My First Kiss Didn't Go Like This

I waited a really long time to tell this story.

It's a story of teenage mishap featuring the Chess Master. It involves dating, which I try not to talk about much on this blog. It just doesn't seem very nice to do so. However—this story is now over ten years old, plus the Chess Master is married with a kid, so it no longer seems mean-spirited to share it.

After a lot of fumbling through email, the Chess Master asked me to go with him to prom. It was the first date for both of us, so neither of knew at all what we were doing. Through more email fumbling, plans were made, plans which involved dinner and dance tickets and a fuchsia dress.

Neither of us had a driver's license. No matter. His parents would drive us.

The Chess Master was the son of one of my former teachers. She was a nice lady, but she was intense. The Chess Master was the youngest in the family, so she and her husband especially doted on him. They were very involved parents, in both good ways and bad.

I didn't mind that the Chess Master's parents drove us, but I didn't know what to say around them. Truthfully, I didn't know what to say around the Chess Master, either. We were friends but not really. Any chances we had to truly get to know each other were thwarted by the fact that we'd decided early on we liked each other. At least, I think that's what happened. I never received any true confirmation that he ever had a crush on me. I just know that I had a crush on him.

Anyway. We didn't know each other. I had not yet learned to talk to people I didn't know or any people, really. We spent a lot of time in silence during dinner...on the drive to the dance...during the dance...and on the drive home.

Oh, the drive home. During said drive, the Chess Master's mother started talking about kissing. I couldn't tell you quite how. I was staring out the window, looking at billboards in the dark, while the Chess Master chatted aimlessly with his mom. He must have said something quite correct to her, for she said something like, "Good job, Chess Master. You win a prize, and that prize is a kiss."

I kept my eyes on the billboard. Just that morning, the fact that I didn't know the Chess Master very well had hit home hard, and I was questioning all of my feelings for him. Even if I hadn't been, I was not interested in being kissed on the first date much less my first date ever. I was too young for that!

The Chess Master's mom backtracked. "A kiss from me! And your dad. And your sister. And the dog."

Yeah, whatever, lady. I said nothing. It didn't even occur to me that I should say something. (I have only just recently realized how socially inept I was as a teenager. I'm mostly better now. Though in some ways, I really haven't improved.)

Eventually, the super chatty parents dropped us off and told us they'd circle around the block. Um...okay.

The Chess Master walked me to the door. Except...my memory is a bit hazy here, but I'm pretty sure he didn't even make it up on the porch. I think he stayed on the lawn. Perhaps he'd realized how much I didn't want to be kissed. Which is commendable, but it didn't require him to stay ten feet away from me.

We awkwardly said goodnight, and I went inside and shut the door behind me. My mom inquired after the dance, and I explained that the Chess Master was waiting outside for his parents to pick him up.

"Well, you should ask him to come in!"

I cracked open the door. "Chess Master, did you want to come in while you wait?"

He said no, no, and then his parents showed up, and so the night ended with me dodging my first kiss.

Super Popular Baby Names that Everyone Is Giving to their Kids

Do you have a baby? Are you going to have a baby? Are you coming up with names for that baby? Well, I’m here to inform you that I know lots of people who have babies, and over the past five or so years I’ve noticed some names which are really popular. Like, I know of at least three people with different backgrounds, beliefs, or even just aesthetics who gave or are planning to give the same name to their babies. Case in point: the Chess Master, a middle-aged relative of a more liberal friend, a sweet childhood friend who was considered unpopular/unfashionable by some, and a super popular girl I went to school with all gave their sons the exact same name.

I’m not trying to knock these names by including them on this list. I actually think most of them are super cute (and I’m jealous that I didn’t have kids before some of them became overused)! I just thought it might be a good service to list some of these names for those of you who don’t want to do the same thing as everyone else.

These super popular names are, in no particular order:
Girls: Sadie, Olivia, Nora, Ruby, Millie, Alice, Lucy, Lydia, Zoe, and Grace (or some variation thereof)
Boys: William, Liam, Henry, Christian, Oliver, James, Samuel

How many of you know 3+ small children with one of these names? Did I miss any other obvious ones?

My Exciting Thoughts about Marvel Movies

If Marvel and I were in a relationship, and if that relationship were on Facebook, then our Facebook relationship status would be "It's Complicated."

