Are We Sure Private School is the Answer? My Weird Trip Jumping For Jesus

 In the mid-1980s I was a quiet autistic kid trying to make sense of a world that seemed obsessed with nuclear war, the Reagan era, and the Second Coming. Fourth grade turned into a bizarre blend of fear, faith, and confusion as I tried to interpret rules no one ever explained. Decades later, I can finally see why everything felt so intense. This episode is part nostalgia, part diagnosis, and part ‘What were we even doing back then?’

Transcript

George TenEyck: 0:00

Segment two Lake Country Culture Shock When I moved from Detroit to Texas, I was nine years old, fresh out of the chaos of suburban Detroit, a little town called Berkeley. I was a BMX kid, a skater kid, a daydreamer kid. I lived on a steady diet of BMX Plus magazine, boys' life, cartoons, and whatever music my older siblings smuggled into my brain. Run DMC, Queen, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, Beastie Boys, Motley Crue, the stuff you crank loud enough to vibrate the paint off of Ford Tempo. Then I got dropped into Lake Country Christian School. Because my uncle helped found it, funded it, and played the part of respected board president. My parents figured, sure, why not? Family's there, better opportunities, safer neighborhood, and on paper, that made sense. But in reality, it was like getting teleported from the Breakfast Club straight into a low budget sequel to The Children of the Corn. See, I grew up around holiday-only Lutheranism. Christmas Eve service, maybe Easter if mom felt guilty. We weren't deeply religious. We were normal Midwest, don't be an asshole, and help your neighbors religious. Nobody ever asked me if I accepted Jesus into my heart. Nobody ever tried to scare me with hellfire. Nobody ever told me cartoons were demonic. I didn't even know evangelicals were a thing. So imagine nine-year-old me, autistic, hyper observant, already wired to scan every room for bullshit. Walking into a place where kids my age were asking if I was saved before they even knew my name. These kids were serious. They'd say things like, If Jesus came back today, would you go with him or would you burn? And I'm standing there thinking, lady, I just learned long division. I'm not ready to discuss my eternal destiny. The culture shock hit me like a freight train. Texas was already its own planet to a Detroit kid, but this? This was a whole ecosystem of Reagan worship, cowboy Christianity, and adults who talked about the rapture like it was scheduled for next Tuesday. And all of this was happening during the full blown satanic panic of the 1980s. You know the era. The moral majority was seeing devils and everything. Rock music, the mall, cartoons, playgrounds, cabbage patch kids, your imagination, and probably your breakfast cereal. At Lake Country they told us the Smurfs were satanic. He-Man was satanic. Dungeons and Dragons opened spiritual doorways. Cabbage Patch kids were demonically inspired and don't even think about watching MTV. Meanwhile, outside of school, my sister is driving me around blasting Run DMC, Van Halen, and Motley Cruz shout at the devil. Not ironically, not in rebellion, just because those songs were bangers. And I loved every second of it. It was oxygen. It was proof that the world wasn't actually on fire because of a cartoon wizard or a blue mushroom guy. Now add another layer on top of all of this. Remember my uncle? The same guy warning the world about moral decay and the evils of secular culture? The guy who stood at the front of the church talking about righteousness and purity? The guy who funded the school with dirty money. He was also the same guy running the business operations that didn't exactly stand up to forensic accounting. Republican leaning Texas businessmen in a three-piece suit. Praise the Lord in the morning, cut corners in the afternoon, and fly private on the weekends. All while telling the world that cartoons and rock music were the real threat to civilization. It didn't add up, and because of how my brain works, I couldn't let it go. Growing up, narrow divergent meant I noticed every discrepancy, every contradiction, every adult saying one thing and doing another. I didn't have the social filter to gloss over hypocrisy. I didn't have the ability to just go along. My whole wiring is based around pattern recognition and calling out nonsense when the pattern doesn't make sense. So while other kids were buying into the fear, the fire and brimstone vibes, I was sitting there thinking, why are we worried about Gargamel summoning demons when my uncle is literally being indicted for real crimes? It created this weird dual identity in me. Half creative kid shaped by music and magazines and counterculture, half sarcastic skeptic shaped by watching grown adults freak out about smurfs while quietly committing fraud on the weekends. And all of it, every bit of it, shaped my humor, my personality, my mistrust of authority, and my tendency to smell bullshit from three counties away. That was the moment my Gen X mine was basically born. Right there in a Fort Worth classroom, surrounded by the sons and daughters of Texas business dynasties, the Grubbs Auto family, Al Banker's Punk Kid, even the children of televangelist