Baptism 1975

This is the story of my baptism.

I was in a church without a building at the time. It was 1975, and I was working as a waitress at a local diner. I got a call that there was going to be a baptism service at the town's YMCA Olympic swimming pool, and to be there at 8:30 if I wanted to be baptized. I was 20 years old, and I had been saved for 2 years at this point. I went directly to the Y from work in my waitress uniform, still sticky from syrup and smelling like cigarettes. Someone gave me a white sheet to throw over my uniform, and before I knew it this sinner was plunged beneath that flood by a pastor who didn’t really know me. No one there knew me, but I was so happy to be there and to be doing this.

Immediately afterward, I threw the sheet off, got into the family car and started to drive home. It was late by now, maybe 11:30 PM. I was in the right hand lane, stopped at the light, and decided not to make that right because it looked like a bad neighborhood. So, there was no traffic, and at the last minute when the light turned green, I signaled left, made a left hand turn from the right hand lane and was promptly pulled over by the police. The officer approached and asked me if I knew what I had done. Nope, I was clueless, righteous and dripping wet, both hair and uniform. He asked me where I was coming from and why I was soaking wet. “Well, officer, I was just baptized in the YMCA pool over there.” I’m not sure if he believed me.

The officer informed me that it is quite illegal to make a left hand turn from a right lane and asked why I had done that. After my explanation, he went back to his vehicle and ran the license plate against my driver’s license. It was strange hearing my parent’s names being shouted out on the police radio so that all the cars in the neighborhood could hear. When he got back to my car, he stared at my license, and told me that since my birthday was the same as his, he was going to have to let me go. My parents never asked and never found out why I was home late or why I was wet. They would have been hurt if they knew. They already thought I had joined a cult and threatened to have me deprogrammed.