For my birthday, I put together a trivia game about my life. As soon as I invited my loved ones to play, things got crazy. First Viola declared a determination to win, then Little Sister. They both asked me for study guides. I was gratified by their interest, amused by their competitiveness, and a little taken aback by the whole thing.
Baby Brother and I had a conversation about it along these lines:
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (to Baby Brother) Viola and Little Sister asked me for study guides for the game.
BABY BROTHER::I need a study guide!
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (now completely taken aback) You don't need a study guide! You know me.
BABY BROTHER: (practically in tears) No, I don't! I don't know you!
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Yes, you do!
BABY BROTHER: I know you, but I don't know stuff about you! What's your favorite color? I think it's blue, but I don't know!
And so on and so forth.
One trivia question was loosely related to fanfiction.
Yes, that's right.
I was a fanfiction writer.
I published a few fanfictions on fanfiction.net. Fanfiction.net is like self-publishing. Anyone can post anything they want there. Viola and I published a joint Harry Potter fanfiction there. I also posted half a Tokka fanfiction there.
The real prestige, though, came from publishing fanfictions on sites like mugglenet. mugglenet.com's fanfiction site is heavily moderated. Nothing gets posted there without the okay of a mugglenet employee. I submitted several fanfictions but only ever published one. I still remember the comments from the moderator who okayed my humor fanfiction. She said that my writing was "bubbly and effervescent" and that my style reminded her of Lemony Snicket.
Please note that at mugglenet, you only had to be 13 to publish a fanfiction. The moderator had no idea how old I was. Nor did she have any clue of my educational background or lack thereof. My work was judged solely on my writing skills. It was a proud day that mugglenet finally published one of the five or six fanfictions I'd submitted to the site. I published seven of eight chapters of the fic on the site. Unfortunately, I got severe writer's block for chapter eight and didn't update the fic for about a year. Right around that time, the site made a rule that unfinished fanfictions that hadn't been updated for over a year would start getting deleted. All seven chapters of my fic, the 300+ reviews, and the many, many views all disappeared in the blink of an eye.
It was a sad day.
I'm not much for fanfiction anymore, although occasionally I will still read a good Harry Potter or Avatar the Last Airbender one. However, I do see a lot of value in fanfiction, especially for amateur writers. It's great to practice your writing skills using previously established worlds and characters.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Friday, April 28, 2017
More Mothering
The manager at Hometown's second-best Chinese restaurant has continued to take a vested interest in my well-being.
There are two dishes I commonly order at this restaurant. The most common dish that I order is the sweet and sour pork. It's delicious and inexpensive. The second most common dish that I order is the walnut shrimp. The walnut shrimp is actually my favorite, but it does cost significantly more than the pork.
A few weeks ago, I got dinner with Pepper. I ordered the walnut shrimp. Presently, the server brought out Pepper's chicken and pot stickers, but my shrimp? Nowhere in sight. It was taking significantly longer than usual.
While I was waiting, the manager brought out a small bowl of sweet and sour pork for me to eat.
I thought this gesture was sweet but also a little hilarious. I don't know why this man is so nice to me, though I am grateful for his kindness!
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
The So What
Did I learn things in college?
Yes.
Are they applicable to real life?
Debatable.
One of the things drilled into my head during my Honors classes was this: "So what?" Every paper has to have a thesis, but it also has to have a So What: Why does your thesis statement matter? Why should anyone care? Why should they waste their time reading your writing?
So Whats are hard to write because, like most writing, they can be pretty subjective. What you care about isn't what everyone else cares about, or, more pointedly, what your professor cares about. In other words, good luck, sucka.
A few nights ago, I had a dream about one of my favorite books, Danny the Champion of the World.
I use the term "dream" loosely, because for the past four months or so I've mostly had waking dreams, aka dreams where my alarm goes off several times. I hit the snooze button, roll over, and go back to sleep to continue dreaming. The dreams then become fragmented, peppered with articulated thoughts from my waking state.
During this particular waking dream, I was composing a thesis statement about how Danny the Champion of the World is vastly different from Roald Dahl's other children's books. The book has no magical candy or marvelous medicine. There are no giants or witches. There no talking giraffes, foxes, or hippopotamuses. The book has a slight feel of magical realism, but it's mostly wacky hijinks. Every event in the book could feasibly happen in real life. It probably wouldn't, but it could.
The problem was that I couldn't figure out my So What. I couldn't figure out why this mattered. So, after hitting the snooze button four or five times, as I laid my head back down on my pillow I realized I needed a different thesis.
