The World Was My Shepherd

By Ben Shocklin

The World Was My Shepherd shares the story of Ben Shocklins life. Filled with hope and security, he had a childhood most people only dream oflots of family time, vacations, game nights, and time with friends. His life suddenly changes after viewing disturbing images and experiencing inconsistent, improper behavior from the God-fearing parents he placed on a pedestal. What began as an idyllic childhood transformed into something entirely different.

His experiences with intimacy and normal relationships were hindered by this distorted past, leading him through a life of worldly desires and an occasional glimpse of greatness through Christ. He takes us through the good and bad, the righteous and the evil of this world, explicitly detailing his life experiences with teenage love, a failed marriage, drug-filled naval adventures, addictions, lost romance, accidental death, and sexual escapades while trying to get sober in AA.

Though aware that God was present in his life, again and again Ben fell victim to his own desires, Satans temptations, and a secular world full of hedonism, hypocrisy, and contradiction. The World Was My Shepherd is Bens personal journey brought to life through provocative reflection, graphic imagery, and candid storytelling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475954449

Ben Shocklin

Ben Shocklin, currently working full time in the Public Works Sector for a small municipality, eagerly awaits his retirement. After graduating from high school, he served in the US Navy for six years. He and his wife live in Upstate New York.

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The Alien Theory

Early in childhood I had a queer sense of feeling different than everyone else; not strange, like Eddie Munster, just different. I don’t know what got into my head that compelled me to have this alienated sense of the world, but there was a peculiar feeling inside that made me think I was destined to do something really important, or be somebody famous, like a mathematician getting the noble prize or a scientist who invents a gizmo that revolutionizes the way energy is produced. I couldn’t explain the feeling to anyone because it was so weird; How could I describe a feeling like this when even I didn’t understand it?

The thought migrating through my head when I was growing up was the belief that everything I encountered in life, every single, infinitesimal experience was all part of a big experiment to find out what makes Homo sapiens tick. This curious little brain somehow came to the conclusion that extraterrestrials, or some other type of nebulous being were out there planet jumping in the great expanse of our universe, and stopped off here on earth for a few of their tests; it just so happened that I was one of the samples they cooked up from this chromosomal cosmic brew. All the other people, even my own family and everyone I came in contact with in my ordinary, contrived life were just alien actors, not from another country but from another world, playing parts that were predetermined based on the personality traits they injected into this formula, this building block of humanity.

In this youth-crazed mind I felt that each one of these new field experiments I was subjected to by aliens confirmed something about humans they had previously surmised. Each new situation I’d find myself in would make me wonder what they were trying to find out about me this time: If I was attending an assembly at school, or going away to camp for a week, the physical and mental observations they recorded in each of these life situations would give them more data to create something else, maybe another specimen like me, or possibly one that was better than me, a specimen that was correct, with all the characteristics of the kind of Homo sapiens they were trying to create, or, recreate.

But I was one of the fortunate people blessed with a very happy and normal childhood, with lots of love and nurturing from God-fearing, ordinary parents, so there was no valid reason for me to feel different and to have these unnatural feelings about the world. An impartial observer could look in on just a snippet of my childhood and conclude that it was something straight out of an episode of Father Knows Best.

I read somewhere that certain psychodynamics are an intrinsic part of our personality based on the pecking order in the family, and since I’m the second oldest child of five siblings, four boys and a girl, and my sister and brothers all seem very normal, then why would I feel different? Possibly the second oldest child in a five-sibling combo of four brothers and one sister is programmed to have this kind of feeling?

The Martian feeling didn’t last very long though, I think it was somewhere around 7th or 8th grade that I began to lose the alien complex. Reality took its toll, partly due to my consistently poor grades and my fathers’ leather belt.

But then there were girls, and they helped fetch a reality check back to my frontal lobe. Intuitively I came to the realization that the intense emotions swelling up inside of me after kissing a girl on the lips were not something an alien could conjure up, and the guilt feelings that consumed me the first time I masturbated were emotions I knew you could not create from an extraterrestrial soup mix; those feelings came from something real, something human, not from a concoction, alien or otherwise.

So reality brought me back to reality, and eventually the alien neurosis was suppressed, scurrying its way back into the subconscious part of my brain. I never told anyone about the alien theory because I knew people would say I was weird, like they probably are right now.

The Adventure Begins

Reaching the pivotal age of ten years old I began to have an ever expanding interest in anything related to girls, and all the thoughts I had originally conceived about feeling different began to fade. Girls took center stage, and any information I could obtain about them and their wonderful charm was something of great importance.

