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    When I was a sophomore in high school, I had a crush on a girl named Sally. I fell in love with Sally during geometry. In all my other classes I made C’s, but in geometry I made a D, which dashed my dream of a college scholarship. Mr. Gibbs, our principal, called me down to his office when the grades came out.

From "Home Town Tales." Buy it online!

    “Sit down, son,” he said. I sat down.

    “You made a D in geometry. What’s going on?” he asked.

    I told Mr. Gibbs I wasn’t mathematically inclined, but the real truth was that I spent the whole geometry class smelling Sally’s hair. She sat right in front of me. For fifty minutes every day, I concentrated on her blond braids and neglected the Pythagorean theorem.

    One Saturday I went to the Rexall drugstore on the town square and sniffed all the shampoo until I figured out what kind Sally used-Herbal Essence. I bought a bottle and took it home, smelled it, and dreamed of Sally.

    Sally was a Baptist. She attended one of the Baptist churches in the next town over. I worshiped at the Quaker meeting, but since my father had grown up Baptist I thought it was time I explored my spiritual roots.

    The Baptist Youth Fellowship met on Wednesday nights in their church basement. The first meeting I attended, Sally was there. She was sitting on a couch. I sat down next to her.

    Sally said, “Hi, Phil. I didn’t know you were interested in God.”

    “Oh, yes, very interested,” I told her. “Very interested.”

    The lesson that night was led by an eager young seminarian. He wore a T-shirt that read, Jesus is coming soon. Look busy.

    He began by asking us to confess our sins. Different churches have diverse ideas about what constitutes sin. Since I didn’t know the Baptist sins, I had to think back to my Catholic days. According to Father McLaughlin, the two big sins were birth control and eating meat on Friday. So when I thought of sin, that’s what came to mind. Thankfully, I was in the clear.

“No, not me. Not this week.”

    When it came my turn to confess, I said, “No sin here.”

    The room grew deathly still. The youth leader said quietly, “Everyone sins.” I reassured him, “No, not me. Not this week.” Sally turned to me and quoted the King James Bible: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

    Just to have Sally talk with me was such an exquisite pleasure, that I scarcely minded that she was calling me a liar. Besides, I hadn’t meant to lie, I was just ignorant. I had to go away to college to learn about sin, which is where a lot of folks get their start with it. My German teacher, Sister Marie Pierre, taught me about it. She said sin is anything that turns our hearts away from God. That’s when I knew I was a sinner.

    The last time I saw Sally was at our high school reunion. She was sitting at the cheerleader table. I gave her a hug and sniffed her hair. It was stiff with hair spray and smelled of chemicals. She wanted to talk religion. So we talked about her old Baptist church, which she no longer attends. Too many sinful people there, she told me. Now she goes to one of those churches where sin is something other people do. Somewhere along the way, Sally forgot that sin is inevitable and human perfection an illusion.

    As for me, I’m still sinning right along and every day requiring the patient grace of God to make me new. Though I’m mostly happy, I do have two regrets. I wish the Rexall drugstore were still open, and I wish I had paid a little more attention to the Pythagorean theorem. Along with God’s grace, it’s the only thing that seems constant these days.

From the book Home Town Tales: Recollections of Peace, Love, and Joy by Philip Gulley. (c) 1999 by Multnomah Pub., used by permission. Also available on audio cassette!