Emma Marlow

My friend, Jill, called last week and asked me to attend a graduation from a class she’d been taking in Raleigh. I was honored and told her I’d love to go. She suggested, since it was so far away, that we meet for a late lunch and later I stay the night at her house and we’d spend the next day together.

I had a friend come get my girls to spend the night and my adventure began. I asked Jill what kind of class it was and she said that ‘she’d had her heart ripped out, twisted and stomped only to have the Lord put it back in a nice white box’…..

Wow! Says I….I want some of that!

We arrived at a large, professional looking building with The Legacy Institute on the front. The parking lot was full and people mingled and talked and hugged each other and introduced their old friends to their new friends. Jill’s daughter, Michaela was there and we met up with her friend Pat.

Michaela seemed to know what was going on and had that shiny animated look that many of the others had. Pat and I became increasingly uncomfortable and our eyes flitted toward each other, wondering what was going on. The graduates got name tags in yellow and their guests got name tags in purple. I’d never been to a graduation where I filled out a card with my personal information and had to wear a name tag before.

I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked Jill to speak to us privately and pulled her to a quiet corner. I asked her again what kind of class she’d graduated from and what was going on. She said she’d never graduated before from these classes and had no idea. I told her that she had to answer four questions before I’d agree to stay.

‘One’, says I….’am I going to have to eat the head off of a chicken?’

‘Ohhhhhhhh Emma’ she assured…..’nooooooo!! Don’t be silly. Not on your first visit!’

‘Two….is anyone going to have snakes?’

‘Ohhhhhhh Emmmmmmmma…….you make me laugh……of course not!!’

‘Three…..is there going to be hugging? Because I hate hugging and no one is going to touch me…right?’

‘Ohhhhhhhh Emma…..no one is going to touch you unless you want them tooooo!!’

‘Four and final question: Is this an Amway meeting?’
‘Oh Emma…I know you’re kidding……..’

I stopped her and made her look me square in the face and tell me honest to God that this is not an Amway meeting.

‘No! Of course not’, says she….

Pat and I were satisfied and we entered the large room full of chairs. We sat in the back and of course they jammed the people in and took out all the empty chairs and made us move to fill in the space. I’ve been in sales a long time and I knew exactly what they were doing and I didn’t like it a bit. Peer pressure is an effective selling technique and people will participate in things they wouldn’t do with space around them. Look at any worship service in a church. The group up front and in close contact is more likely to raise to their arms and close their eyes and cry than those isolated in the back.

A speaker spoke for a few minutes about our futures and what would we do if we didn’t have obstacles and what would those obstacles be? People yelled out “Money!!” “Kids!” “Job” etc while she wrote a list on a dry erase board. Then she said that those obstacles would still be in our lives five years from now and the goals we thought five years ago that we’d have now would simply be ten years further away….BUT!! The answer was right here folks…right here in River City…and it starts with T that rhymes with P that stands for POOL…POOL…POOL!!

Oh, I digress. The speaker was good….been there…done that.

Then the speaker announced that the graduates were going to leave the guests and have their final session and we schmucks were going to stick around and have a taste of the freedom-making program that has made our friends all shiny and sparkly. All those with yellow name tags were to leave and we were assured that they would return in twenty minutes. I grabbed Jill’s wrist in a death grip and told her I wanted the car keys. She tried to pull away and I didn’t loosen my grip. I was serious.

Jill left to go to wherever they took the graduating class and I didn’t see her again for two and a half hours.

The staff came away from the wall and began hauling away all of the unused chairs and shifted people further and tighter toward the front of the room. I whispered to Pat…”.we’re touching strangers…I don’t like this!”

The speaker shared her testimony of how lost and lonely she was back when she got her doctorate at Harvard and day in and day out she’d do research on chicken embryos’. I whispered with a note of panic to Pat: “Oh geez….there ARE chickens involved!” She giggled and told me to hush. I whispered….”aren’t chicken embryo’s called eggs?” She bit her lip and looked away.

It was like a church service with testimonials of change and happiness and fullness of joy…..of the staleness without the Lord and finding truth and light and the American way and never being the same….but she didn’t find it with Jesus…she found it at the Legacy Institute.

Now, for many folks that would be crazy enough, but I’ve been around the bend a few times and if I can sit in a room full of midwives that breath back into mother earth the energy we took from her that day and moan ‘and mode it be’ or some such weirdness…than I can sit and listen to someone spout the freedoms of the Legacy Program. I mean…God’s principals work. Positive attitudes and positive thinking and not dwelling on the negative works….with or without Christ. Treating people the way you want to be treated works. Living simply and loving deeply and laughing loudly works. God’s Word won’t come back void…no matter what headline it falls under. Christians certainly don’t have a monopoly on love. The Word says that a heathen wouldn’t give their child a scorpion when they ask for a fish…or give them a stone when they ask for bread.