This time, I started thinking how, although many of Roald Dahl's books prominently feature female characters and at least two I could think of have female protagonists, Danny the Champion of the World has almost no "onscreen" female characters. I could think of only one woman who was actually involved in a scene.
This seemed like a much more interesting topic. However, what was the So What? Why should people care? Why did it matter?
My alarm blared one last time. This time, I sat up for good. And as I did, it all came rushing to me: It didn't! It didn't matter! Danny's mother died when he was a baby. He's raised entirely by his father on the outskirts of a small village, and he goes to an all-male school with all-male teachers as was common in the book's time period (and which matches Roald Dahl's own educational experience). The doctor, the constable, and the wealthy villain obsessed with hunting are all male, as also was fitting for the time period. None of these characters could have feasibly been female due to the setting and circumstances of the story!
This was the grand epiphany I had as I woke with a start. I was pretty happy with my conclusion. However, the more I think about it, the more I am certain that this particular So What wouldn't have flown with my professors. In fact, although I think Waking Dream Awkward Mormon Girl had a good point, my So What of "It doesn't matter" was probably impressive to only me.
It's probably good that I'm no longer in college.
Yes.
Are they applicable to real life?
Debatable.
One of the things drilled into my head during my Honors classes was this: "So what?" Every paper has to have a thesis, but it also has to have a So What: Why does your thesis statement matter? Why should anyone care? Why should they waste their time reading your writing?
So Whats are hard to write because, like most writing, they can be pretty subjective. What you care about isn't what everyone else cares about, or, more pointedly, what your professor cares about. In other words, good luck, sucka.
A few nights ago, I had a dream about one of my favorite books, Danny the Champion of the World.
I use the term "dream" loosely, because for the past four months or so I've mostly had waking dreams, aka dreams where my alarm goes off several times. I hit the snooze button, roll over, and go back to sleep to continue dreaming. The dreams then become fragmented, peppered with articulated thoughts from my waking state.
During this particular waking dream, I was composing a thesis statement about how Danny the Champion of the World is vastly different from Roald Dahl's other children's books. The book has no magical candy or marvelous medicine. There are no giants or witches. There no talking giraffes, foxes, or hippopotamuses. The book has a slight feel of magical realism, but it's mostly wacky hijinks. Every event in the book could feasibly happen in real life. It probably wouldn't, but it could.
The problem was that I couldn't figure out my So What. I couldn't figure out why this mattered. So, after hitting the snooze button four or five times, as I laid my head back down on my pillow I realized I needed a different thesis.
This time, I started thinking how, although many of Roald Dahl's books prominently feature female characters and at least two I could think of have female protagonists, Danny the Champion of the World has almost no "onscreen" female characters. I could think of only one woman who was actually involved in a scene.
This seemed like a much more interesting topic. However, what was the So What? Why should people care? Why did it matter?
My alarm blared one last time. This time, I sat up for good. And as I did, it all came rushing to me: It didn't! It didn't matter! Danny's mother died when he was a baby. He's raised entirely by his father on the outskirts of a small village, and he goes to an all-male school with all-male teachers as was common in the book's time period (and which matches Roald Dahl's own educational experience). The doctor, the constable, and the wealthy villain obsessed with hunting are all male, as also was fitting for the time period. None of these characters could have feasibly been female due to the setting and circumstances of the story!
This was the grand epiphany I had as I woke with a start. I was pretty happy with my conclusion. However, the more I think about it, the more I am certain that this particular So What wouldn't have flown with my professors. In fact, although I think Waking Dream Awkward Mormon Girl had a good point, my So What of "It doesn't matter" was probably impressive to only me.
It's probably good that I'm no longer in college.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Teenagers Are Better Than Writers Think
My dad sent me photos of Little Brother all dressed up for prom.
News flash: Maybe I just have an exceptionally handsome brother, or maybe it's that I've known him since he was a chubby-cheeked baby and therefore still see him as such, but I think Little Brother looked cuter than any boy I've ever seen at any prom ever.
Not long before Dad sent the photos, I was struggling through a young adult novel about a girl the same age as Little Brother.
Now, it's my opinion that most of the best literature in the world is aimed at children or young adults. A very small percentage of the novels I read are from the adult section of the library. Why? Well, my experience is that most novels aimed at adults are actually poorly written. They hook people by being full of foul language, gratuitous violence, and smutty sex. The actual intelligence or originality of content is pretty low.
