My freshman year in college, I fell like a ton of bricks for a football player. What a cliche, right? He was a junior, big and brawny, sweet as pie...and a baby born-again Christian. I only knew him "after," but apparently, "before" he was hell on wheels -- a hard-partying, fight-picking jackass who went through girls like a quart of milk and scared the pants off many an underclassman. Imagine my delight when this nice, good-looking guy paid attention to me, sought me out and asked me to go to church with him. We drove twenty miles or so out into the sticks, two or even three times a week, for months. The church held more than two thousand people, and it was always full. They brought poor kids in by the busload and kept track of how many people attended each service on a big chart on the wall. Wednesday nights were my favorites -- less fire and brimstone, more classic old hymns. I'd share his bible, he'd hold the hymnbook for me, and on the way home, we'd sometimes stop at a gas station, where he'd pour a bag of Lance salted peanuts into a full Coke bottle and we'd sit in the dark on the hood of his car, sipping and chewing, talking about nothing. I had a crush the size of a billboard on that guy. It took me about six months to figure out that he wanted my soul and not my body.

When he pressed me to get baptized, I put my Presbyterian foot down, explaining about infant baptism and confirmation and how, thanks, but really, I feel perfectly okay about my relationship with Our Lord. He smiled sadly and moved on to some other, more impressionable girl. Looking back on it, it's possible that had the baptism not involved full immersion in front of a couple thousand people, and had I not been utterly reliant on a blow-dryer and some Maybelline to feel my absolute best, I might have caved to his persuasion and gone ahead and done it... for all the wrong reasons. I guess I can partially credit crippling self-consciousness for my ability to withstand the pressure.

That guy ended up quitting football and dropping out of college -- the better to evangelize, he said. Maybe it worked for him, maybe it didn't. We lost touch, so I don't know how his life turned out. As for me, I went on to fall for another nice guy, sweet as pie... who wanted the whole package I had to offer -- body, mind and spirit. That one, I married.