I first heard about Marvel movies when I was in high school. In the midst of our strange and unproductive flirtationship, the Chess Master went to see the first Iron Man movie. He emailed me to tell me that it was (and I quote) "recommended by me and one of my friends who went with me."

Not that I didn't trust the Chess Master's opinion of movies...no, actually, I didn't trust his opinion of movies. I wasn't intrigued. I was all, "Iron Man? What's that about? Sounds dumb."

When I later learned that it was a superhero movie, I remained unimpressed. I've never been much for superheroes. I saw all of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies in theatres, of course, because they were good movies. But they weren't very uplifting. I didn't think much of Batman's so-called "morals."

A while later, when I heard that Disney had purchased Iron Man and associated properties (that was the first time I heard them referred to as "Marvel"), I reconsidered. If Disney was interested, then maybe I was wrong. But it was a few more years before I went to see a Marvel movie. I saw The Avengers with my cousin, and I liked it. It wasn't a movie about superheroes; it was a movie about interesting people who just happened to be superheroes.

Also, I finally found me a superhero whom I could actually wholeheartedly support. Captain America actually had values! Which maybe it says something about me that I have the same values as a guy from the 1940s. But anyways, I spent the whole movie being all, "Oh, I like this guy!" And then I told myself that I would probably watch the Captain America movies.

Except I didn't. And didn't. I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Ant-Man, but I didn't catch up with any of the individual Avengers. Until this past weekend, when I finally grabbed Little Brother and forced him to watch Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: Winter Soldier with me.

So what did I think? The verdicts are as follows:

Captain America: The First Avenger was a good movie. Good characters; fun times. The biggest complaint that I had was that, having seen The Avengers, I felt like the entire first Captain America movie was putting all the energy towards setting up for the first Avengers movie. I mean, The Avengers movie pretty much picks up where Captain America: The First Avenger leaves off, right down to a significant portion of the beginning taking place in Germany and old guys talking about how they bowed before Hitler so they won't bow down before Loki, la da da de da. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just that Captain America: The First Avenger didn't really feel like a full movie to me. It felt like the appetizer before the Avengers meal.

Nevertheless, having seen my first movie solely about Captain America, I was super excited to see Winter Soldier.

After watching Winter Soldier, my verdict is eloquently expressed by these two statements of Little Brother: "The first ten minutes of the second Captain America movie are more violent than the entire first movie," and, "The second movie is a very different sort of movie than the first movie."

I didn't think Winter Soldier was a bad movie, but I definitely did not like it as much I liked the first one. I mentioned once on this blog that it doesn't really matter what happens during a story as long as the audience likes the characters. People will stay invested in a story about buying a ham sandwich if the characters are interesting enough. In most Marvel movies, they play to that principle, but in this one, they don't. It's like instead of sitting down and saying to themselves, "Now how would these characters react to these situations?" and letting that drive the story, the writers sat down and said to themselves, "Now how many cool fight scenes can we put in this movie?" and let that drive the story. And thus, in my opinion, the emotional base of the movie really suffers. (The same thing, in my additional opinion, also happened in Age of Ultron.)

I was surprised to learn that the same team who wrote the first Captain America movie also wrote the second movie. Since there are so many Marvel movies coming out and so many writers involved, and since the tone of the second movie was so different, I assumed that the writing team for Winter Soldier was not the same team from The First Avenger. Of course, to my understanding, writers only play a small part of the tone of movies. The producers, special effects people, composers, and editors also play a hand in that. So, naturally, does the director. A lot, I should think, from my movie-going experience. It seems like the director affects the tone of the movie more than almost anything else. That may be why the tone of the Harry Potter movies fluctuates so much. Even though the same writer wrote seven out of eight of the movies, they switched directors what, three times? The difference between the tone of the first two movies and the third movie is especially notable. As a child, I was really confused by the third movie. Actually, I still am somewhat. It just seems a strange follow-up to the way Chris Columbus directed the first two movies.

Someone once told me that Alfonso Cuarón, the director for the third movie, was actually considered more of a romance movie director. So for years, I imagined him meeting with the writer and having this conversation:

CUARÓN: So who's in love?

WRITER: Huh?

CUARÓN: In this movie. Who's in love?

WRITER: No one?

CUARÓN: No one?

WRITER: No. This is Harry Potter. So, it's, you know, friendship and magic and stuff.

CUARÓN: Love is the only magic I know.

WRITER: Okay. Then I'll see if I can work in a few awkward hand-holding, side-hugging scenes.