Unfortunately, the quality of young adult novels seems to be deteriorating now too. I mean, sure, there have always been some poorly written young adult novels, but usually the content is pretty PG-13. It's just the last couple of years that I've come across more and more young adult novels that should probably be in the adult section.
This novel was one of those. The character's point of view was pretty original and described skillfully. But the language got increasingly worse and worse, and the events got more and more degrading. I eventually quit reading and flipped to the back just to see how it ended. Guess what? Everything tied up with a murder-suicide.
While all that was hardly uplifting, there was something that bothered me even more. It's bothered me for a while, actually, because even young adult books that are pretty clean tend to feature this one thing. And that is this: unsupervised teenagers drink, do drugs, and have sex. That's just what they do. It's what they want to do, and they spend a lot of time working out ways to do this so that their parents don't find out.
I realize that I grew up in a fairly straight-laced, conservative community, and it's also true that I held myself to specific standards of my religion, but I'm skeptical that teen drugs, drinking, and sex actually happen anywhere near as much as YA writers portray, even in other communities or with teens who don't have as rigorous of standards. Because YA writers, even good ones, usually don't portray reality super well. For instance, it's my experience that teenagers have a hard time being honest with each other. Heck, not-teens have a hard time being honest with each other. It seems a large proportion of people who are mutually interested in each other never actually end up dating because they never get to the point where they feel comfortable talking about it. Sad? Yes. But true. And, even when they do talk about it, they're nowhere near as eloquent as portrayed in literature. Yet so many high school kids in novels are in relationships. Or for another example—physical bullying. A lot of teen novels include characters who will physically bully other students in their school. I had a conversation at ward book club about this. The conclusion was that maybe this happened a lot when our parents were kids, but it hardly ever happens now. Yet it's still portrayed a ton in teen novels.
In other words, a lot of things are portrayed in young adult fiction that don't seem to jive with reality. And while I'm sure there are some high school kids who experiment with drugs, drinking, and sex (I knew some), it seems to me that a lot of kids actually don't do those things in high school.
I can only support this hypothesis with my own experience, so don't expect me to present a lot of peer-reviewed studies. But here are a couple of truths from when I was a teenager.
Truth #1: Drinking, drugs, and sex never occurred to me. Guess what? I had no curfew in high school. Nada. None. I was allowed to stay out until two in the morning if I wanted (although I had to have a ride home because there's no way my parents were going to come get me). The conditions upon which the no-curfew law was predicated were 1) I'd better tell my parents where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and when I anticipated being home and 2) if I ever gave them a reason not to trust me, I would get a curfew so fast I wouldn't even know what was happening.
Basically, though, I really could have done what I wanted and my parents wouldn't have known. Yet in spite of that, I didn't do anything inappropriate. It wasn't that I was afraid my parents would find out. It wasn't even necessarily that I was all, "Oh, I'm LDS, so I shouldn't do those things." I just didn't even think about it.
Truth #2: My friends and I could be kind of stupid, but we were also kind of shortsighted. I have often said that teenagers don't handle relationships well (I even implied it a few paragraphs ago). This is true. It's also true that most teenagers don't handle most things well because they lack adult-level skills like foresight. Even though I didn't do anything bad as a teenager, I can't say I always made the wisest decisions when I was with my friends. Red lights were run. Graveyards were possibly trespassed (the rules were a little unclear). One of my friends tried to chase a herd of deer up the side of a mountain. One time, Dostoevsky was mad that his more-popular sister was throwing a party, so he threw all of her friends' shoes outside (and we helped). However, none of these things was premeditated. They just kind of happened. Doing something like obtaining drugs or alcohol or getting alone with a person with whom you could have a sexual encounter would require the kind of premeditation that a lot of teenagers just don't seem to have. At least, they would require premeditation if their parents aren't okay with their kids having those kind of mature experiences. And it seems like most parents, even if they're not against drugs or alcohol or premarital sex per se, don't necessarily want their kids engaging in those things as teenagers. Most parents have rules about those things for their teens, and purposely breaking those rules often requires a beyond-teen-level foresight.
In spite of those truths, I can't tell you how many young adult books I've read where the protagonists have or attend an illicit house party while parents are away, and everyone at said party is drinking, doing illicit substances, and having sexual encounters. Does this happen in real life? Probably. But I doubt it happens anywhere near as much as young adult novels portray.