The problem I had with girls was that they made me so nervous whenever I’d get near one of them; they were the aliens, and I was completely captivated by the allure of these beautiful creatures, especially the cute ones, but I’d usually act stupid and say dumb things any time a girl was present. I was extremely shy, and I couldn’t think of words that sounded normal. It was so difficult to act nonchalant whenever one of these delicate little flowers was in my presence. Girls were fascinating, and quite a mystery, but a mystery worth trying to unravel, if I could.

Maria Griffen was the first girl I ever kissed; we were coupled together as part of the LCC (Loving Couples Club) that my best friend Mark Minell engineered on the playground in grade school. Mark was a real lady’s man, with the Frankie Avalon looks, and just like Frankie Avalon he always had the prettiest girls. Many times Mark would be the one with a cute girlfriend by his side while I had nothing but the yearning for a girlfriend, any girlfriend. I admired him and his ability to capture the affections of girls, and I didn’t realize just how much an influence he had on future relationship endeavors. Mark was not a love’em and leave’em type either, he treated girls with respect, he just wasn’t one for beating around the bush when it came to the first kiss.

Apparently Mark had plans for getting busy with Sonya Burd, one of the prettiest girls of our 5th grade class. I also had desire for Sonya, but as usual I didn’t feel she’d ever find any redeeming value in me, so I never got up the nerve to get to know her better. Sometimes I wonder if the LCC was a plan that Mark concocted just to get into Sonya’s pants; he was always scheming something, and usually something to do with a girl. But then again I don’t think Mark needed help getting into a girl’s pants, he was an expert at that.

This lover’s club was such an important part of my pre-pubescent development that I can still recall all the couples who were part of our private little guild:

The Loving Couples Club (LCC)

Members List 1969

One particular day Maria and I were supposed to get together at her house after school, and I think our little rendezvous had something to do with an initiation into the club. I don’t know who set it up or what kind of rule prompted this action, all I know is that I didn’t have anything to do with getting the two of us there that day; more than likely it was Mark’s idea. I was so shy that there is no way I could’ve embarked on such a bold and daring mission as getting a girl alone, in her own house. And for some reason or another Maria’s parents were not around that day, and I don’t know and definitely did not care where they were, all I knew was that the two of us were alone, nothing else really mattered.

Secretly I had a crush on Maria since we were in 1st grade, but never in a million years did I think I’d actually be attempting to kiss her!

Maria was the plain-Jane looking girl, with straight, short cut, oily brown hair. Her skin was an attractive feature, soft and smooth, very appealing as I’d watch her arms gently turn the pages of a book. It was as though her skin was tempting me to reach out and touch it, daring me to do the impossible, and the improbable.

Lips were Maria’s finest feature, full and globular, the part of her anatomy that taunted me the most, and though her upper lip was a little puffy on one side, presumably from a previous injury when she was younger, they still cried out for my lips to touch them.

The time arrived for this prerequisite kiss, this rite of passage, and there we were, stammering and stalling, walking all around her living room trying desperately to look like we knew what we were doing, awkwardly moving closer and closer in a feeble attempt to consummate our predetermined status as a couple.

Finally, after all the nervous dancing, the mating ritual of pre-teens in lust, stumbling our way all around the living room we arrived at the couch. We took our respective positions, like infantry on the front line trying to obtain a strategic point of attack. With what I believed to be the correct poise and posture I sat parallel on the couch, next to Maria. Turning my torso ever so slowly towards her I looked into her eyes. I began leaning my body over to her, as she did the same. Leaning forward I tilted my head slightly to the right, for proper alignment, while she reciprocated. We touched lips.

To my utter surprise this was not the feeling I envisioned after many years of watching people kiss on TV. I thought this kiss would be something exciting, something magical, something that would make me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

But it was not, it was just a tightly formed, pucker to pucker kiss; her lips felt cool and firm.

Since this was the first kiss for both of us we didn’t know how we were supposed to move our lips, like they do in the movies, or even that you’re supposed to close your eyes when you kiss. This was one thing about our kiss that seemed a little odd to me; your eyes get kind of blurry when you’re up that close to something.

So after waiting all this time to kiss the precious face I’d been fantasizing about for so long, repeated wet dreams confirming my excitement, she ends up looking more like a big-eyed frog than the girl who had my heart completely mesmerized.

Having this grade school crush on Maria for more than four years, with lust and desire running through my veins in vivid, multi-colored detail, the kiss apparently broke the spell, because I didn’t feel the same infatuation for her after that. Actually I felt the complete opposite, and Maria began to look kind of dumpy to me, and I promptly went back to Mark and told him I wanted a new partner.

Needless to say we didn’t remain a couple; after all, we were in 5th grade, I don’t think anyone expected we’d be together forever! Mark was good, but not that good at choosing partners.

