Young Adults & Marriage - Part 3

 Transcription

[music]

Announcer:  How did the Pearls provide a healthy social circle for their teenagers? Mike tells us all about it.

Michael Pearl:  Now, when our boys and girls were coming up, we had volleyball. I set up a volleyball court, and we invited all the young people over to play volleyball. Now, I played volleyball with them the whole time they were playing volleyball, until I finally got too old to do it, they got too good, and I started getting my face smashed with balls. [laughter]

Debi Pearl:  Unless they got married.

Michael:  Yeah, they got married. Twenty young people would come over, of all different ages, and they would all play volleyball. Now, we would not allow them . . . we had a rule, we've got a sign up right now on the property there, the church property, that says, "No shirtless boys, no shorts, no immodest clothing." We won't let the girls wear tight pants. We got old ladies playing in dresses that go to their ankles, and they run out there and bend over and hit that volleyball. They'll wear some kind of bloomers underneath, so if they happen to do a dive in the sand and the dress goes up over their head, you got some doilies sticking up in the air instead of a suntan.

[laughter]

Michael:  They have to dress modestly, but some of the girls wear pants as long as they're baggy. They can't wear girl's pants. You cannot wear girl's pants and them look modest on you, but if you put on your daddy’s pants, it's okay to play volleyball in them, because nobody's going to lust after that. [laughter]

Michael:  We still have girls who'll try to come around and we've gone out and said, "Get your rear-end off of this court, girl. You're advertising too much." We've had to run them off.

We had trouble a couple of times. They'd go out to get pizza after a meeting or something, and it'd look like it was okay. Had some older kids and everything, but you watch it, boy. They'll end up pairing up. We didn't allow any overnight stays or dates or anything like that, but the whole group with some adult sponsorship would go get pizza.

Everybody would go and the kids would sit around, and laugh and carry on with some nonsense, and do the silly things that all young people do. They'd flirt with each other. They'd eyeball each other. You'd get the feeling this one liked that one for a while, and this other one likes that one.

What they're doing is very helpful. They're experimenting with different personalities. A girl is learning to know what kind of male she likes. She likes a guy for about three months without any talking on the phone or love notes. You can tell she's got her eye on him, and then she realizes he's a real jerk. She learns to read a man, that he's a jerk. He might be handsome, but . . . or this guy, he's a lazy bum; he won't work.

A guy learns this girl, when she gets in tight in a volleyball game, she gets really grouchy. We don't want anything to do with her. This girl over here, she's silly and she's dumb. I don't want a silly, dumb girl for a wife. The guys relating to females all their life learn to know what they like and are comfortable with in a girl. The girl learns to know what she likes and is comfortable with in a guy.

Now, every one of my children married somebody of their choosing that was different from what I would have chosen—not against my will, but just different. I would go out and find a girl that I would like if I was 50 years younger, 40 years younger. I would make some kind of arrangement to meet my sons and my sons wouldn't like them. I couldn't understand why.

To me, they were 10-plus, man, in every possible way. My sons didn't like them. Then my sons would find a girl they would like. I would look at her and say "I don't like her," but they did. As I got to know the persons that my sons picked out, eventually, I started liking them, but they were different from my wife.

They were different from the kind of woman I'd have picked, that I did pick when I was young, or that I would pick if she died. They were four or five years younger for one thing.

[laughter]

Michael:  That's just a joke. [laughter]

Michael:  Joke, joke. [music]

Announcer:  Thanks for listening. We hope this helps or encourages you in some way today. As always remember to check out our ever-changing specials.