I once hung a jury for the better part of a week. I did so even though my gut told me that the defendant was guilty. But, even though I was fairly convinced that he was guilty, when weighing the evidence in a dispassionate manner, I realized that it was only my gut telling me so. The prosecution had presented the weakest of cases. There were several holes in the case that I could see and which, for some reason, the defense had chosen not to exploit. But still, my gut was telling me that the defendant had committed a crime...then it hit me. The defendant had, indeed committed a crime but probably not the crime of which he was accused...After four days, I finally agreed to convict the defendant on a much lesser charge. I did so because I was convinced both in my mind and my gut that he was guilty of that lesser charge.
During my time in the jury room, I spent eight to ten hours a day with anywhere from nine to eleven people yelling and hating me. The yelling and hating wasn't one-sided either. At one point I had to ask one juror to shut up and not be on my side because the only reason he could give for not believing the prosecution's key witness was that "he looked a little gay". Juror number four will forever hold a special place on my list of people who should die with festering boils. He was a pseudo-intellectual who kept saying, "it's a moot point" only he kept mispronouncing it; saying, "it's a moat point. By day three of listening to that man make arguments that a seventh grade debate student could rip apart, the only thing that kept blood from shooting out of my eyes, nose and ears whenever he spoke was the mental image I had of driving my freshly-sharpened Number 2 pencil through his eye socket and into his brain.
At one time, the following argument took place between me and mister "moat point"
"It was a GUN"
"The charge reads 'fire-arm' and the weapon was never produced so the prosecution could never prove it was anything other than a BB Gun"
"A BB gun is a firearm"
"No...a 'fire arm' as a weapon that uses gunpowder and fire is produced as a by-product of its projectile's means of propulsion...a BB-Gun uses compressed air as its means of propulsion and since no fire is produced, it cannot be called, 'a fire-arm'"
"That's a moat point...I could still kill you with a BB-Gun"
"And I could kill you with a pork chop bone or even this number 2 pencil I'm holding..neither of them is a fire-arm"
At another point, a very sweet looking little old lady complained to me, "Well, I'm going to tell the judge that I don't think you belong on this jury" . It was her misfortune that her particular statement was the final straw that broke my camel's back. "I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT BELONGS ON THIS JURY!", I screamed "Every single ONE of you answered the same questions I did during Voir Dire and every single ONE of you said you would not hold it against a defendant for not taking the stand in his own defense...and every single ONE of you, at some point in the last three days has said that he must be guilty or he would defend himself...so that means that every single ONE of you is a &*##! LIAR!"
(I might have over-reacted a tad).
I saw that little old lady once years later at the Cineplex Multi Cinema off of Grand Parkway and, when she saw me, she had that sweet, I-know-you-from-somewhere-but-can't-quite-place-where, smile. Then I could see the recognition creep into her eyes and that sweet face of hers darkened like thunder clouds as she turned her back to me and went over to her husband sitting on a bench. I stood outside the theater until the movie started enduring malevolent glances and whispering back and forth between the two. The old man looked at me through narrowed bitter eyes and I could tell he was wishing that he was thirty years younger. I vacillated between going over to them and offering the most sincere apologies for my inexcusable conduct or going over to the man and letting him know that the sweet little woman he thought he married wasn't quite so sweet after all. I finally decided that this was one instance when discretion really was the better part of valor.
During my time in the jury room, I could tell that what I was battling were deep-seated convictions. The people on the other side of the argument were all very fine and decent people. But it became more and more apparent, as we argued, that they felt in their hearts that their job as a juror was to convict the person accused of the crime. I had always felt that my job as a juror was to judge, not the defendant, but the case presented to me by the prosecution. If the case presented by the prosecutor was proved to me beyond a reasonable doubt. I would vote to convict. If not, I would vote to acquit. I was to place the burden of proof always with the prosecution and never with the defense and, even if I felt in my gut the defendant was guilty; if the prosecution had not done its job properly and presented a case proving to my mind that he was guilty, I was doing our justice system a greater disservice by going with my gut over my mind.
The basic difference in my philosophy and those of the other jurors was that they felt that their job as a juror was to judge the defendant. I felt that my job as a juror was to judge the prosecution's case against the defendant.
