Growing up, the wildest, most disrespectful kids were the “PKs”, or “Pastor’s Kids.”  If someone was going to mess around in a cemetery, it would be a PK.  Everyone else with either too afraid of ghosts (who would deal them imaginary harm if they did anything in a cemetery) or parents (who would deal them physical harm if they ever found out).  PKs were unfazed by either.  Perhaps it was knowing that there were no ghosts, or that daddy wouldn’t ever lay a finger on them.  I’m not sure why.  From their perspective, it was the natural rebellion after years of having to dress up and go to Sunday School, and then sit straight and act attentive (quite difficult for a 5 year old) in Church for EVERY service EVERY week.

I remember hide-and-seek games in a pitch dark church sanctuary…  several of them, actually.  It seemed right at the time.  Some of them were so big as to be really hard to find someone who knew the place and was good at keeping quiet.  I don’t remember how we got into those churches.  I must have been a PK thing…

PK boys were the loud (or quiet — never in the middle) kids who would do any dare, pull any prank, start any fight, or get into any kind of mischief — or several kinds at once.  BB guns and slingshots were their friends, and could do a lot of damage from concealment, but that didn’t always stop them from getting caught.  PK girls were the quiet (seldom loud) kids who would be the first to skip school, stay out too late, or go “too far” in a child’s game of “spin the bottle.”  They might not be pretty, but they would make up for it by being bold…  and then trying to hide by running to daddy, so he could say, “My little girl would NEVER do that.  Take your accusations elsewhere.”

I had the misfortune of finding the PKs in any group — from summer camp to school to late nights after the high school football games, when we all used to congregate at the Arby’s, or Burger King, or whatever it was that put up with a bunch of rowdy teenagers.  I remember one night after we won a game that I squirted my date head-to-toe with a smashed packet of mayo…  and she left in a huff, so I hung around until closing time when a cute girl got off shift at the Burger King.  I didn’t know she was a PK until she tried to rip my clothes off in a town park not far away while trying to get me to smoke some weed.  I’m not sure why I said “no” to both…  but was glad I did, because not five minutes passed before a sheriff deputy showed up, asked us what we were doing, and told us to move along.  I was embarrassed and flustered.  She was cool as a cucumber, as if it happened to her often.

Another time we had a campfire sing-a-long at summer camp, and I remember sneaking around after curfew with at least one PK in a group of kids.  I grew up in the country, so it didn’t bother me to walk around in woods in the dark, even if it wasn’t my turf.  It felt good to be the one in charge for once.  Naturally, my own dumb luck meant I was the one who got caught.  The girls didn’t.  They made sure I knew it the next day.  Especially the PK.

I went to college and got introduced to some “MKs”, or Missionary Kids.  For some reason, they were the opposite of the PKs…  They were well behaved and fairly well-adjusted.  For the life of me, I don’t know why the differences were so marked.  It could have been a fluke, but who knows?

I’m a PK and proud of it.  Ashamed of what I did as a kid, perhaps, but I grew out of it and turned out ok.  I’m not sure how the rest of this group fared.