I think that teen novels should stop portraying these wild parties and start portraying more realistic teen things. Like trying to navigate situations where you like someone and they like you and you know you're experiencing a mutual attraction and everyone considers you a thing but you're not actually dating. Or trying to handle a situation where you and another girl like the same guy but she's a really great girl and you're trying not to dislike her just because she has a better chance with the guy than you do. Or not even anything about boys at all but just trying to get along in class when all your friends go to a different high school than you do and you feel like you don't belong at your school. Something. Anything. Teenagehood is interesting and complex and full of so much potential, so why do people keep writing about teenage drugs, drinking, and sex, especially when it seems to be the exception and not the rule?
News flash: Maybe I just have an exceptionally handsome brother, or maybe it's that I've known him since he was a chubby-cheeked baby and therefore still see him as such, but I think Little Brother looked cuter than any boy I've ever seen at any prom ever.
Not long before Dad sent the photos, I was struggling through a young adult novel about a girl the same age as Little Brother.
Now, it's my opinion that most of the best literature in the world is aimed at children or young adults. A very small percentage of the novels I read are from the adult section of the library. Why? Well, my experience is that most novels aimed at adults are actually poorly written. They hook people by being full of foul language, gratuitous violence, and smutty sex. The actual intelligence or originality of content is pretty low.
Unfortunately, the quality of young adult novels seems to be deteriorating now too. I mean, sure, there have always been some poorly written young adult novels, but usually the content is pretty PG-13. It's just the last couple of years that I've come across more and more young adult novels that should probably be in the adult section.
This novel was one of those. The character's point of view was pretty original and described skillfully. But the language got increasingly worse and worse, and the events got more and more degrading. I eventually quit reading and flipped to the back just to see how it ended. Guess what? Everything tied up with a murder-suicide.
While all that was hardly uplifting, there was something that bothered me even more. It's bothered me for a while, actually, because even young adult books that are pretty clean tend to feature this one thing. And that is this: unsupervised teenagers drink, do drugs, and have sex. That's just what they do. It's what they want to do, and they spend a lot of time working out ways to do this so that their parents don't find out.
I realize that I grew up in a fairly straight-laced, conservative community, and it's also true that I held myself to specific standards of my religion, but I'm skeptical that teen drugs, drinking, and sex actually happen anywhere near as much as YA writers portray, even in other communities or with teens who don't have as rigorous of standards. Because YA writers, even good ones, usually don't portray reality super well. For instance, it's my experience that teenagers have a hard time being honest with each other. Heck, not-teens have a hard time being honest with each other. It seems a large proportion of people who are mutually interested in each other never actually end up dating because they never get to the point where they feel comfortable talking about it. Sad? Yes. But true. And, even when they do talk about it, they're nowhere near as eloquent as portrayed in literature. Yet so many high school kids in novels are in relationships. Or for another example—physical bullying. A lot of teen novels include characters who will physically bully other students in their school. I had a conversation at ward book club about this. The conclusion was that maybe this happened a lot when our parents were kids, but it hardly ever happens now. Yet it's still portrayed a ton in teen novels.
In other words, a lot of things are portrayed in young adult fiction that don't seem to jive with reality. And while I'm sure there are some high school kids who experiment with drugs, drinking, and sex (I knew some), it seems to me that a lot of kids actually don't do those things in high school.
I can only support this hypothesis with my own experience, so don't expect me to present a lot of peer-reviewed studies. But here are a couple of truths from when I was a teenager.
Truth #1: Drinking, drugs, and sex never occurred to me. Guess what? I had no curfew in high school. Nada. None. I was allowed to stay out until two in the morning if I wanted (although I had to have a ride home because there's no way my parents were going to come get me). The conditions upon which the no-curfew law was predicated were 1) I'd better tell my parents where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, and when I anticipated being home and 2) if I ever gave them a reason not to trust me, I would get a curfew so fast I wouldn't even know what was happening.
Basically, though, I really could have done what I wanted and my parents wouldn't have known. Yet in spite of that, I didn't do anything inappropriate. It wasn't that I was afraid my parents would find out. It wasn't even necessarily that I was all, "Oh, I'm LDS, so I shouldn't do those things." I just didn't even think about it.