During those four days, I was tempted several times to make nice with my fellow jurors and just go along..I was told over and over again that I was wrong. I was called names, At one point mister moat point called me a bleeding heart liberal.(that was a first for me) But each time I felt the urge to capitulate, my mind kept coming back to a quote by John Adams."There are only two creatures of value on the face of the earth: those with the commitment, and those who require the commitment of others"
What it came down to in that jury room was a battle of values, my basic values and beliefs over the basic values and beliefs of eleven other people. A person's beliefs are based upon their values and, as such, there are many times when a belief is neither right nor wrong...it is right or wrong depending upon the holder's values.
But this wasn't one of those times.
What that experience left me with was the firm conviction that you really ought not to try and get out of jury duty. If you are a rational person who can look at a case without passion...the greatest service you can render your country is to serve on a jury. Unfortunately, most people who think that way are also very busy people for whom jury duty would be a financial sacrifice as well as a sacrifice of their time...and so, when they get the summons, they do their dead level best to not get on a jury. (My personal favorite was the man who showed up to jury selection with a "Nuke Gay Baby Whales For Jesus" T-shirt) Unfortunately, that leaves most juries filled with either people who have nothing better to do with their time or people who, for some reason or other, relish the thought of sitting in judgement of their fellow man...and believe me when I tell you that none of these people is apt to be sitting across from Regis Philbin holding a check for a million dollars with all of their life-lines still unused.
Ask yourself this. If you say you love your country and are willing to die for it...why do you try and get out of Jury Duty?
The next time you are summoned...go and serve
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
One Last Blessing
It's four in the morning and I've been up for the better part of an hour. I love this time of day. It is my hour of peace and rest unmarred by earthly care. For some reason, my thoughts always seem better honed and more clear at this time. My emotions are more crisp and I can more easily identify thier roots.
For the better part of this hour, I have been feeling an emotion that I didn't remember ever feeling before...it is a mixture of happiness and sadness and anticipation and worry...all of my emotions seem to be mixed with its counterpart; except one...pride.
Today is the day that my last child, my daughter leaves for college. In just a few short hours, she will step out of my door and, when she crosses that threshhold one last time, her status will change. She will no longer be a permanent resident under my roof. At 3:00 this afternoon, my Sarah will take her fledgling flight into this world.
Oh sure, she will return to my home from time to time but these will always be temporary visits. When she returns, I will be painfully aware of the ticking clock that will take her away from me again. Although she will always be welcome here for as long as she wishes, if things go according to the grand design, once she leaves today, she will only have temporary residences until she finds and makes one of her own.
For the last week or so, my wife has been urging me to find the time to give our daughter her traditional father's blessing before she goes off to school. I have, to her vexation, been putting it off. I don't think that she realizes what she's asking me to do or she wouldn't be quite so frustrated with me when I procrastinate exercising my patriarchal franchise.
Whenever I ponder this blessing, the realization hits me that this could very well be the very last blessing of comfort that she seeks at my hands. The possibility is very real that she will meet someone else to whom she will look for comfort in a priesthood blessing and, when I lay my hands on her head this afternoon, I might very well be passing off the baton to someone I don't even know yet but, somehow, don't like very much right now.
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings take us down a path that seems almost pre-determined...as if the course for them has been laid by a divine hand...and that's what is happening to me this morning because, as I sit here and steep myself in this melange of emotions, it occurs to me that these feelings would not be possible were I not a parent...this is exactly the kind of thing that Heavenly Father wanted me to experience...this is what is referred to as "a growing pain".
All for this mixture of emotions that could be experienced in no other way (and others like them) a Heavenly Being created this world and sent me to it. Because he wanted me to return, he devised a plan wherein his First Born in the spirit and Only Begotten in the flesh would take upon himself my sins...all of that effort so that I could sit here at four in the morning and nourish myself with this wonderful bittersweet emotion. And now I have to add one more feeling to the mixture.
I don't know when I've ever felt more loved.
For the better part of this hour, I have been feeling an emotion that I didn't remember ever feeling before...it is a mixture of happiness and sadness and anticipation and worry...all of my emotions seem to be mixed with its counterpart; except one...pride.
