I started a religion once, back in high school circa 1980. A couple of us smart asses became followers of a fictional Father Dandelion. Best I remember, we went for dandelions as a symbol because it was spring, and they were plentiful for passing out. We started with the flower power nonsense and worked up the basic stunt/religious statement.
We really annoyed a couple of teachers with the piles of fresh springtime dandelions piled and scattered and passed out all over the school. However, those teachers dare not try to suppress our free religious expression.
Naturally, we interpreted any criticism or attempt to restrict our flower distribution (ie complaining when we piled hundreds of dandelions on an annoying teacher's desk during lunch hour) as a horrible religious persecution/violation of our First Ammendment rights. Littering? You have just insulted our religious faith!
From there, we just spun new things to extend the joke religious statement until we ran out of ideas/got bored with it after a month or so.
By the time we got done, half of the inmates at Laurel High School had adopted flower names. I was Brother Buttercup. As I recall, Brother Violet was my principle co-conspirator.
Several of us wrote short books of faux hippy Dandelion philosophy and at least one gospel- all unfortunately long lost.
Note that I came up with this kind of stuff years before I'd even heard of Stranger in a Strange Land.
Then the school year/dandelion season ran out, and it was forgotten.
Perhaps Dandelionism was the One True Religion. Hey, my guess is as good L Ron Hubbard's or that of Jesus of Nazareth. Memory fails, but perhaps the full truth was glimpsed only once -briefly- by some teenage crackers from Indiana.
Or maybe not. I can't quite remember. I seem to have forgotten a lot, cause I sure knew everything then.
All hail Father Dandelion.
Article comments
1 - Howard Owens
A friend I once invented a religion to worship Irregular Geometric Shapes. I think that religion lasted until the end of that study hall.
When I was elementary school, my friends and I started our own National Holiday. Oct. 26 -- National Horn Day -- in honer of the day we all rode down El Cajon Blvd. in a 1920somthing Ford flatbed truck -- every other car on the street honked at us, and we honked back. It was great fun. So we proclaimed it National Horn Day ... the day everybody is supposed to drive around honking their horns. More than once I've given my car horn a little unneccessary toot on Oct. 26. Forgot this past October ... maybe I'll remember next year.