It all started because Emily had a cold.
It was a disappointment in more ways than one. First, having a cold sucked. Nothing tasted right, everything hurt, and overall, she was miserable.
Second, she loved going to Youth Group on Sundays. All of her favorite friends were there. Having been home schooled since second grade wasn't conducive to making much of a circle of friends, so the group at Sea Coast Baptist Church was her social life.
Third, today was a special Sunday; it was the first Sunday of the new month after her 18th birthday, and that meant she "graduated" up into the older half of Youth. She cursed having to wait so long, as her birthday was early in the month, so she'd had to wait almost a full four weeks until she could move up to the next class.
The younger class was teens aged 13-17; the older 18-21. She was terribly excited to be part of the "adults". She was the last of her circle of friends to make the move. Kayla was the oldest; she had moved up last fall. Amy and Tawny went right after the new year. The last friend to leave her behind was her best friend Sierra, in the summer. It was fall now, and she had finally caught up with her besties.
Fourth, and maybe the worst part, being home sick meant not only missing Youth, it meant not being in the presence of the incredibly hot Mister Carson.
Ted Carson had joined the staff at SCBC two years ago and immediately stirred things up at a rather tepid church. He was a dynamic leader, charismatic, witty, very liberal-minded (for a Baptist church at least), and yes, very good looking. Literally every girl in Youth had a tremendous crush on him. Married, in his late forties, he had the graying good looks of a George Clooney.
Insisting right away that everyone in his class call him "Mister Ted" or just "Ted", instead of "Mister Carson" or "Brother Carson" scored him plenty of Cool Points with the youth, and stern disapproval from the elder, more traditional members of the congregation. What they couldn't deny though, was that in just a few months he had taken a tiny handful of semi-attending kids and grown the group into one of the largest youth programs in their side of town.
He introduced community projects, out-of-town trips (all paid for by aggressive fund-raising drives), and a music program that included a choir and a praise band. This growth spilled over into the church as a whole, and if there was one thing that made Baptists happy, it was a full church (with plenty of tithing members). So, despite his liberal, unconventional attitude, Ted Carson was a very popular staff member at SCBC.
So, Emily was not happy at all.
The sore throat was the worst of it; it made eating torture, so she had deliberately avoided food at all costs, and that had made her even weaker. Now she was in bed, nursing a glass of Gatorade and browsing MySpace on her laptop.
Every Sunday afternoon the church's page posted video clips of the service (another innovation suggested by Mister Ted) and Emily kept checking the page hoping to catch the praise band, and a glimpse of Ted. Emily had a thing for him, just like all the others, and she was hoping he had done a solo in today's praise band music, so she could see a close-up.
Youth Minister Ted Carson sat at his computer, waiting for the video file of today's service clips to upload. He wasn't as tech-savvy as many thought. He really was just learning as he went along, but he saw the potential of internet media and social networking to grow the youth group's numbers and help promote the church overall, so he accepted the unofficial title of church webmaster.
He had created a MySpace page for the church and the youth group, and his own personal page was used to post videos and announcements for the group's upcoming activities. It was certainly easier to post a bulletin to all the kids in his class than to call or mail all of them, so he was grateful for the new technology.
Sometimes he explored the pages of his students out of curiosity and got a headache from all the glittery flashing displays and auto-playing music, but it was a good way to keep abreast of their current likes and dislikes, and reading the comments and conversations that went back and forth publicly helped him stay on top of any feuds or cliques before they formed.
He was amused to see how many of the girls in the group had him in their "Top 9" or "Top 12" lists of contacts. He wasn't completely oblivious to his popularity among the female students. It helped remind him of what a great opportunity he had to have a positive influence on the lives of so many impressionable people. He did, however find his mind occasionally wandering as he looked at the girls' pictures. He'd catch himself saying the old phrase in his mind, "Where were all these pretty girls when I was a teenager?" to which he'd answer, "Not even born yet, man."
It was hard not to let his mind wander, considering the turn his married life had taken the last couple of decades.
Ted Carson married the first girl he ever dated, and the first girl he ever kissed. It just felt right, and things always seemed just the way things were supposed to be, and, since he had no other frame of reference to compare, he was satisfied. Now he was at the point many men fear; the dreaded middle ages. This is where it's obligatory to look back over one's life and compare it to others in one's peer group, and feel depression at how much less the reality compares to the dreams of his early twenties. Two children, grown with kids of their own, a decent job, a mortgage, and two cars. Is this all there is?