Ricky in Buffalo Grove, Illinois: "What If God...."
TEENAGE DIARIES
Produced by: Joe Richman All Things Considered (NPR)
6/3/96


ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: This is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, Host: And I'm Linda Wertheimer. Children grow up with the lessons their parents teach them and it sometimes isn't easy for them to question those lessons. But as they become teenagers, young people often do rethink the beliefs, values, the culture they were raised with. Ricky Sherman is fourteen years old. He lives in Buffalo Grove, a suburb of Chicago. A few months back we gave Ricky a tape recorder to document his life. It's part of our series called "Teenage Diaries." This is Ricky's story.


RICKY SHERMAN: 1, 2, 3, testing. Okay. Hi, my name's Ricky Sherman and I am fourteen years old. I live in Buffalo Grove, which is 20 miles northwest of Chicago. It's a pretty nice suburb and our house is two stories, like most of the houses around here. [Walking sound] Right now we are going downstairs--live--to see my mom. Here she is in the kitchen making pizza and right now the pizzas in the oven. Say hi mom.

MOTHER: Hi.

DAWN, Sister: Hi Ricky.

RICKY: In the background you can hear my sister, Dawn....

DAWN: Say hi Ricky. [Repeats as Ricky talks]

RICKY: Whom I was about to introduce. [Laughs] She is two and a half years old. She is really cute and she talks a lot. And, here's a word from Dawn. Say hi.

DAWN: Hi.

RICKY: Say bye Dawn.

DAWN: Bye Dawn.

RICKY: No. [laughs] Dawn, say bye.

DAWN: Bye.

RICKY: Okay.


RICKY: Here we are in my room, and my closet is next to my desk. So here are the clothes. And, Okay that's it for my closet. Now. I basically like dinosaurs and space so I have a lot of those kinds of books and then I have regular novel books and here is my night stand which has my radio on it.

[music on radio - La Bamba]

RICKY: Okay. Here we are flipping through the radio stations. My favorite radio station is 101.9 which is like music from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Oh wait. This is Q 101 right here.

[DJ on radio: 'today's rock mix...', music - "One Of Us" by Joan Osborne starts playing]

RICKY: I like basically all types of music but my favorite song is called "One of Us." Ironically, it's my favorite song because my dad's an atheist and it's about God. So.

[music]

RICKY: My dad's name is Robert Sherman and he's an atheist which means he doesn't believe in God. Well, that doesn't make my house really any different, I mean, my dad doesn't like it when my sister says like, 'bless you' when she, like, sneezes. Other than that, it's no big deal. I say 'oh my God' all the time. The only thing that's different really is, like, my dad has a license plate that says ATHEIST and that's probably the only thing that you could, if you were just to pass by our house, that would be the only thing that could tell you my dad's an atheist. It's not like neon signs saying: "the atheist lives here" or something like that.

[music]

RICKY: It's sort of hard for me. Kids at school think that being an atheist, you worship the devil, and you think that the devil is the best thing in the whole wide world. When they nag me about the devil I tell them that an atheist doesn't believe in the devil. And also, I'm sorta, I'm not an atheist really. I'm sorta confused. I'm not sure. And so they say--yeah sure.

[music]

RICKY: Before I used to umm, I used to think that I was atheist. Now I'm not really so sure. I'm sorta confused. 'Cause I don't know what to believe.

[music ends]

[Dawn making noises]

RICKY: Okay, I want you to say a few words for me, okay? Can you say 'God bless you'?

DAWN, Sister: God bless you.

RICKY: Can you say 'Thank God.'

DAWN: Thank God.

RICKY: Okay. What does daddy tell you to say--what is God?

DAWN: Make believe.

RICKY: Okay. Did daddy teach you to say that?

DAWN: Yeah.

RICKY: Okay. Now we're going to go talk to mommy, okay?


RICKY: Now here we are going over to my mom who is flipping the channels of the television. Okay My mom's name is Celeste and she's agnostic which means she thinks there might be a God, but then again she's not sure so she's like sort of confused. So what religion are you?