That seemed the most reasonable way to explain how certain parts of the movie turned out. But then I found out that Cuarón isn't actually necessarily considered a romance movie director, so now I'm at a loss for an explanation. Regardless, I'm pretty sure that this conversation must have taken place:

CREW: Any requests?

CUARÓN: I would like for Hermione to become sexy, because ordinary girls are overrated. I also want her to be the only person in this movie who does anything remotely competent. I want the saturation of the film to be such that everyone looks deathly pale. And I think the best way to end the movie would be a blurred close-up of Harry's jubilant, screaming face.

CREW: You got it.

CUARÓN: Also, shrunken heads. With Jamaican accents.

CREW: ...?

CUARÓN: Best idea ever.

Anyways. Despite my disappointments in the first two Captain America movies, I'm still very excited for Civil War tomorrow. The ensemble of characters is so great, I would gladly watch a few hours of them doing nothing but purchasing ham sandwiches. I mean, fighting would be cool, too, especially since the movie is called Civil War and all. But I'd accept the ham sandwich thing, 100%.

Also, in case you were wondering...

Team Cap all the way!

Teenagers Are the Worst

Writing this post about surprise birthday parties reminded me of a few things about being a teenager/almost-teenager.

At that age, I suffered from--well, a lot of things, but three particular delusions come to mind.

1. Life was controlled.
I didn't understand just how much of success was out of my hands, how much of the stuff that happens to people just, well, happens. Boys liking you just happens. Surprise birthday parties just happen. And so do negative things, like death and disease and accidents.

2. The things that I could control should not be controlled.
I can't even begin to tell you how many times I thought things like, "I want to talk to that person but they're not coming over to talk to me, so I can't."

Why didn't I just go talk to them myself? Because if teenagers talk to people they want to talk to, they die.

3. I couldn't be honest.
If teenagers are honest, they also die.

Basically, teenagerhood is one big giant death trap.

Really, though. Teenagers are masters of double-talk, of saying one thing but meaning another and of "hinting" instead of frankly speaking their minds.

Case in point:

When we were in high school, the Chess Master and I would email fairly frequently as we went to different schools and saw each other but rarely. One fine February day, the Chess Master began an utterly bewildering email conversation that lasted the better part of a month. Here is the gist of what was said.

THE CHESS MASTER: I was just at a military ball. Military balls are fun. Maybe I will take you to one sometime.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Okay!

THE CHESS MASTER: I want to go to my school's prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Okay...

THE CHESS MASTER: You're a girl.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: That's a clever thing for you to say.

THE CHESS MASTER: You know what girls like. Help me ask a girl to my prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I don't know how to do that.

THE CHESS MASTER: The girls I might take are named Madison or Kristina. If you help me ask one of them, I will help you get a guy to ask you to your prom.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I'm so confused and annoyed.

THE CHESS MASTER: Why are you annoyed? My sister will send you an email telling you some things about prom now.

THE CHESS MASTER'S SISTER: Let me tell you some things about prom now.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Why is this happening.

THE CHESS MASTER: Tell me about some guy you want to ask you to prom. I will tell you how to get him to ask you.

In a moment of unteenagerish honesty, I replied to the Chess Master and said that I had no interest in coercing some poor boy into taking me to prom thank you very much.

The Chess Master responded by saying, "I wish more girls were more like you."

Then he asked me if I wanted to go to prom with him.

I stared at the email, feeling emotionally exhausted and drained. I wondered if this is what he had in mind the whole time and if so, why he hadn't just said so in the first place.

Then I quickly banished the thought. I knew at some instinctual level that if I thought that way, I would not survive being a teenager.

Surprise! Or Not.

I decided that for my thirteenth birthday, I would like to have a surprise party.

I like surprises, but the problem with them is that you can't give yourself surprises. They depend solely on other people.

Well, theoretically, anyway.

In the months leading up to my birthday, I would occasionally comment on how much I liked surprise parties and, gee, wouldn't it be great to have one? I thought I was being fairly transparent about this, but I guess my mom was only catching on in some ways. Little Sister told me she and Mom had this conversation:

LITTLE SISTER: You do know Awkward Mormon Girl knows about the surprise party, right?

MOM: No, she doesn't.

LITTLE SISTER: There's a note on her rehearsal calendar from her friend Viola, asking if she can hang out on Saturday. Awkward Mormon Girl literally wrote, I can't. My parents are throwing me a surprise party in response.

