FlipFlop

The Co-Op in Austin is a two-story, University-owned department store on the main drag across from the campus. In the 70’s, they sold everything a college kid could need — from new and used textbooks to the all-important vinyl records, turntables, amps and speakers, to UT-branded clothing and paraphernalia. They even sold the essential footwear of college life, the flipflop.

Part-time jobs at the co-op were highly coveted due to two benefits — they offered flexible work hours tailored around students’ class schedules, and they provided employees an even deeper discount on all items in the store. As a photo-journalism major, I had the bountiful good fortune of scoring a job at the co-op’s camera department for my last two years at UT.

We sold cameras, film, and photo-processing supplies at the best prices in Austin. We also handled Kodak film processing for those amateurs who sent their film off to be developed and printed. Customers just dropped their 35mm film off with us and we overnighted it to the Kodak lab in Dallas. Two days later, we’d receive their processed film and prints back in nifty Kodak-yellow envelopes. There was this one girl…well, never mind.

Opening those envelopes and spying on customers’ private photographs was strictly forbidden so I never engaged in that illicit activity, but I was informed by other, less scrupulous employees that there were some pretty revealing images of sorority girls in those envelopes.

As you might expect in a college town, employee turnover was significant, so having worked at the co-op camera department for a full year, I had seniority which allowed me to work the coveted Saturday shift, a full eight-hour day. That also provided me with the luxury of giving up one of my other two jobs as a night cook at the local donut shop.

Weekdays at the co-op sales counter had been mostly filled with customers who were fellow students, but Saturdays brought in the tourists and local townspeople not associated with the university. One lady showed up almost every other Saturday morning. She would present me with her expensive 35mm camera and insist that I remove the film and send it off for processing. Then, she’d purchase a new roll of film and insist that I put in in the camera for her.

This woman always made a point of telling me that if the photos did not come out, it would be my fault for loading her camera wrong and I would owe her a free roll of film. She was, to say the least, an angry and bitter individual. Consequently, I made it my goal to win her over and struck up conversations with her as I was unloading and reloading her camera. She liked to shoot landscape images, and it helped that I liked that as well.

The woman turned out to be Madelyn Murray O’Hare, a prominent atheist and activist of the time. That fact deepened my resolve to get through to her and have a meaningful conversation. We had lots of Saturday morning talks but never anything meaningful and they were more like lectures given by her. But I did learn a lot about the woman.

What I learned about Ms. O’Hare was that although she adamantly proclaimed her atheism, she had a more active relationship with God than most preachers I’ve ever met. It was just that she spent her efforts hating the God she perceived.

Since then, I’ve been friends with a lot of folks who identified as atheists and with few exceptions, they fit that same mold of being angry at God, or at least haters of religion rather than apathetic about a God who does not exist. In most cases, they’re reacting to bad experiences with fellow Humans who profess to believe in God.

To be fair, I’ve also known a whole lot of folks who professed to be Christians, but whose theology was not aligned with the teachings and actions of Christ. Most of them would counter that I fit that description as well since my theology doesn’t align with their personal preconceptions about the Creator of the universe.

Culture of Hypocrisy
You might insist that we exist amidst a culture of hypocrisy — people professing to be that which they are not and, in some cases, can never become, all the while, demanding that others conform to the image they’re projecting.

Some would say Humans consist entirely of flip-floppers and self-indulgent prevaricators. I would argue that we — both you and I, as well as all those other nameless faces — are simply maladjusted entities, worn down from three million years of skewed evolution aimed at acheiving personal peace and affluence.

Perhaps we tell ourselves the stories we tell ourselves in order to feel better without having to get better — kind of like the folks who hang out at gyms but never really do any strenuous exercise. Between the option of giving up and embracing the asshole that I’ve become, and the option of putting in the hard work of self-analysis and change, it’s awfully tempting to embrace those comfortable flipflops and go with the double standard.

Think I’m wrong? Convince me over coffee. I’ll buy. Just email me so we can pick a time and place.

A meeting of great minds who think alike