Let’s just say I’ve learned to chew and spit. I can take things and sift them through Scripture and apply it to my life…..you know…as long as they don’t invade my space and get personal….and hug me or something.

About that time the speaker said that we were going to break up into triads and dyads. Now for those of you, like me, that didn’t know what that was…that means we were going to break up in groups of two and three. We couldn’t be with anyone that we knew before and each group had to have one graduate of the course and was now a trainer. Those people rose to their feet and they were peppered throughout the room…wearing purple name tags.

So…they looked like guests and they acted like guests and they smelled like guests and they wore purple name tags like guests and they were among us and we thought they were guests…..BUT THEY WERE TRAINERS!! They weren’t purple name tagged people at all!!

I saw the horror and fear in Pats eyes and I could give her no comfort because I was horrified and fearful too. I ended up sitting with a small framed man in his sixties. He wore a suit and tie and was well groomed. He reminded me of Barney Fife. We were told to touch knees. Pat looked at me and started laughing. “HE’S TOUCHING ME!!” was written all over my face.

The first instructions were to look deeply into the other person’s eyes…the window to the soul…. and tell that person with my eyes who I am and where I’ve been and where I’m going. Then I was to see in his eyes where he’s been and where he’s going. The speaker asked if we’d made an opinion about that person by the way they looked or their clothes or their gender. I thought, “Well…he’s a waffle…I wonder if he can see in
my eyes that I think he’s like breakfast food?”

If that wasn’t uncomfortable enough….Then the speaker said that we were suppose to tell the other person in forty five seconds, if we could have a magic wand, where and what we would be doing in five years. I was completely stumped. I had no idea. I didn’t have a clue even where I’d be living next week and I’d been in limbo for several years. I couldn’t see past getting out of that room and I wanted out in a real way!!

My dyad partner was instructed to encourage me for the forty five seconds while I was going to have to tell him my plans…..GO!! The room burst into noise and I leaned way back in my chair and Barnie Fife leaned forward in my face. I casually said that may-be in five years it would be nice to have a few of my books out there so I didn’t have to keep repeating myself and teaching the same things over and over…but I didn’t want anyone to know who I was or where I was. I said it slowly and with conviction. All the while he was leaning in and yelling at the top of his lungs in my face: “I BELIEVE IN YOU!! I BET YOU’RE A GREAT WRITER!! I CAN’T WAIT TO GET ALL OF YOUR BOOKS!! I’LL BUY EVERY ONE AND GET THEM FOR MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY!!! I BELIEVE YOU’RE A KIND AND WONDERFUL PERSON AND IT WILL BE A PLEASURE TO READ YOUR BOOKS!”

Well….I hadn’t been so shocked and uncomfortable since that evangelist decided I was going to dance for the Lord many years ago. I was pinned to the lunacy by my knees and couldn’t even do a little bunny hop out of the room!

Before I could get my bearings and composure, the speaker yelled stop and told us to tell our partner AGAIN our hopes for the future, but his time convince them while they respond in the negative. GO!!! I sputtered a bit and said again in the same casual voice that it would be nice if in five years some of my books were available to people so I didn’t have to repeat myself all of the time. This time he was in my face yelling: YOU CAN’T WRITE A BOOK! NO ONE WILL READ THAT GARBAGE!! WHO CARES WHAT YOU THINK!!!

My heart was pounding and the fight/flight mechanism was in full swing. I was either going to lung for the little weasel’s throat or run out of the room. I looked at the doors and two purple tagged wolves were standing in front of each of them. Then without time to get my heart slowed down, we were told to ‘go over the top’ and convince that person that nothing is going to stand in the way of the goal and tell them again what you’ll be doing in five years but this time your partner is going to ignore you GO!!!

The room exploided again into the din of people yelling. I said again that in five years I’d like to see my books published so I wouldn’t have to repeat everything over and over but I’d have to have complete privacy and do it without anyone knowing who I am. He yawned and looked at his watch and looked around the room.

Then the table was turned. It was his turn to tell me his goals and plans and it was my turn to yell encouragements, forty five seconds GO!! Then to listen to him for forty five seconds and insult and discourage him GO! Then listen to him and ignore him…. Forty-five seconds GO!

He jumped in my face and started yelling that he was going to be helping people in Washington DC with his adult daughters, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t care. I really didn’t care.

I thought I was going to applaud for my friend as she walked across a stage and graduate from something important to her. I came for the food, doggone it!! I didn’t know this man and I didn’t want his knees touching my knees and I really didn’t care what he was going to do in five years.