MOM: If you say so, Little Sister.

LITTLE SISTER: The calendar is hanging on the kitchen bulletin board if you want to see for yourself.

MOM: I can't. I'm too busy planning this surprise party for your sister.

When my sixteenth birthday approached, I dropped hints to Viola and Little Sister that, hey, sixteen is pretty special, and wouldn't it be nice to have a surprise party to commemorate the occasion?

There was many a discussion after this manner:

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, what would you want to eat?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Pizza is cheap and easy.

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, would you want people to be invited by phone or through invitations in the mail?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Invitations, of course. The phone is the devil's way.

VIOLA: If you had a surprise party, who would you want to come?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: You, Little Sister, Baby Sister, the Chess Master, the Fearless One, Etch-a-Sketch, Shutterbug, Best Friend Boy, and, let's see...Porch.

Porch and I had known each other for years, but he is an elusive sort of human, and he didn't spend much time with anyone, myself included. Still, if I was going to have a surprise party, I wanted him there.

I decided that the most anxious-making thing about birthday parties is not knowing what sort of present to get the birthday person. It seemed that if Porch knew exactly what to get me for my birthday, the likelihood of him coming to the party would be increased. So, during our World Civ class, I laid the foundation of an ingenious plan.

A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THE PARTY
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Wow, Porch, is that pencil you're using to do your schoolwork sparkly? That's pretty cool.

A WEEK OR SO LATER
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: I wish I had a sparkly pencil like yours.

THE WEEK I ESTIMATED THE INVITATIONS WENT OUT
AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: For my birthday, I'm going to ask for sparkly pencils of my very own.

Finally, the long-awaited party arrived. I went to Viola's on some fool's errand, and when I arrived...

"SURPRISE!!!" Everyone jumped out from hiding places.

Viola, Little Sister, Baby Sister, the Chess Master, the Fearless One, Etch-a-Sketch, Shutterbug, Best Friend Boy, Porch, and a quantity of pizza were all there!

Oh good I thought. This all went exactly as planned.

PORCH: Surprise! I got you these sparkly pencils for your birthday.

February 3rd

Guess freaking what??? It's February 3rd, that's what. And February 3rd is the day that dreams come true!

For several years in a row, something extremely exciting and often life-changing happened to me on February 3rd.

The first Anne of Green Gables practice aka the time I officially my BFF Viola was February 3rd. The day I took second place in the district Science Olympiad competition was February 3rd.

The day the Chess Master really looked at me for the first time was on February 3rd. And when I say he really looked at me, I'm not being adorably cliche. We'd sat next to each other in eighth-grade science for weeks and had hardly spoken. But on February 3rd, our teacher handed out nails, rocks, and hammers, and invited us to break apart the rocks with the hammers. (He also passed out safety goggles.) I was frustrated for one reason or another, so I, who never said a word in class, grabbed that hammer and broke apart a rock dangerously close to the Chess Master's face. I don't see how he could help but reexamine me after that.

February 3rd, people. It's a thing.

After those first several years of much excitingness on February 3rd, I began to expect the same on every February 3rd.

Then one year, the only unusual thing that happened on February 3rd was that my previously infertile cousin and his wife had a baby.

"Well," I said, "that is exciting. Just not what I was expecting."

Another February 3rd, I learned that Best Friend Boy's first niece was born. He had been very excited about her impending existence. I was pleased for him, but let down for myself.

Similar things happened on February 3rd after February 3rd. If something magical and exciting happened, it happened to someone else and not me. So it has been every year. Yet each year on this day, I can't help hoping... dreaming... and perhaps justifying.

Today, for example:

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (heads to work) It's raining, which means I don't have to scrape my car. That is so February 3rd.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (at work) I almost fell asleep reviewing this content. But I didn't. February 3rd, amirite?

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (holding box of cherry cordial bark she bought at the store) Thanks, February 3rd, for providing this delicious candy for my enjoyment!

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: (tries a piece)

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Hmm.Tastes remarkably like cough medicine.

Road Trippin'

A Shakespeare play is considered either a tragedy or a comedy based on the ending. It's a comedy if it ends with a marriage and a tragedy if it ends with death.

Going by that classification, road trips are tragedies, for they almost never end in marriage and almost always involve the participants being bored to death (if not killed by their traveling companions and stuffed in a trunk).

