When we think of beautiful, touching things that one person can do in for another we can ask what typically characterizes those things? Usually it is something which in eloquent simplicity meets the special, in many ways crucial, need of another. I have been on the receiving end of bountiful and priceless blessings beginning with the family in which I was born and extending into the church communities of which I was a part. Yet, and you will have to forgive me, the moment that flashes before me when I ask the question above occurred in a passing moment on a school bus when I was in high school. It is important to mention that during those years I had few, if any, close friends. The moral support I saw readily shared among close friends was not an option for me. To be quite frank and specific, I had no peer to affirm or even recognize the fact that I was becoming a man and taking on a sexual identity. This day I was seated on the school bus and Fred Cotney (who got off the bus before my stop) passed by me on his way out of the bus. He stopped, paused a moment when by me and said "Wayne, what is this?" and he held out his open hand. There was nothing in his hand and I looked up in puzzlement. He just smiled and said "It beats me!" That was the one and only time during my years of puberty that a peer in any direct fashion gave acknowledgment of my sexual knowledge. Think about it what you will, it was a moment I will always cherish.
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