Truth #2: My friends and I could be kind of stupid, but we were also kind of shortsighted. I have often said that teenagers don't handle relationships well (I even implied it a few paragraphs ago). This is true. It's also true that most teenagers don't handle most things well because they lack adult-level skills like foresight. Even though I didn't do anything bad as a teenager, I can't say I always made the wisest decisions when I was with my friends. Red lights were run. Graveyards were possibly trespassed (the rules were a little unclear). One of my friends tried to chase a herd of deer up the side of a mountain. One time, Dostoevsky was mad that his more-popular sister was throwing a party, so he threw all of her friends' shoes outside (and we helped). However, none of these things was premeditated. They just kind of happened. Doing something like obtaining drugs or alcohol or getting alone with a person with whom you could have a sexual encounter would require the kind of premeditation that a lot of teenagers just don't seem to have. At least, they would require premeditation if their parents aren't okay with their kids having those kind of mature experiences. And it seems like most parents, even if they're not against drugs or alcohol or premarital sex per se, don't necessarily want their kids engaging in those things as teenagers. Most parents have rules about those things for their teens, and purposely breaking those rules often requires a beyond-teen-level foresight.
In spite of those truths, I can't tell you how many young adult books I've read where the protagonists have or attend an illicit house party while parents are away, and everyone at said party is drinking, doing illicit substances, and having sexual encounters. Does this happen in real life? Probably. But I doubt it happens anywhere near as much as young adult novels portray.
I think that teen novels should stop portraying these wild parties and start portraying more realistic teen things. Like trying to navigate situations where you like someone and they like you and you know you're experiencing a mutual attraction and everyone considers you a thing but you're not actually dating. Or trying to handle a situation where you and another girl like the same guy but she's a really great girl and you're trying not to dislike her just because she has a better chance with the guy than you do. Or not even anything about boys at all but just trying to get along in class when all your friends go to a different high school than you do and you feel like you don't belong at your school. Something. Anything. Teenagehood is interesting and complex and full of so much potential, so why do people keep writing about teenage drugs, drinking, and sex, especially when it seems to be the exception and not the rule?
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Naomi
My mom gave me another pansy plant to kill nurture.
I've named her Naomi, because everybody knows pansy plants want good, strong Hebrew names.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Old Facebook Conversations with Little Sister
Just in case you were wondering, everything is happening right now. I have some major deadlines at work, my little sisters have finals coming up, Easter is this weekend, five members of my family have birthdays over the next six weeks, and Little Sister's wedding is fast approaching.
In other words, everyone is very stressed.
I did want to share these Facebook messages that Little Sister and I sent each other over the years. In case you can't tell, up until a few years ago a large percentage of my relationship with Little Sister was her harassing me with weird messages until I replied.
In other words, everyone is very stressed.
I did want to share these Facebook messages that Little Sister and I sent each other over the years. In case you can't tell, up until a few years ago a large percentage of my relationship with Little Sister was her harassing me with weird messages until I replied.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Who's Alex?
A few months ago, I was writing business articles for my workplace. This involves reading lots of other people's business articles.
During this process, I read this article about storytelling.
Towards the beginning of the article, this sentiment was shared:
...Alex?
Alex?
ALEX?
WHO'S ALEX?
I AM SO CONFUSED.
Because look, first of all, this isn't just any old movie. This is Back to the Future. It's written into the DNA of our culture. Not as much as, say, Harry Potter, but still quite a bit.
Say that the person who wrote this article (it looks like that person was named Paul White) had never seen Back to the Future. That photo of Paul in the article looks kind of old, so it's plausible. Maybe he likes the Lone Ranger and the Hardy Boys and never cared about 1980s time-travel movies. Okay. Whatever. In any case, he obviously knew enough about it to reference the movie specifically. If you've heard of Back to the Future enough to make that specific of a reference, you must know the main character's name is Marty McFly, right? Marty McFly is a fairly iconic character from American cinematic history. But if Paul didn't know that, or if he just forgot, couldn't he have looked it up online? Since Paul apparently submitted an article to this website, he must know how the Internet works.
But if somehow all of that escaped Paul and he still called Michael J. Fox's character "Alex," what about the copy editor? Someone must have proofread this article! Why didn't that person catch it? HOW DID THIS GLARING MISTAKE MAKE IT INTO PRINT? AND WHY HASN'T IT BEEN CORRECTED IN THE ENSUING YEAR AND FIVE MONTHS? Because there are people on the Internet telling everyone else how to live literally every aspect of their lives and correcting their grammar and obscure Harry Potter trivia, so how did this particular error escape notice?!
Someone please explain. K thnx bye.
During this process, I read this article about storytelling.
Towards the beginning of the article, this sentiment was shared:
Alex?
ALEX?
WHO'S ALEX?
I AM SO CONFUSED.
Because look, first of all, this isn't just any old movie. This is Back to the Future. It's written into the DNA of our culture. Not as much as, say, Harry Potter, but still quite a bit.