For serious, though. Road trip = 10% adventure and 90% brain-melting, body-numbing boredom. I should know--I just came home from one.

My family set off on the trip lively humans capable of intelligent conversation and returned weakened and stupid by the many, many hours in the Mormon Assault Vehicle. For it took many, many hours to get where we were going. For we were going to Nauvoo, Illinois, not-so-recently the home of Mormon pioneer ancestors on my mom's side.

A brief commentary on each of the states we passed through:

Utah. People working together. What a great place to be. Blessed from heaven above, it's the land that we love. This is the place.

Wyoming. Characterized by semi-interesting rock formations and cheaper gas.

Nebraska. Flatter than a pizza, a sheet of rice paper, or Flat Stanley. There were no mountains, which was horrifying. From Nebraska on, I had no sense of direction.

Also, I got the feeling that nothing exciting ever happens in Nebraska. Please feel free to provide evidence to the contrary.

Iowa. You really ought to give it a try.

We saw a million Iowan businesses with 'River City' on them. It made me like The Music Man that much more.

Illinois. About two years ago, Little Sister did not know that the 's' in 'Illinois' is silent. This brought great joy into my life.

Missouri. I spent the entirety of my time in Missouri calling it 'Missoura,' as I have been led to believe that is the proper pronunciation. No one corrected me, so either I'm right or I was bringing great joy into their lives (see above commentary on Illinois).

Kansas. When we stopped for gas in Kansas, Little Sister suddenly said, "I want there to be tornado while we're here. Not a big one. Just a small one that will follow alongside our van but not destroy anything in its path."

Colorado. It was windy whilst we were in Colorado. I had a sudden desire to spit on the concrete of a parking lot during one of our stops.

Now, I don't randomly spit in public. Excepting those times when the Chess Master would spit in the grass after track. And I would too because he did. We'd spit, and then we'd jaywalk.

I'm not proud of it, okay?

Anyways, I had that sudden desire to spit, but I had a just as sudden image of the spit being caught by the wind and striking the face of the guy gassing up his car a few feet away.

Other than that, I slept through most of Colorado. Also, listened to my mother traumatize my brothers by telling stories of giving birth.

I was a little traumatized, as well.

So yeah. That's an overview of the wheres and wherewithal of the trip.

I was only going to write one or two blog posts about this trip. But it ended up being so interesting, Imma write 3-plus instead.

Road trippin' posts, ho!

I Could Care Less

I gave the Chess Master his epithet because he liked to play games.

Some days he would say hi to me and engage me in conversation. Some days he would smile at me but not talk. Some days he would flirt with other girls in front of my face.

The guy was about as consistent as Little Sister is normal.

Which is why even though the Chess Master made a special effort to keep in touch with me when he went to a different high school, and even though he asked me on my first date (prom, no less), and even though his mother as good as told me that he was madly in love with me, I was never sure because everything he did was so ding-dang confusing.

Had someone honestly asked the Chess Master the reason for his behavior, then his honest answer may have taken the shape of, "To show that I could care less about Awkward Mormon Girl."

"I could care less." If you ever say that phrase in my presence, you may look over and see that my fingers are twitching in a valiant effort not to slap you.

Being a person rather concerned with words, I dislike it when people say, "I could care less," because they are misquoting the phrase, "I couldn't care less."

"I could care less," literally means "It would be possible for me to care less about this," aka you do care, when what you're trying to convey is "It isn't possible for me to care less about this than I already do," aka you don't care one whit, jot, or tittle. To properly convey that you don't care, you need to say, "I couldn't care less."

Got that? Okay, here comes the confusing part. Usually when people say, "I could care less," but they're trying to say, "I couldn't care less," they still really mean "I could care less."

Take the Chess Master. He seemingly behaved in an inconsistent manner because he was trying to inform me, "No, I don't actually have a crush on you. I could care less about you."

Of course we know the phrase he meant was couldn't care less, because he didn't care. He didn't care so much that he went out of his way to show me that he didn't care because HE JUST DIDN'T CARE, OKAY? GOSH!

In other words, when someone gets riled up about something enough to declare, "I could care less!" we can forgive them their grammar errors for, however unintentionally, they are probably speaking the truth.

They probably actually do care. Why else do they try so hard to show that they don't?

Now, the days of the Chess Master are the days of yore aka junior high. In junior high, if you liked someone, you had to play it cool. You had to work hard to show the frosty degree of your extreme apathy. For if the person you liked found out that you liked them, you'd die.

