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Mother May I?

Loking back, it strikes me as funny that a church that stressed so much about relationships produced such weird ones between members of the opposite sex. We had to go out on dates every week, so you could hardly just walk up to a woman and say ‘hey’ without her expecting to be asked on a date. Of course, she wasn’t allowed to say ‘no’, if you were asking her on a date, so sometimes you could never talk to some female members at all. In my old church, going dutch to anything was not illegal, but frowned upon. This brought up endless lectures about how to go on a date with little or no money. I think I swung on every swing-set in Raleigh, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Durham, and even Bahama over the course of six summers. Aside from the rules, though, there was this need for permission. Until recently, I thought I was free from needing permission from anyone to live my life.