27 by 'chris' says, "wow, there's a lot of angry people here. The way s*cks/ the way's great. Get over it. You're all lame". That, IMO, sums up the world's attitude. We were losers for being Christian in the first place, then we were bigger losers for being in a "cult", then even worse for "whining" about stuff.

Despite my often pro twi stance, I feel a strange sense of belonging to this place. What will this new family do?

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Last year my daughter wanted me to take her to a movie called Whip it. Movie is about a 17 year old girl from Texas whose mother was always getting her to enter beauty contests and live that whole lifestyle. The girl, however, had different aspirations. She wanted to do roller derby, although that term was never used. She got herself on a girls only roller skating team called the 'Hurl scouts' and did just fine. These girls would skate around in a circle and kinda rough each other up and at the end of the competition one team would win and the other would lose. She fit in quite well.

Eventually her mom found out and there were hard feelings. Near the end of the movie there was one key scene where the girl was with one of her skating teammates, a thirty something single mom played by Drew Barrymore. Drew's character was explaining to the 17 yr old about how she never went to the parties after the games because she didn't think it would be best for her 8 yr old son. At one point she said, "just because you find a new family doesn't mean you have to throw out the old one".

After this, with give and take from both sides, the 17 yr old reconciled with her family without having to give up roller skating. Good flick, I thought. But that statement about a 'new family' stuck with me.

TWI was definitely a new family for me, but not the first. The drug culture was my first new family. It seemed like such a refreshing change from the scene the adults were always trying to cram down everybody's throat, plus you didn't have to be a jock, an A student, or any of the other prerequisites for participation in a "legitimate" clique; all you had to do was participate and you were accepted in the drug culture. But this did not last. By the time I left the drug culture it seemed like just another way to CONFORM or be cast out. Enter TWI.

I have an older sister who moved to NYC in 1969. She started going to meetings of the 'Women's liberation movement'. She went to all the meetings she could at first It was a safe haven. She could openly discuss her dissatisfaction with being a second class citizen in a male dominated world and receive encouragement and reenforcement. After awhile she stopped going to meetings. During a 1998 phone conversation with her, she told me she still considers herself a feminist, but that it wasn't a safe haven anymore. She saw too many instances where young women would be talking to older more cynical feminists and the attitude was..."oh, you made THOSE mistakes? Well, you must be really stupid; don't even talk to ME". This was disturbing to my sister.

TWI is still a new family to me. I don't go to (THEIR) meetings anymore, but the meetings I do go to are a safe haven like before. I'm also glad that I didn't throw out my "old" family. They're still all liberals and we don't have much contact, but at no time have I not been speaking to anyone in my biological family. I think GSC has been a new family for many of us.

The world doesn't care about people like us. This is poignantly revealed in one comment on the link to the 'Talk soup' clip. If you click on 'What hath God wrought' you can see comments on the E channel's website. The first few comments are about the dancing skills of TWI, or lack of them. Then some GSers get on there, then some TWI people, and comment #27 by 'chris' says, "wow, there's a lot of angry people here. The way s*cks/ the way's great. Get over it. You're all lame". That, IMO, sums up the world's attitude. We were losers for being Christian in the first place, then we were bigger losers for being in a "cult", then even worse for "whining" about stuff.

Despite my often pro twi stance, I feel a strange sense of belonging to this place. What will this new family do?

((((Johniam))))

See you over at Trust and Obey's site... I think that is where a lot of this family is going...

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The way s*cks/ the way's great. Get over it. You're all lame". That, IMO, sums up the world's attitude. We were losers for being Christian in the first place, then we were bigger losers for being in a "cult", then even worse for "whining" about stuff.

I don't think that most people that go to sites like "E" and others aren't looking for anything outside of making fun of other people. As an agnostic/atheist, I don't feel that Christians are loosers. I have a hard time thinking in terms of "the world" this or "the world" that. I think there are plenty of good people around if your take the risk of putting your real self out there. That is a risk though because there certainly are plenty of jacka$$es out there too. It's a risk we have to take to find who are the good ones. I think there's more than we realize. Plenty of families to join and people to welcome.

See you around at the new place. I should drop by occasionally... and get your ire up ; )

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I don't think that most people that go to sites like "E" and others aren't looking for anything outside of making fun of other people. As an agnostic/atheist, I don't feel that Christians are loosers. I have a hard time thinking in terms of "the world" this or "the world" that. I think there are plenty of good people around if your take the risk of putting your real self out there. That is a risk though because there certainly are plenty of jacka$$es out there too. It's a risk we have to take to find who are the good ones. I think there's more than we realize. Plenty of families to join and people to welcome.

See you around at the new place. I should drop by occasionally... and get your ire up ; )

Yes, there are jacka$$es in every walk of life. Sometimes I'm the even the personality in question. Then again, one person's jacka$$ in another person's saint. I think in Ecclesiastes somewhere it says, Be quick to listen, but don't listen too carefully, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Sometimes we have more in common with people we don't like than we care to admit.

Edited by Broken Arrow
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Quote: I don't think that most people that go to sites like "E" and others aren't looking for anything outside of making fun of other people. As an agnostic/atheist, I don't feel that Christians are loosers. I have a hard time thinking in terms of "the world" this or "the world" that. I think there are plenty of good people around if your take the risk of putting your real self out there. That is a risk though because there certainly are plenty of jacka$$es out there too. It's a risk we have to take to find who are the good ones. I think there's more than we realize. Plenty of families to join and people to welcome.

The comment made by 'chris' was an overview. If he wanted to comment on the TWI dancing he probably would have said it's lame, but it appears that the only reason he was motivated to comment at all was to address the anger he inferred from the comments by GSers and TWIers. He wasn't just trying to make fun of people, it was an overview, just like your post was to my last paragraph. Nothing wrong with an overview.

The phrase 'the world' definitely put people in a box, yet it's a big box. It's everybody. For God so loved 'the world'. Non biblical sources say 'society' when they want to put large numbers of people in the same box. It serves its purpose.

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