Today is the day that my last child, my daughter leaves for college. In just a few short hours, she will step out of my door and, when she crosses that threshhold one last time, her status will change. She will no longer be a permanent resident under my roof. At 3:00 this afternoon, my Sarah will take her fledgling flight into this world.
Oh sure, she will return to my home from time to time but these will always be temporary visits. When she returns, I will be painfully aware of the ticking clock that will take her away from me again. Although she will always be welcome here for as long as she wishes, if things go according to the grand design, once she leaves today, she will only have temporary residences until she finds and makes one of her own.
For the last week or so, my wife has been urging me to find the time to give our daughter her traditional father's blessing before she goes off to school. I have, to her vexation, been putting it off. I don't think that she realizes what she's asking me to do or she wouldn't be quite so frustrated with me when I procrastinate exercising my patriarchal franchise.
Whenever I ponder this blessing, the realization hits me that this could very well be the very last blessing of comfort that she seeks at my hands. The possibility is very real that she will meet someone else to whom she will look for comfort in a priesthood blessing and, when I lay my hands on her head this afternoon, I might very well be passing off the baton to someone I don't even know yet but, somehow, don't like very much right now.
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings take us down a path that seems almost pre-determined...as if the course for them has been laid by a divine hand...and that's what is happening to me this morning because, as I sit here and steep myself in this melange of emotions, it occurs to me that these feelings would not be possible were I not a parent...this is exactly the kind of thing that Heavenly Father wanted me to experience...this is what is referred to as "a growing pain".
All for this mixture of emotions that could be experienced in no other way (and others like them) a Heavenly Being created this world and sent me to it. Because he wanted me to return, he devised a plan wherein his First Born in the spirit and Only Begotten in the flesh would take upon himself my sins...all of that effort so that I could sit here at four in the morning and nourish myself with this wonderful bittersweet emotion. And now I have to add one more feeling to the mixture.
I don't know when I've ever felt more loved.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Danny Boy
I've been nursing a feeling of sadness lately and I haven't quite been able to put my finger on the reason. Then, last night my daughter went off with some friends to the David Archuleta concert and my wife and I ate our dinner with our son Daniel. That's when it hit me...in a few short weeks, this is how it's going to be from now on. Except for a few holiday meals and some trips home during the summer, from now on, it will be just us three at the table.
And, even though the emotion was purely selfish, I have never been more grateful to have a child who would never leave and always be at home with his mother and I.
When you first have a child, you pray that they will have all ten fingers and ten toes and be completely healthy and 'normal'. When you find out that God didn't quite grant you all of your initial hope, your next hope is that they won't realize that they aren't like the other kids.
Daniel missed out on both of those accounts and through the years, when the kids his age began to reach milestones like baptism, priesthood, missions, marriage...Daniel would come to his mother and I and wonder when he was going to be able to partake of those blessings.
For years, I have felt like Gepetto with a son I love very much whose only wish is to be, "a real boy".
But even though it's been painful while he was growing up. Daniel has more or less come to terms with his condition and, along with his mother and I, has come to accept that this is the way it will be.
Is it wrong for me to be happy that he will always be at our dinner table? Children are supposed to grow up and leave and parents are supposed to want that for them but I confess that I am selfish in this respect.
I don't want any of them to leave and, while I could do nothing to prevent John-Ross and Sarah from growing up and taking their place in this world...I am going to find a great deal of comfort in Daniel always being here.
I heard a story once about a certain song.
It is the story of an old irishman whose wife had passed and left him with three sons to raise. In those days, his country was at war and when the county levy for young men to enter into the army was to be filled, it was announced by parades and bagpipes calling the young men off to war.
The old man's first son grew into manhood and the bagpipes came, calling him off to serve and, even though he served with honor, he dies in battle leaving the old man grief-striken but finding comfort in his remaining two sons.
As time passed, the bagpipes came once again calling the young men off to war and this time it was the second son's turn to go...and he also failed to return.