MOTHER: Umm. I don't believe in any organized religion if that's--I'm not Catholic or anything like that. I personally believe that if there is such a thing as a God that he's probably not what we have pictured him to be, but I really don't know if I accept the concept that there is nothing.

RICKY: So do you think people of the same religion should just marry, uh, a person of like the Jewish religion should only marry Jewish people or do you just think they should marry whoever they feel like?

MOTHER: That's a difficult question because, you know they say that love conquers all--well that's not always the case.

DAWN: I want to sing skidaleee. Skidalee.

RICKY: Okay. Here is Dawn and my mom singing Dawn's favorite song. Okay, start singing.


[Dawn and mother begin singing, then fades out]

[sound of meeting fades in]


MAYOR: Thank you. Our last speaker is Robert Sherman.

FATHER, ROBERT SHERMAN: Evening Mayor, members of the council. My name is Robert Sherman. I'm the founder of the National Civil Rights Foundation.


RICKY: My dad fights a lot of religion battles, like once he tried to get rid of the Under God part in the pledge of allegiance, or make it so it's not mandatory to say it. When I was in the fifth grade I wanted to join the boy scouts and in their oath they said I will do my duty to God and his country and other stuff like that and my dad didn't like that, and he told the cub scout leaders that I was an atheist, and my dad was an atheist, and so they had to contact the Board of the Cub Scouts--the main cheese guy. So they let me join for two weeks. After 2 weeks they told my dad I couldn't be in it and he couldn't be a Cub Scout leader. So we went to court, and I think we lost, but I don't--yeah I'm pretty sure we lost.


[meeting fades out]

[sound of walking around house]


FATHER: You gotta pick up your recorder and follow me. You know, I'm a busy guy.

RICKY: [laughs] Okay.

FATHER: You're lucky to be getting this interview. All right. Come on, follow me.

RICKY: Okay. Why did you become an atheist?

FATHER: Oh, I was always an atheist Ricky.

RICKY: You mean right when you were born you were an atheist?

FATHER: We are all--stick the microphone right in my face, very good--Okay we're all born atheists. Some people are taught to be superstitious.

RICKY: Do you ever think about whether there might be a God?

FATHER: Oh yeah, I think about it all the time. I think about uh, whether there might be a God. I take another look at the evidence, and I come to the same conclusion every single time: God is make believe.

RICKY: So what do you think happens when you die?

FATHER: When you die, you rot. You become food for maggots.

RICKY: Do you feel I should believe a certain belief, or do you care what I believe?

FATHER: Sure I care. I hope you grow up to be an atheist, but this is a free country, you can--whatever opinion you arrive at is your business, not mine. Of course, I'm a good salesman and so far my efforts to sell you on the logic and merits of atheism have been successful, haven't they?

RICKY: [laughs] Yeah.

FATHER: [mimics] Yeah, yeah dad.

RICKY: Umm. Have you ever considered changing your license plate which says atheist on it?

FATHER: The license plate stays.

RICKY: Okay. Umm...That's it.

FATHER: All right. [teasing] Now get out of here.

RICKY: Well, thank you and go away.

FATHER: Yeah, and don't come back here for 4 days, right?

RICKY: [laughs] Yeah. Good-bye. Thank you.


[music - "One of Us"]


RICKY: Kids usually pick up their religion from their parents but I don't really think that kids should just automatically have their parents religion or whatever. Sometimes at night when I'm thinking about it, I often wonder what happens when you like die. I mean, what becomes of you? Do you just go into a hole in the ground and just rot away into a lot nothingness? Or does something else happen? Maybe I think that there might be a God. And that something different happens to you when you die. I just probably won't be any like certain religion. I'll probably just be whatever religion my wife would be 'cause I mean, if my wife's Christian--I mean, I love putting up a Christmas tree and decorating and stuff--and if she's Jewish I wouldn't mind celebrating Hanukah or anything like that. I mean, that would be really cool.


[music plays for while, then fades]


LINDA WERTHEIMER, Host: Our story was written and recorded by 14 year-old Ricky Sherman. Our Teenage Diaries series is produced by Joe Richman.



© 1999, Joe Richman