Kissing Michelle Vitt

Michelle Vitt looks happy enough. She’s pretty in the picture of her in today’s Jacksonville Daily News. Sitting in the Starbuck’s there on Western Blvd., in her Abercrombie T-shirt, pretty smile, lovely cheeks, cell phone and keys on the table next to her frozen coffee drink, you might think she’s just your average American college age girl. But Hope Hodge of the Daily News Staff tells us there’s something very atypical about Michelle that you can’t see in that photograph, or even in person.

Michelle has never been kissed. By that, I do not simply mean that Michelle is a virgin. I am not telling you she’s never been a gropee or been the groper. Ladies and gentlemen, Dreamers, casual readers of this little blog, I am telling you that lovely Michelle here has never, not once, been kissed. (I would assume that statement’s meaning excludes familial kissing, of course.)

As incredible as that is to believe, the reason behind it is unfortunately glaringly mundane and predictable.

Vitt said her decision was made when she was little - one that she has stood by, even when it has been difficult.

“You hear everybody say, well, I wish I had waited,” she said. “Everybody has their regrets. I don’t have a regret about doing this.”

Vitt has lived near Jacksonville all her life, and after home schooling through her high school years, attended the Potter’s School for a theology degree and then took several semesters at Coastal Carolina Community College with a focus on elementary education.

Though her plans and ambitions have changed over the years, Vitt said, one hope for the future has always been the same.

“One thing I’ve always wanted to be is a wife and mother,” she said.

She grew up with a strong Christian background, she said, and was encouraged to have high standards by her parents. But the decision to save kissing for marriage is one she made on her own.

And there you have it. She made the decision when she was little to be unsullied until her wedding day. More properly stated, her parents so brainwashed her from the time she was not capable of making an informed decision, and then insulated her from society to maintain that indoctrination so severely, that this girl has reached college age having never been kissed by a boy (or a girl, presumably) and is happy about that.

I’d like to correct something Michelle said in the first statement quoted above. Michelle said:

“You hear everybody say, well, I wish I had waited,” she said. “Everybody has their regrets. I don’t have a regret about doing this.”

No. No, Michelle, not everybody says that. In fact, I’ve never heard anybody say that. What I have heard people say is “I sure wish I had…” Your parents tell you that everybody says that, the people in your isolated little fundy world might say that in church, but the truth of the matter is that people tend to regret the things they didn’t do much more than they regret the things they did do. It is only the warped programming of your parents’ religion that would cause you to believe kissing before your marriage is regrettable.

In my own experience I can personally tell you there was a particularly beautiful young English teacher who taught me in high school, about whom I shall always carry a large dose of regret. She was not only lovely to look at, but articulate, compassionate, engaging, intelligent, and enticing. Had it not been for the insane social stigma attached to sexuality in America today, I believe I could have, I didn’t, I regret. I believe that one day in the (hopefully) distant future, I shall be lying on my death bed, and thinking of Miss Santos (later Mrs. Williams), regretting that I never once took the opportunity, as she leaned over my shoulder to inspect my work, to simply turn my head and plant one right on those alluring lips. Seriously, what could the administration have done to me for that? Suspend me? Arrest me? It would have been a small price to pay for such a memory, I’m quite sure. As long as she acted “properly” reproachful afterwards, there’d have been no consequences for her, and she too would take that memory with her through life, I guarantee it. I’m also more than a little convinced it would have been a rather pleasant memory for her.

These, dear Michelle are the things we regret in life. We regret the things we didn’t do. We regret not kissing our English teachers. I hope you come to that realization sooner rather than later, before the regrets pile up so high they eat you alive when you finally notice them.

The comments below the Daily News article get pretty ugly sometimes, but some of the more pointed utterances contain not-so-subtle points that as usual are lost on the Fundy Cheerleading Squad. I find the Jesus/Muhammad Yahweh/Allah comparisons rather apt, and the unsurprising obliviousness to the validity of the analogy and its implications by the family’s admirers tragically predictable.

I am so sorry for you, Michelle. Nobody should be so abused by their parents.

(Crossposted from UDoJ )