After a few more seasons had passed, the bagpipes came once again, calling the young men off to war. And this time, before he let him go, the old man took his only remaining son aside, and sang to him, the world's most beautiful love song
Oh Danny Boy
The pipes, the pipes are calling
from glen to glen
and down the mountainside
the summer's gone
and all the roses falling
'tis you, 'tis you
must go, and I must bide
But come ye back
when spring is in the meadow
or when the valley's hushed
and white with snow
'tis I'll be here
in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny Boy Oh Danny Boy
I love you so
When my wife and I heard that story, we told each other that if we ever had another son, we would name him after that song.
We didn't know how ironic it would be that the son we named after that song would be the son that would stay with us always.
And, even though the emotion was purely selfish, I have never been more grateful to have a child who would never leave and always be at home with his mother and I.
When you first have a child, you pray that they will have all ten fingers and ten toes and be completely healthy and 'normal'. When you find out that God didn't quite grant you all of your initial hope, your next hope is that they won't realize that they aren't like the other kids.
Daniel missed out on both of those accounts and through the years, when the kids his age began to reach milestones like baptism, priesthood, missions, marriage...Daniel would come to his mother and I and wonder when he was going to be able to partake of those blessings.
For years, I have felt like Gepetto with a son I love very much whose only wish is to be, "a real boy".
But even though it's been painful while he was growing up. Daniel has more or less come to terms with his condition and, along with his mother and I, has come to accept that this is the way it will be.
Is it wrong for me to be happy that he will always be at our dinner table? Children are supposed to grow up and leave and parents are supposed to want that for them but I confess that I am selfish in this respect.
I don't want any of them to leave and, while I could do nothing to prevent John-Ross and Sarah from growing up and taking their place in this world...I am going to find a great deal of comfort in Daniel always being here.
I heard a story once about a certain song.
It is the story of an old irishman whose wife had passed and left him with three sons to raise. In those days, his country was at war and when the county levy for young men to enter into the army was to be filled, it was announced by parades and bagpipes calling the young men off to war.
The old man's first son grew into manhood and the bagpipes came, calling him off to serve and, even though he served with honor, he dies in battle leaving the old man grief-striken but finding comfort in his remaining two sons.
As time passed, the bagpipes came once again calling the young men off to war and this time it was the second son's turn to go...and he also failed to return.
After a few more seasons had passed, the bagpipes came once again, calling the young men off to war. And this time, before he let him go, the old man took his only remaining son aside, and sang to him, the world's most beautiful love song
Oh Danny Boy
The pipes, the pipes are calling
from glen to glen
and down the mountainside
the summer's gone
and all the roses falling
'tis you, 'tis you
must go, and I must bide
But come ye back
when spring is in the meadow
or when the valley's hushed
and white with snow
'tis I'll be here
in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny Boy Oh Danny Boy
I love you so
When my wife and I heard that story, we told each other that if we ever had another son, we would name him after that song.
We didn't know how ironic it would be that the son we named after that song would be the son that would stay with us always.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Tom Goes to Girls Camp
Blame Shauna Pitcher Anderson for dredging up these rightfully-repressed memories. It was she who sent out a request for Camp Liahona songs. For those who are unfamiliar with Camp Liahona, it was a spot of mosquito-infested, so-humid-you-could-chew-the-air, water-tasting-like-iron, surrounded-by-banjo-playing-inbreds-with-fewer-teeth-than-chromosones ground about fifty miles North of Houston. (We all loved it and went there whenever we could)
Camp Liahona was the offical camp of The Houston Stake and later the region. It was the place we went for Father-Son campouts, Boy Scout Overnight Camps, Family Reunions, and every single Girls Stake Camp. Most of us old-timers in Houston can find the place in the dark since those were the conditions in which we usually arrived on a Friday night. In fact, only about forty percent of the travel time from Houston to Camp Liahona was spent driving about ninety-nine percent of the distance. The remaining sixty percent of the travel time consisted of driving up and down five to ten miles of I-45 with a flashlight, looking for a dirt road turnoff that was harder to find than the entrance to The Bat Cave.
Various versions of the following conversation took place in virtually everyone's car:
"That's it right there, isn't it?"