But, I am a good sport…if nothing else…..so even though I didn’t have a word to say to him, I smiled and nodded at him in a positive manner. I looked like Bob on the Enzyte commercials with that stupid grin. Then it was stop and go again and I was supposed to respond in the negative. All I could do is grin that same stupid grin but frown with my eyebrows furrowed…gritting my teeth trying to hold on for forty five seconds. Then it was ignore time and I fumbled through my purse while he shared his goals and dreams and a sadness washed over me and tears welled up in me. When the speaker yelled stop he asked me if I was alright. I told him no….that I would NEVER ignore someone or discourage someone when they shared their goals and dreams with me, if I cared for them or not and I resented having to do that to anyone…even a stranger.

He assured me that it was ok and that I had a big heart. I asked if I was allowed to leave to go to the bathroom. The two purple wolves moved aside and I went to the ladies room. A woman wolf followed me and asked if I was alright. I told her yes…that I just needed to pee and asked her if that was ok. I had had enough. The staff member was standing outside of the bathroom after I used the facilities and she escorted me back into the room. There would be no escape to the car.

When I returned to the room, the speaker was driving home the importance of the program and if we didn’t do this class we’d be in the same dead end spot we’re in now in five years and our only hope for freedom and light in our future was to sign up now and go through the program. Of course the three levels; basic, advanced and leadership were all available at the low-low price of $26.95. Its basic course is five days and nights…ending at midnight each night. Ahhh…sleep deprivation…that’s what cults do. It’s used as a means of torture and the Geneva Convention forbids it but it’s effective and breaks people down and allows them to do things they usually wouldn’t do.

The speaker continued…how important this is to finish….that we’re all doomed and lost and broken heaps of dog dung and life will keep us down without the skills she can teach us for the low-low price of $26.95! BUT WAIT! Tonight…if we sign up for the whole program in the next ten minutes…we could get all three programs for the ridiculously low price of only $19.95!!

Then I got a clearer picture of the prices. She said, “The person that brought you here tonight has been given a gift certificate for their guest for $695.00 but it can only be used tonight! Then I realized that the program was $2,695!! Not twenty six dollars and ninety five cents! Good grief…I’m in the wrong dern business!!

Barnie and his friends began the sales push….just what would it take to sign up tonight? What would get in the way? Money, kids, job, etc. Those things have to take a back seat…we’re doing this for them…it’s important that we get our goals and dreams lined up so we can be better people for our boss and our family and for ourselves! I let him finish his caring response to my future and I said that I had four children in Virginia that were homeless…that right now finding a roof to cover them was more important than my well being….but thanks. My kids are part of the trickle down dysfunction in my life and they’ve survived it for years and another year or so won’t hurt. It shut him up.

Three more people stopped me before I escaped the room wanting me to sign up for the course. I found Pat in the lobby and we hugged and I clung to her arm….yep…they’d done a number on me…I was touching!!

We looked for Jill and started to laugh about the weirdness we’d been suckered into. We agreed that we’d find Jill and pounce on her from opposite sides and yell: “INTERVENTION!!!”

We looked in the woman’s bathroom and I told her about being followed by one of the wolves with the purple name tag. I noticed on the back of the toilet that there was a nice basket with a few feminine napkins and tampons and tissue. There was also a Dixie cup with fresh ground coffee in it. I have no idea why it was there….someone may have just left it there. I slam
med open the door and yelled at Pat in the mirror, “DON’T DRINK THE COFFEE!!” We cackled and howled. A staff member came in and asked if we were alright…they could hear us laughing in the lobby. I told Pat that they just wanted to know which one of us was going to lay the egg!! See….there ARE chickens involved!!”

We found Jill and agreed to act nice and share in whatever joy it was that she’d found though we certainly didn’t get it.

On the way home I asked Jill exactly what she learned in those five horrible, heart wrenching days where her heart was ripped out and twisted and stomped and God put it back in with a nice white box?

She paused and tears welled up in her eyes and she tried to speak. She finally said that she’d spent her whole life being late…it was part of the Hispanic culture…that everyone was late! I told her that being Mexican didn’t have a thing to do with it…that home schoolers are all late too! She got a dreamy look over her face like something mystical and wonderful had happened to her and she was an ascended creature now….someone of deeper understanding and thought. She said that she’d learned that it wasn’t ok to be late all of the time. It wasn’t ok to make people wait….

I thought…dern…I could have told you that for twenty bucks and saved you a fortune!!

I whispered to Pat when we dropped her off at her house in the wee hours of the morning, “I’d have rather been to an Amway meeting!”

© Copyright Notice: Permission is hereby granted to make copies as long as Emma Marlow is properly cited/credited as the author.