Say that the person who wrote this article (it looks like that person was named Paul White) had never seen Back to the Future. That photo of Paul in the article looks kind of old, so it's plausible. Maybe he likes the Lone Ranger and the Hardy Boys and never cared about 1980s time-travel movies. Okay. Whatever. In any case, he obviously knew enough about it to reference the movie specifically. If you've heard of Back to the Future enough to make that specific of a reference, you must know the main character's name is Marty McFly, right? Marty McFly is a fairly iconic character from American cinematic history. But if Paul didn't know that, or if he just forgot, couldn't he have looked it up online? Since Paul apparently submitted an article to this website, he must know how the Internet works.
But if somehow all of that escaped Paul and he still called Michael J. Fox's character "Alex," what about the copy editor? Someone must have proofread this article! Why didn't that person catch it? HOW DID THIS GLARING MISTAKE MAKE IT INTO PRINT? AND WHY HASN'T IT BEEN CORRECTED IN THE ENSUING YEAR AND FIVE MONTHS? Because there are people on the Internet telling everyone else how to live literally every aspect of their lives and correcting their grammar and obscure Harry Potter trivia, so how did this particular error escape notice?!
Someone please explain. K thnx bye.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Tell All
Yesterday, as I was perusing my Facebook, I noticed something interesting. A fellow who went to college with me got married a few weeks ago in Taiwan. He was married to his wife in a temple after the normal LDS fashion, but it looked like there was also a huge celebration before or after the temple ceremony...or both.
Immediately, I started composing in my head exactly what I would say to Viola when I told her about it.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Viola, remember so-and-so from Nameless Utah College? The one from Virginia I would have gone out with if he'd asked me? Well, he just got married in Taiwan because apparently his wife is Taiwanese. It looked like they had what I assume was a bunch of traditional Taiwanese wedding traditions. From the pictures it looks like the bride had at least four different special wedding outfits. And it looked like one of the traditions involved so-and-so dressing up as a squid before the wedding. I kid you not, he was wearing a squid headpiece. Now I'm really curious about Taiwanese weddings. I actually read an article a few days ago about how in certain parts of Indonesia, funerals are more expensive, festive, and important than weddings. Isn't the world interesting?
And so on and so forth. It's funny how when we develop a bond with someone, we want to share everything with them. All week, I've been storing up words in my head: descriptions of the cupcakes my mom brought me at work on Wednesday and of my Thursday doctor's appointment. Quick, pointless anecdotes about the four hours I spent today with Little Sister, Mr. Little Sister, and Baby Sister in our grandmother's basement, painting the shelves in the basement so that they're ready when Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister move in after their wedding. A meandering explanation of my psychological reaction to having to plan a party. I store them all up in readiness to give away to the right person. The right person will think they're valuable. The right person will look at me and think how great it is that I want to share with them, even though what I'm saying isn't interesting in the least. If you've ever talked at length to a small child, you might understand what I mean. Small children tend to go on and on, but we find them fascinating and count ourselves lucky that they would trust us enough to share their words.
Immediately, I started composing in my head exactly what I would say to Viola when I told her about it.
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Viola, remember so-and-so from Nameless Utah College? The one from Virginia I would have gone out with if he'd asked me? Well, he just got married in Taiwan because apparently his wife is Taiwanese. It looked like they had what I assume was a bunch of traditional Taiwanese wedding traditions. From the pictures it looks like the bride had at least four different special wedding outfits. And it looked like one of the traditions involved so-and-so dressing up as a squid before the wedding. I kid you not, he was wearing a squid headpiece. Now I'm really curious about Taiwanese weddings. I actually read an article a few days ago about how in certain parts of Indonesia, funerals are more expensive, festive, and important than weddings. Isn't the world interesting?
And so on and so forth. It's funny how when we develop a bond with someone, we want to share everything with them. All week, I've been storing up words in my head: descriptions of the cupcakes my mom brought me at work on Wednesday and of my Thursday doctor's appointment. Quick, pointless anecdotes about the four hours I spent today with Little Sister, Mr. Little Sister, and Baby Sister in our grandmother's basement, painting the shelves in the basement so that they're ready when Little Sister and Mr. Little Sister move in after their wedding. A meandering explanation of my psychological reaction to having to plan a party. I store them all up in readiness to give away to the right person. The right person will think they're valuable. The right person will look at me and think how great it is that I want to share with them, even though what I'm saying isn't interesting in the least. If you've ever talked at length to a small child, you might understand what I mean. Small children tend to go on and on, but we find them fascinating and count ourselves lucky that they would trust us enough to share their words.