"No...I'm telling you we passed it about a mile back. I remember because I tied a bandana to a branch so we could find it easier the next time"
"There's no bandana back there"
"Yeah...I know...but the BRANCH is still there"
I sometimes think that we called the place Camp Liahona because only a person with a Liahona could actually find it on their first try. In fact, in the LDS religion, a person whose patriarchal blessing declares him to be of the Tribe of Levi, can claim the mantle of The Bishop and serve without counselors. It was whispered that only such a person could actually leave Houston in the dark and drive straight to Camp Liahona.
To the North of the camp, down a long treacherous path with tree roots waiting to reach out and trip you in the dark, was a small creek which, when dammed with sandbags, filled up to become a fairly decent swimming hole. There was a nearby rope swing of questionable molecular structure that served to provide an airborn means of entry to the aforementioned swimming spot. No matter how dark it was, no matter how late it was...if you were the first to arrive at Camp Liahona, your first duty was to trek down the path with a shovel and start filling sandbags to dam the creek. Failure to do so would result in your becomming a well-deserved social pariah.
Later on, the Stake sprung for an actual swimming pool and Camp Liahona Alumni became thereinafter divided into two groups...those who had used the swimming hole and those who had not (or as I like to think of them, the non-pansies and the pansies)
My family moved from Houston to Corpus Christi when I was twelve and I became lifelong friends to Robert Ghormley and Buddy Murphy. We were all in scouts together, got our life-saver merit badge together, and, in the process, became ceritified Red Cross Life Guards together (this might sound like rambling but I swear it's part of the story)
The year before we moved back to Houston, my mom became Stake Young Women's President. If I were to go strictly by my own observation, then I would have to say that the calling of Stake Young Women's president consisted of a year long planning session of Girls Camp during which your family languished upon a diet of Whataburgers and Swanson's Turkey Pot Pie.
The fly in my mother's ointment, apparently, was in finding a place which was suitable for girls camp. It was my father who suggested she call the Stake President of Houston and ask to use Camp Liahona. She was given permission upon condition that she provide three Red-Cross Certified lifeguards as well. (see? I told you it would become relevant)
There are fewer moments sweeter in a young teenage boy's life than when he realizes that his mom actually needs him for something that is above and beyond the call of duty. Going to Girls Camp was something that every teenage boy dreamed of...you're all alone with every girl in the stake!. Unfettered access to endear yourself to over a hundred young women!...how was I to know then what a huge disconnect there is between fantasy and reality?
But this was no time to let my mom know what a huge plum had just fallen into my lap...nope...my mom was backed into a corner. This was the time to get concessions. Buddy, Rob, and I were to be allowed to take our family's tent trailer as our official lifeguard headquarters. We fashioned a sign to that end. It read:
"Official Camp Liahona Lifeguards...also Philosophers, Bikini Inspectors, and Notary Public...(flats fixed)"
The girls of the stake would have to camp out on concrete slabs...this was before those slabs had roofs on them so they were to be exposed to the elements while we luxuriated in our family's tent trailer complete with mattresses, a refrigerator, and stove!
Within two hours of arriving at camp, we had the swimming hole dammed. Our entire official duties were done for the day and so we sat back and drank root bear and Dr. Pepper from our cooler and played Risk while the girls went about their routine.
There was, over the decades of use at Camp Liahona, a huge mound of garbage that sat right about where the swimming pool sits now. I didn't know it then but, apparently, it was a part of Girls Camp for the girls of the stake to complete a "camp project" . By way of thanking the Houston Stake for allowing us use of the camp, my mom determined that the camp project would be to bury that mountain of garbage.
"She went out to the baseball diamond with a bull horn and announced" This year, the camp project will consist of the girls in the camp digging a hole and burying the garbage pile" She pointed to a stack of shovels and picks and then walked away.
The next day, my mom, again went out to the baseball diamond and, with her bull horn announced, "Okay...the boys will dig the hole and the girls will fill it with the garbage" Then she grabbed the shovels and picks and dropped them at the door to our sanctuary.
We spent the rest of the day digging a hole big enough to fill in that pile of garbage and cover it with a decent layer of dirt. I won't bore you with a lesson on the geology surrounding the Houston area but suffice to say that only about three inches of any ground around Houston is actually topsoil the rest is clay and caliche. We went to bed about eleven that night and slept like the dead anticipating that, when we awoke, the girls at girls camp would be busy filling in the garbage and we could get back to drinking root beer and Dr Pepper and playing Risk. Before we left, however, we stacked the shovels and picks over by the girls' slabs so that they could find them in the morning.
