When I was in high school, I was walking down an alley and a bar had discarded boxes of decorative liquor bottles. Some were interesting and unique. I decided to bring a bunch of them home.

My bedroom was basically a second-floor sun room. It was windows on all three sides of the room. I washed the bottles out and put them on the sill of my windows. They were very visible to the outside world, which was probably part of my rebellious demeanor.

Oh, did I mention that our house was a parsonage, located next to the church? My room overlooked the back parking lot of the church. On Sunday, these liquor bottles were very obvious to the parishioners heading in to worship.

After a few weeks, I was getting ready for church and saw a family looking at and obviously discussing my bedroom décor. It actually occurred to me that I probably have put dad in a compromising position. First, this may be a shocker to you but church members can be judgmental. Secondly, not to rock your world, but many pastors consume some alcohol.

Now my parents were very light drinkers, but would have a glass of wine on occasion. I grew up in the era that my parents actually hid the wine bottles if people were coming over to our house. Frankly, if I was a pastor and had to put up with us parishioners, it would be hard not to drink heavily.

But the point of my story is, my parents never said anything. They allowed me to be a defiant idiot. They allowed me the time to make a better decision.

In my high school Social Studies class, we were studying the end of World War II. There were two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man. As my class project, I made a life-sized paper replica of Fat Man. I put our high school as Ground O and showed the rings of damage emanating out and how it would flatten and harm our home town. In the current day, I’d likely be suspended from school and thrown in Juvenile Jail. The Social Studies teacher actually asked if he could keep my project to use with future classes. I was motivated to learn so much about the terrible destruction and impact of real people in Japan. I was allowed to show how those bombs would have impacted us, not some people we don’t know across an ocean.

Between my junior and senior year of high school, I was selected by American Field Service, which is an international exchange program. I had the opportunity to pick where I would like to spend my three months. My thought was to travel to a place I probably would never travel, and Africa seemed like a big adventure. My time was spent living with a family in Ghana and I was 16 when I traveled there. We’ve had two 16-year-olds and my granddaughter is knocking on the door of being sixteen. I’m not sure I’d want them go that far away. It had to be difficult for my parents to let me fly on a plane to New York for orientation, then on to Africa by myself. But that trust (or maybe they were simply glad not to have to deal with me for three months) was literally life changing for me.

I know times have changed, but I appreciate that I was allowed to have wings. They’ve gotten clipped a few times along my flight path, but I was permitted to glide my own reckless way.