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If such apercus are reminiscent of love-ins, mood rings and Woodstock, it is no coincidence. The author began life as a strict Southern Baptist in Waco, Texas. "I guess it was a pendulum reaction to what had gone before," he recalls. One grandfather had abandoned his family of seven children; the other had been shot to death in a tavern. Robert parroted the Fundamentalist line until the pendulum swung back. "On prom night we went to a country club where the girls wore lipstick and hose, and the next day, at Sunday School, the teacher thundered about going to a den of iniquity. It occurred to me that God had better things to do than to worry about people dancing."
His head full of questions, the youth headed northwest for the University of Colorado. In summers he supported himself by acting as a singing cowboy on a dude ranch and riding in an occasional rodeo. But in Robert's junior year, his father, a retired manager for Sears Roebuck, became seriously ill. The tuition money ran out, and the undergraduate finished his studies at Baptist Baylor University in Waco. "By then, however," says Fulghum, "I had seen a wider world, and there was no going back." He spent one year working as a salesman for IBM in Dallas but then forsook the old-time religion and set out for Berkeley. There he enrolled in a small Unitarian seminary. "The beatnik thing had just happened in San Francisco, and I jumped into that with both feet." The feet were covered with sandals; the face was decorated with the beard he still wears. He and his new wife sat up listening to jazz and drinking cheap wine. "Oh, it was gloooorious."
The marriage was something less than gloooorious. The Fulghums had two sons and adopted a daughter, but their union ended with the Age of Aquarius. "It was life's low point," Fulghum sighs. "I thought there was no way up." He retreated to a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan, seeking spiritual solace. There he met a Japanese-American teacher named Lynn Kohara Edwards. Even in his depressed state, Fulghum impressed Edwards as the "most entertaining person I've ever met." He still does. The couple journeyed back to Seattle and were married in the summer of 1975. Instead of exchanging rings, he gave her a silver flute, and she presented him with a fiddle. Fulghum always had a knack for painting and drawing; to supplement his small ministerial income, he became an art instructor at a local high school. His maverick approach became a point of local pride. On one examination the class was challenged:
Suppose all human beings had tails. Describe yours.
Did you ever think about doing something terrible? Pretend that you did it.
Describe the crime you committed, and make your own mug shot and fingerprints.
In time the personal clouds lifted, the marriage took hold, the students were inspired, and the instructor-minister began to issue the upbeat sermons that were to make his name. Fulghum summed up his new attitude with a quote from Albert Camus: "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."