Teenagers are patently stupid, so you'd think they would be the only persons engaging in this kind of contradictory behavior.

You'd think, but adults do it too. Just as much. Maybe more. Every day in many ways, we show that we don't care about the things and ideas and especially people that we care about so much that we feel the need to act like we don't care.

Am I the only person who finds this incredibly stupid and dishonest?

There have been times in my life when I really, truly cared about someone, but I didn't know if they cared about me back. And instead of being proactive and recognizing that it was better to be genuine in my feelings than not, I got caught up in the common trap of being reactive. I had to receive something if I was going to give it. And since I wasn't receiving it, I wasn't gonna give it. So I took a page from the Chess Master's book and very much went out of my way to ignore and pull away from the same person I cared so much about.

It goes without saying that nothing good ever comes from this.

Whenever I've gone the opposite route and chosen to show that I care, I haven't always had that regard reciprocated. I have, however, found a great deal of freedom and peace in allowing myself to be earnest.

Now if you'll excuse me, there are some people I need to go show that I care.

Because really, truly--I could care less.

Dream a Dream and See

Last night I had a dream that I was friends with a lot of woodland creatures, including Brer Rabbit from Songs of the South/Splash Mountain. Then there was like an apocalypse or something in the woodland but the woodland was actually a college campus in the middle of a river and I had to run through the woodland-college-campus making sure all the creatures were okay except I couldn't find Brer Rabbit so everyone thought Brer Rabbit was dead but then I found him and hugged him but he wasn't a sassy animated rabbit at all just a big fuzzy real-live bunny.

That isn't the weirdest dream I've ever had. Oh no. Far from it.

I've had a strange dream almost every night of my entire life. I usually remember them. Vividly.

As a child, I had a recurring dream about a man in a poncho who would watch me from outside. He'd be there, and then be gone, and then be there again. My dream-parents would either warn me to stay away from poncho man or poncho man would disappear before they could see him and they would tell me I was imagining things. Neither response was encouraging.

Poncho man never said anything. He never moved except to blink in and out of existence. He just watched.

Here are some other things I've dreamed over the years:

I was the Brave Little Toaster's sidekick. I was animated. I looked awesome.

It was the first day of third grade. I was late and I didn't know anything.

The kittens on the calendar above my bed turned into Ernie and Bert. They talked to me. Then they died.

I was in a play that I'd never rehearsed and I didn't know my lines.

Older Sister was a yellow blanket. I was a red blanket. Older Sister was taken to the dump and I never saw her again.

I was late for my junior high class. I couldn't find my backpack and I was only wearing my underwear.

I folded Little Sister up inside my sunglasses, which killed her.

I was in a play that I had rehearsed and I didn't know my lines.

The Chess Master was a super hero named the Green Arrow and I was a superhero named the Yellow Lemon. Our superhero mode of transportation was bikes.

My second-grade class was having school in my bedroom.

Favorite Cousin died and I had to speak at his funeral. Except he was very much alive but my entire family wanted me to think he was dead.

Porch thought he was a cat.

I was late for my high school class. I'd forgotten to do my homework and I couldn't navigate the school.

I was in a car that started going backwards down a hill.

Baby Sister and I went to a buffet inside a department store. I was irritated because my cup was full of pizza and I didn’t want to have to drink the tomato sauce.

Baby Brother was adopted.

I was in a play that I once had a starring role in, that I knew backwards and forwards and inside out, and I still didn't know my lines.

My parents had chosen my husband for me.

I could fly but only by jumping off the roof of my dollhouse.

My house was being invaded by some creepy invisible creatures. When I tried to get help, I couldn't speak.

I was taking a math class in college but I hadn't attended since day one. An English teacher from my high school and my science teacher from junior high were the professors.

I was a hobbit.

And much, much more.

By the way. Not too long ago, the poncho man made a reappearance in my dreams.

I was, and still am, thoroughly creeped out...

Vehicular Homicide and Other Things I Try to Avoid

I was almost hit by a bike in Verona.

Well, bikes in the plural, really. The bikers would ring these little bells to warn me and my brain would be all, "Oh, a little bell. That's nice" never equating the sound with DANGER. After a couple times of my almost getting hit this girl in the group gave herself the specific assignment of yelling "AWKWARD MORMON GIRL!" every time a bike bore down on me. That got my attention.