A few years later, sometime around 8th or 9th grade I remember Maria began to look exciting to me all over again, I think having something to do with her developments, which became quite an attraction as I got older. Maria had blossomed, and she wasn’t the type of girl to wear bras, even when she was wearing a t-shirt. This made her become even more enticing, and I had lurid thoughts of reconnecting with her just to cop a feel of those promenading new mammary glands.

Total Recall

It’s curious to me how you can recall little details about things in your past, like when you hear an old song and it reminds you of a certain moment in time, or how an odor or fragrance can take you back to a particular place in your life. I’ll always remember that day with Maria whenever I have fresh squeezed lemonade, which Maria offered me upon my arrival at her house. There’s absolutely no doubt it was the most refreshing lemonade I will ever have.

Thank You God

Early days are filled with fond memories, a childhood chocked full of fun and good times, and one that I am extremely grateful for. It’s easy to see that a childhood growing up in a warm and fun-loving home is what gives me the hope and strength I have to rise above today’s never ending challenges and adversities.

Growing up in a middle class home, with two loving parents, we had many of the essential things every child should have, like love, security, and togetherness.

With three brothers and one sister we loved playing games, all the time. We played countless board games, card games, strategy games, and any other kind of game imaginable; on some occasions we even had to leave the game in place and go to bed, just to wake up the next morning and begin playing again.

Wintertime

One of the great pastimes during the long winter months was playing table tennis on our antique dining room table. Sometimes we’d play so long and hard and with such enthusiasm that our hands would get blisters from the grip on the paddle. This poor table took a beating; my older brother Dick didn’t like to lose, so he’d usually give the edge of the table a good sharp whack with his paddle when he lost a point, typically after a long contested rally. Dick was not someone you’d call a sore loser, but he just loved to win.

Another game we were fond of playing was around-the-world, using a tennis ball and a clothes hamper. The course would begin on the second floor of our house and eventually work halfway down the stairs. The stair at the bottom was the toughest shot, so it took a lot more effort.

We also had countless hours of fun sledding down the hills behind our house, especially after a big snowfall. An old farming road curved around some hills and down beyond our neighbor’s property, past our backyard and all the way down to the road that ran in front of our house. Snow days off from school were spent pulling our sleds up that hill and cascading back down the winding trail, ending right at our back door if we desired.

The things we’d find to occupy our time during those long, cold, northeast winters provided us with endless hours of fun.

Summertime

Summers were the best times of the year. I could fill up an encyclopedia with all the adventures we had between May and September: Ramp-to-ramp jumping on banana seat bikes; building tree forts; digging for old bottles (buried treasure), and white water rafting on inner tubes down the creek running through the town. Summers in this town had everything a kid could possibly want, and more.

We were also blessed with an abandoned railroad bed that wound its way through our small town, offering miles of flat trails to ride our bikes on for endless hours of off-road fun. One of these railroad beds ran through the woods behind our house, and snaked through an old sand and gravel pit, so in addition to the biking fun we had on the railroad bed, the sand pit was a great place to camp out and build huge bonfires.

There was also the old mill in the center of town; with its two abutment walls on opposing sides of the creek, overlooking a gigantic swimming hole, it was the leaping and diving capital of the world. If you were looking for me on a sweltering hot day in July or August you need look no further than the old mill.

Dad

My father, an extremely talented and creative man invested much of his leisure time pursuing the arts and crafts that he was a master of. Dad would spend numerous hours working in his den, meticulously carving a small piece of balsa wood into the shape of an owl or pheasant or mallard duck, then hand painting each piece to exact replication and adding the hardware to make it into a pendant, earring, or necklace. Though dad was never recognized as an accomplished artist by commercial or professional standards, his artistic abilities are unparalleled, yet he’d be the last to agree with this because he’s probably the most unpretentious man on the planet.

As my father he was the quintessential disciplinarian, and did quite well in his role of keeping the peace. I grew up having great reverence for his tactful and timely use of a leather belt.

Mom

Mom was the ultimate homemaker, and in that role she deserves high honors. Some of the tasty meals she prepared are still locked in my taste bud memory banks, and will be there forever. Mom would often use us as guinea pigs on new recipes she’d find in her vast collection of old Betty Crocker cookbooks, and at the end of dinner she’d have us rate how good it was, whether it was good, very good, or bad. This way she’d know whether or not to make it again.

She also played the piano, and sometimes we’d gather around and sing songs together, especially around Christmastime. I also have fond memories of learning to play chopsticks under her careful instruction, and sometimes mom and I would play alone.

Like many kids, I placed my parents on a very high pedestal; they were Ozzie and Harriet and the Walton’s all rolled into one, and I can’t imagine a youngster having better parents or a happier childhood than the one I had.

Oh Brother

Growing up with an older brother was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he introduced me to many new things, many of which I still enjoy today. Listening to rock-n-roll music,