James Robeson. Meanwhile, I'm the Detroit kid in the back row holding a trapper keeper with a Metallica Doodle on it, listening to suicidal tendencies cassettes, trying to figure out how cartoons and rock music became evidence in a spiritual murder trial. This is where the sarcasm came from. This is where the skepticism turned into survival skill. It wasn't rebellion, it was self-defense. And honestly, it stuck. I grew up in Detroit public schools where the biggest theological debate was whether Optimus Prime counted as a robot or a truck. Then at nine years old, my parents dragged me to Texas and dropped me into Lake Country Christian School, a place my uncle helped found, fund, and run like some kind of evangelical Fortune 500 project. I went from a world of BMX bikes and Star Wars and G.I. Joe and E.T. and Boys' Life magazine. To kids asking if I'd accepted Jesus into my heart before they even asked my name. It was like transferring from the Breakfast Club into Left Behind, the Elementary Edition. This was peak 1980s satanic panic. Adults were convinced the Smurfs were demonic. He-Man was basically a gateway drug to hell. Cabbage Patch kids were apparently handcrafted by Lucifer himself, and MTV? Forget it. Pure spiritual poison. Meanwhile, my older sisters driving me around Fort Worth, blaring Motley Crue's "Shout at the Devil" like an unofficial middle finger to the whole Moral Crusade. I didn't know it then, but this was the first time I realized adults didn't always know what the hell they were talking about. Being on the spectrum meant I noticed things that other kids didn't. Like how the same grown-ups warning us about demons and our toys were the ones cutting shady business deals and flying private on the weekends. My uncle, the respected Christian school board president, was preaching righteousness in the morning and dodging the feds by nightfall. It didn't add up. And my brain refuses to let things that don't add up slide. That's where my sarcasm was born. That's where my dark humor started. That's when skepticism stopped being a personality trait and became a survival skill. Texas was full of kids from big business families, televangelist families, insurance empires, car dealership dynasties, and there was me. Trying to understand why cartoons were a gateway to damnation while grown-ups were committing real crimes without blinking. This is the stuff that shaped my worldview. The whiplash of Reagan-era fear-mongering, religious theatrics, and the realization that hypocrisy is basically America's unofficial spiritual mascot. And honestly, it explains a lot. So yeah, that was my introduction to Texas. A nine-year-old kid from the suburbs of Detroit suddenly dropped into a world where everybody talked about Jesus like he was running for class president, and every toy I loved was apparently a demonic plot. Meanwhile, the adults were out there living like Gordon Gecka with a Bible on the dashboard. It was confusing as hell. And look, I didn't have the language for it back then. Being on the spectrum meant my bullshit radar was basically military grade. I could spot hypocrisy at 30 miles, even if I didn't know what to do with it. Kids around me were buying into every fire and brimstone story, and I'm sitting there wondering why these same grown-ups think the Smurfs are satanic, but don't blink at cooking land appraisals for profit. It was like everyone was playing a massive game of pretend, except I couldn't join in. My brain doesn't do pretend like that. If something doesn't make sense, it just sits there, glitching in the foreground like an eight-bit sprite that won't go away. And all of this, the religion, the hypocrisy, the Reaganomics worship, the private air travel, the quad runners, it shaped me. My humor, my skepticism, my love of calling out nonsense. My instinct to look under the hood when something claims purity a little too loudly. It's no accident that sarcasm became my native language. Honestly, the whole thing felt like living inside of a live action morality play, written by someone who'd never met a real child or listened to a real song. They preached salvation while practicing creative accounting. They warned us about Satan while quietly building their own personal kingdoms, and there I was, stuck in the middle, trying to figure out why grown-ups cared more about cartoon demons than the real ones sitting at their dining tables. But here's the wild thing. That culture shock, the whiplash from Detroit to Texas theatrics, it didn't break me. It forged something weird and sharp and observant. It gave me a voice. It gave me a story. And it made me realize early on that if you want the truth, you're gonna have to go digging for it yourself. Because the people holding the microphone aren't always the ones telling it. So as we wrap this segment, here's the thought I keep circling back to. For all the chaos, for all of the hypocrisy, for all of the fear that they tried to sell us, the thing that actually saved me wasn't religion or rules or warnings or fear about the end of the world. It was the ability to look at all of it and say, yeah, I don't think so. And that, my friends, might be the most Gen X thing about me. More to come on Confessions of a Gen X Mind. Thanks for listening.