About ten the next morning, we heard, through the fog of our sleep, the clank of shovels and picks being dropped outside our tent trailer door. About fifteen seconds later, we were awakened by my mom's sweet voice coming through a bullhorn, "Okay....the boys will fill in the garbage hole and the girls will cover it up"
When we didn't emerge from our beds soon enough to suit my mom, she came up right to our trailer door, turned up the volume on the bullhorn until it squeeled with feedback and blasted us, "I SAID! THE BOYS WILL FILL IN THE GARBAGE AND THE GIRLS WILL COVER IT UP!!!!"
I got up, locked the door, and went back to bed. About ten seconds later, I was awaked with a loud, meaty "THUNK". I looked up to see the business end of a pick poking through the splintered door. Buddy Murphey's eye poked out from under his pillow. His muffled voice came through the covers, "I think she's serious"
I spent the rest of the day shovelling garbage into a hole while listening to Robert and Buddy invent a new brand of humor that has since become widely known as "Yo Momma So..(fill in the blank)"
By the time we finished filling in the garbage pile, we stunk and we were thoroughly disabused of any notions we had previously held about how neat it would be to spend a week surrounded by all the girls in the stake. For those young men who have not had my experience, let me state that, the moment the young women of the stake hit girls camp any pretense of fashion or hygiene goes right out the window.
They stop wearing makeup, plucking eyebrows, shaving legs, armpits or even wearing deodorant. In fact, just like one of those old black and white werewolf movies, you can actually see them transform into beasts before your very eyes!
It was Thursday and my mom had decided to bundle up everyone's dirty clothes and take them into town to wash at the laundromat. When she came back, all the clothes were dumped on a picnic table in one huge unisex pile.
Buddy, Rob and I had to dig through a pile of girls undies and padded bras looking for our duds. Every once in a while a beehive would come up to us with a disgusted look on her face holding up a pair of threadbare whitey tightys and, stretching the waistband for emphasis on each syllable ask, "are these yours?"
As I looked through the pile and pondered my humiliation, a plan for revenge began to formulate. I stuffed a few bras and panties under my shirt. I could see that great minds thought alike because I caught Rob and Buddy in the same activity.
Later that night, we hatched a plan on getting those purloined unmentionables up the flagpole, which sat directly in the middle of the girls sleeping area. We decided that a diversionary tactic would be utilized.
We gathered up as many pinecones as we could stuff in pillow cases and began a midnight assault on the girls' slab. We had planned a blitzkrieg of pinecones during which I would slip through their line of defense and run the panties and bras up the flagpole.
What we had not planned, was that the girls would see us gathering pinecones, correctly interpret our intentions, and have a stash of their own missles ready and waiting.
About eleven thirty that night, The Great Pinecone Raid of 1973 began. We emerged from the woods, our pinecones at the ready, and announced our presence with the tradional screams and yells employed by pirates and vikings which quickly turned into full-on boy screams once it became obvious that our intended victims were not only waiting for us but armed to the teeth as well.
We had depended upon surprise to be our ally but that notion soon disappeared , we quickly realized that we were outnumbered a hundred to three and we were about to be annialated. It is no shame, under such circumstances, to retreat as quickly as one can. I turned and ran down the path I had come from as quickly as I could; forgetting, in the process, that there was a branch that crossed that path about five feet above ground. (I was, at the time, five foot ten) When I got to the spot of the branch I was in full flight mode. The branch hit me in the throat which had the affect of immediately stopping all forward progress my body was making from five feet above the ground on up.
From five feet on down, adhering closely to the principles of physics Newton had discovered centuries before, my body continued on until it could go no further. At that point all forward motion was transferred to the branch which acted as a pivot, swinging my feet up until I was on a horizontal plane with the branch.
It was at this point, that gravity once again decided to manifest itself and slam me back onto the ground. knocking every minute molecule of breath from my body.
I had heard that Marines will stand over a fallen comrade and fight to the death, their motto being "no man left behind". My own comrades employed a different philosphy, known as "every man for himself" and continued running and screaming away.