Barely.

Then there was the time my family was in a Twenty-Fourth of July parade. We all wore pioneer clothes. Dad pulled a handcart with Little Sister and Baby Sister inside. Mom and Older Sister and I walked.

I was so excited by the experience, waving at the crowds and making my cloth doll wave too, that I wasn't paying attention. I stepped in the handcart's path. Dad pulled it over my foot.
Mom rushed to my aid. She was convinced I was maimed. (I wasn't.) She was swearing up and down and all around. Of course, the stake president was sitting with his family on that particular stretch of street.

Things got awkward.



The Beatles, crossing the street with
grace, speed, and style. A car would
never dare hit them. Not even if they
were jaywalking.

 

In spite of these near-disasters, and in spite of the fact that Mom has always been convinced that I would be hit by a car long before now (she feels that in addition to being highly distractible, I never paid enough attention to the Barney song, "Stop, Look, and Listen"), I haven't even come close. Not even when I jaywalked with the Chess Master after track... by which sentence I mean that I am a law-abiding citizen who has never jaywalked, not even as an impressionable fifteen-year-old who wanted to impress a boy she liked. Capisce?

I definitely wasn't jaywalking the other day when a car simply didn't see me.

I was using a crosswalk near Nameless Utah College. The little stick figure person on the crosswalk light shone brightly. "Place your fate in my stick figure hands," it said. "Step into the street," it said.

"Okay," I said. "I trust you, little stick figure person."

Alas, my trust was misplaced. The stick figure person didn't know that the driver of a car making a right turn wasn't paying attention.

The right-turning car came to an abrupt halt just before the crosswalk. I also halted--luckily I'd seen the car before it saw me. Had I gone any farther I would have stepped straight into its path.

An awkward impasse ensued. The car didn't move. Neither did I. 'Cause, I mean, what are the rules of etiquette in this situation? Nobody taught me the proper way to handle this in Driver's Ed. Or Pedestrian's Ed aka "Stop, Look, and Listen" (which by the way, I did actually pay attention to. Enough attention to appreciate the catchy tune, anyways).

Still no moving.

After a few seconds of this confusion, I moved forward. So did the car.

It didn't hit me...but when it braked its bumper was about to get pretty fresh with my leg. So to speak.

If crosswalks are this dangerous, then maybe I should just go back to jaywalking.

If I had ever jaywalked.

Which I haven't.

Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

The Telephone and Other Disasters

I blame Older Sister for the whole thing.

Older Sister is currently serving a mission in South America. Older Sister emails the family every week. Older Sister's most recent email informed us that the Mission Department has changed the missionary email rules. Now missionaries can email their friends and new converts as well as their families.

Immediately I thought of Best Friend Boy. Best Friend Boy is, well, my best friend who's a boy. He is serving in the mission just north of Older Sister's mission. Best Friend Boy's entire life is dedicated to God right now, which is a wonderful thing, but it means that we don't get to communicate much and only through letters. Sometimes that can be hard.

So when Older Sister said missionaries can now email their friends, a syllogism sprang into my head:
Premise: I am one of Best Friend Boy's friends.
Premise: Best Friend Boy can email friends.
Conclusion: Best Friend Boy can email me.

First I congratulated myself for thinking in syllogisms. Then I congratulated myself for remembering the word, "syllogism." Then I realized that I did not, in fact, remember the word "syllogism" and that I was actually calling the syllogism "one of those proof things" in my head. Which clearly means that college isn't doing anything for me and that I'm just wasting my time. Which caused me to decide that I should go to the registrar's office right now and demand my money back.

And when I demanded my money back, I would say, "I demand my money back! For the kind of tuition I pay, at the very least I should be learning to remember what those proof things are called."

And the office people would say, "But we can't give you your money back because you don't pay any tuition. You're on scholarship."

And then I would say, "Oh yeah? That's DISCRIMINATION!" And then they would have to give me money. Because discrimination is the magic word.

Once I'd syllogised that Best Friend Boy could email me, I realized the next logical step would be for me to get his address. That, my friends, would be easier said than done, because getting his email would require calling his mother...

...and I'm deathly afraid of the telephone.

It's because I'm overabundantly awkward, you see. When I have extremely awkward interactions in real life, I can sometimes mitigate them by looking attractive. Or by saying funny things. When I'm on the phone, however, people can't see how attractive I look. Funny things tend to not be that funny on the telephone, and even suave people usually sound somewhat awkward. Thus the telephone is basically my nemesis.

(Once I had this friend-crush called the Chess Master. Ah, the Chess Master. I won't delve into the backstory with this boy now, but suffice it to say that long ago, when I really, really liked the Chess Master, I tried to call him. It took me at least ten tries of dialing his number before I found the courage to hit SEND. When the phone actually started ringing, I panicked. I threw that thing across the room like it was a time bomb. Or a red-hot potato. Or a piece of chocolate that actually turned out to be white chocolate. Sadly, this example embodies the majority of my call-making experiences.)

After determining that the only way to get Best Friend Boy's email was by experiencing Doom Itself aka the telephone, I slept on that realization. I went to school. I came home and ate a taco, a strawberry, an ice cream sandwich, and a blueberry muffin. Have you ever eaten a muffin and felt like you were asphyxiating? Because that's the sensation eating this muffin gave me. Asphyxiation. With blueberries.

Eventually, I stopped stalling and prepared myself to face my doom. I thought about putting off the phone call until the next day, or the next week, or maybe the next month--but no. If I put off the phone call, I would use that time to convince myself that getting Best Friend Boy's email wasn't important, which simply wasn't true. Missionaries need to hear from their families and friends and know that they have support. Besides, I wanted to email him.

So after much internal hemming and hawing, I lickety split dialed his mother's number. This time I only had to dial it twice before I could make myself press SEND. I was tempted to throw the phone, but I didn't.

Ring ring ring. "Hello?"

Words cannot describe the terribleness of that moment. I only barely found my voice. I stuttered. I corrected myself in the middle of my own sentences. Surely I sounded like a fool. But Best Friend Boy's mother was kind, even though I had interrupted a family gathering. She was gracious. It seemed she was trying her best to put me at ease. When I hung up after some ten minutes, I had received a promise that she would text the address to me as soon as possible.

I was fairly skipping for the next half-hour. Now I could email Best Friend Boy and hear from him more regularly. World peace was imminent. AIDS would surely cure itself. And I had talked on the telephone, and it had turned out well...

"But wait," I said to myself. I rewound the phone conversation in my head and stuck on one moment in particular.

"Did Best Friend Boy tell you about the new email rules?" I'd said in this moment.

"No," Best Friend Boy's mother had said. "I know there were some..."

Pause. Replay. "No." "No." "No," she'd said. Uneasiness crept into my brain. I rushed to my laptop and began to do some speedy research. Within moments I'd turned up various discussions talking about how not all missions had instituted the new rules yet.

...oh no. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I dug a little deeper. With my super internet stalking skillz (they are quite mad, I tell you) I turned up a missionary blog from an elder in Best Friend Boy's mission. Among the emails he'd sent his family, there was one commenting on how their mission president had not yet put the new rules into place.

A terrible, terrible feeling washed over me. Whyyyy had I decided to use the telephone? Had I not called Best Friend Boy's mom, I would have sent her some kind of written communication that she surely would have taken her a while to respond to, and then I wouldn't have rushed into things, and I probably would have thought to do more research, and then I wouldn't have made a fool of myself for nothing and-

My phone buzzed. It was the text giving me the email address. OH NO! Not only had I made a fool of myself, I had given Best Friend Boy's entire family faulty information. For all I knew, they were now contacting every single person Best Friend Boy had ever known, sharing the joyous news that he could now exchange emails with them and giving away his address like it was free nonwhite chocolate. Then Best Friend Boy's inbox would be overflowing with emails he couldn't respond to, and it would be totally distracting, and he might even get in trouble!!! Clearly, I had to do something.

Quickly I whipped up a response text that thanked his mom for the address. Then I gave a spiel about how on second thought I wouldn't email him until I had more information, along with a strong yet discreet hint that no one else outside the family should email him either. Then I thanked her again. It was like a thank-you sandwich with a warning in the middle instead of cold cuts.

Yeah I decided, reading it over. That sounds natural.

I sent it.

Yeah I realized, thinking it over. That didn't sound natural at all.

You know how, when you do something embarrassing, they say that you'll laugh about it later? Well, I laughed inside about this one right away. Only it wasn't a ha-ha-that-was-so-funny-shrug-it-off laugh. It was more of a sobbing, hysterical laugh. I laughed until I was exhausted, physically and emotionally.

Then I said to myself, "I'm gonna go eat another muffin."