In a perverse way, their cowardice had the affect of bringing our plan to fruition; for while the girls passed by me chasing the other two deep into the forest, I had enough time to catch my breath, slip back to the flagpole and complete my mission.
The cherry on top of all of this was that, by the time I got back to the trailer, the boys were barracaded inside while the girls surrounded the trailer, pelting it with rocks and pinecones. My mom was busy calling off the hounds (either figuratively or literally depending upon how one viewed the now more hirusite female youth of our stake)
My mom brought all the commotion to a complete stop by shouting at the top of her lungs, "THE BOYS ARE NEVER COMING TO GIRLS CAMP AGAIN!!!!!" (no bullhorn necessary here)
I threaded my way through the crowd, past my mom, and in as a bewildered and innocent voice as I could muster asked, "I was in the latrine....what's all this about?"
In my fifteen years on earth, I had done many things to incite my mother's anger. I had watered the wisteria bush with a gasoline can. I had waxed the linoleum floor with furniture wax (my mom slipped and broke her tail bone) I had impaled Keven McCreary's hand to the fence with an arrow.....I had NEVER seen her more angry than that night.
As we sat up the rest of the night, we pondered our fate in the morning. We decided that our only hope of salvation lay in retrieving the bras and panties I had run up the flagpole. We drew straws, I got the short one and since I had partially exhonerated myself from the previous night's fiasco, I felt it was my duty to go without protest.
I made my assault just before dawn. I had planned it just when I felt everyone would be asleep and my mom, whom I knew would be up all night keeping vigil, would be most vulnerable. I got safely through the girls sleeping area and got the lingerie down from the flagpole and was almost back to the trailer when my mom's voice called out,
"Tom! what are you doing up so early?"
"Nothing...just couldn't sleep, mom!"
I continued on...Rob came out of the trailer and watched from a few yards away and out of my mom's line of sight.
"You tell the rest of those boys that I expect them to get up for devotional...no sleeping in!"
"I'll tell them mom!" I mouthed for Rob to take the bundle of undies I had secreted under my shirt
"And tell them no more shenanigans or that's it!"
I looked at Rob, pleading with my eyes for help...he just shook his head. Buddy showed up next to him and looked at me standing there out in the open. I made a break for it and something slipped out of my shirt. My mom called after me..
"What did you just dro.........THAT'S MY BRA!!!!"
The three of us evaporated into the woods.
Later that day, my mom marched out onto the ball field with her bull horn. She had set up a table with sandwiches and chips and soda. She then turned up the volume on the bull horn and announced, "THE BOYS WILL NOW COVER OVER THE PIT"
We came out of the forrest, ate our lunch, and grabbed the shovels.
Later on, when we got back to Corpus, my mom got up in church and reported on Girls Camp. She stated with glowing pride how the girls had dug a pit and buried a mountain of garbage for thier camp project.
I had to be physically restrained.
Camp Liahona was the offical camp of The Houston Stake and later the region. It was the place we went for Father-Son campouts, Boy Scout Overnight Camps, Family Reunions, and every single Girls Stake Camp. Most of us old-timers in Houston can find the place in the dark since those were the conditions in which we usually arrived on a Friday night. In fact, only about forty percent of the travel time from Houston to Camp Liahona was spent driving about ninety-nine percent of the distance. The remaining sixty percent of the travel time consisted of driving up and down five to ten miles of I-45 with a flashlight, looking for a dirt road turnoff that was harder to find than the entrance to The Bat Cave.
Various versions of the following conversation took place in virtually everyone's car:
"That's it right there, isn't it?"
"No...I'm telling you we passed it about a mile back. I remember because I tied a bandana to a branch so we could find it easier the next time"
"There's no bandana back there"
"Yeah...I know...but the BRANCH is still there"
I sometimes think that we called the place Camp Liahona because only a person with a Liahona could actually find it on their first try. In fact, in the LDS religion, a person whose patriarchal blessing declares him to be of the Tribe of Levi, can claim the mantle of The Bishop and serve without counselors. It was whispered that only such a person could actually leave Houston in the dark and drive straight to Camp Liahona.
To the North of the camp, down a long treacherous path with tree roots waiting to reach out and trip you in the dark, was a small creek which, when dammed with sandbags, filled up to become a fairly decent swimming hole. There was a nearby rope swing of questionable molecular structure that served to provide an airborn means of entry to the aforementioned swimming spot. No matter how dark it was, no matter how late it was...if you were the first to arrive at Camp Liahona, your first duty was to trek down the path with a shovel and start filling sandbags to dam the creek. Failure to do so would result in your becomming a well-deserved social pariah.
Later on, the Stake sprung for an actual swimming pool and Camp Liahona Alumni became thereinafter divided into two groups...those who had used the swimming hole and those who had not (or as I like to think of them, the non-pansies and the pansies)
My family moved from Houston to Corpus Christi when I was twelve and I became lifelong friends to Robert Ghormley and Buddy Murphy. We were all in scouts together, got our life-saver merit badge together, and, in the process, became ceritified Red Cross Life Guards together (this might sound like rambling but I swear it's part of the story)
The year before we moved back to Houston, my mom became Stake Young Women's President. If I were to go strictly by my own observation, then I would have to say that the calling of Stake Young Women's president consisted of a year long planning session of Girls Camp during which your family languished upon a diet of Whataburgers and Swanson's Turkey Pot Pie.
The fly in my mother's ointment, apparently, was in finding a place which was suitable for girls camp. It was my father who suggested she call the Stake President of Houston and ask to use Camp Liahona. She was given permission upon condition that she provide three Red-Cross Certified lifeguards as well. (see? I told you it would become relevant)
There are fewer moments sweeter in a young teenage boy's life than when he realizes that his mom actually needs him for something that is above and beyond the call of duty. Going to Girls Camp was something that every teenage boy dreamed of...you're all alone with every girl in the stake!. Unfettered access to endear yourself to over a hundred young women!...how was I to know then what a huge disconnect there is between fantasy and reality?
But this was no time to let my mom know what a huge plum had just fallen into my lap...nope...my mom was backed into a corner. This was the time to get concessions. Buddy, Rob, and I were to be allowed to take our family's tent trailer as our official lifeguard headquarters. We fashioned a sign to that end. It read:
"Official Camp Liahona Lifeguards...also Philosophers, Bikini Inspectors, and Notary Public...(flats fixed)"
The girls of the stake would have to camp out on concrete slabs...this was before those slabs had roofs on them so they were to be exposed to the elements while we luxuriated in our family's tent trailer complete with mattresses, a refrigerator, and stove!
Within two hours of arriving at camp, we had the swimming hole dammed. Our entire official duties were done for the day and so we sat back and drank root bear and Dr. Pepper from our cooler and played Risk while the girls went about their routine.
There was, over the decades of use at Camp Liahona, a huge mound of garbage that sat right about where the swimming pool sits now. I didn't know it then but, apparently, it was a part of Girls Camp for the girls of the stake to complete a "camp project" . By way of thanking the Houston Stake for allowing us use of the camp, my mom determined that the camp project would be to bury that mountain of garbage.
"She went out to the baseball diamond with a bull horn and announced" This year, the camp project will consist of the girls in the camp digging a hole and burying the garbage pile" She pointed to a stack of shovels and picks and then walked away.
The next day, my mom, again went out to the baseball diamond and, with her bull horn announced, "Okay...the boys will dig the hole and the girls will fill it with the garbage" Then she grabbed the shovels and picks and dropped them at the door to our sanctuary.
We spent the rest of the day digging a hole big enough to fill in that pile of garbage and cover it with a decent layer of dirt. I won't bore you with a lesson on the geology surrounding the Houston area but suffice to say that only about three inches of any ground around Houston is actually topsoil the rest is clay and caliche. We went to bed about eleven that night and slept like the dead anticipating that, when we awoke, the girls at girls camp would be busy filling in the garbage and we could get back to drinking root beer and Dr Pepper and playing Risk. Before we left, however, we stacked the shovels and picks over by the girls' slabs so that they could find them in the morning.
About ten the next morning, we heard, through the fog of our sleep, the clank of shovels and picks being dropped outside our tent trailer door. About fifteen seconds later, we were awakened by my mom's sweet voice coming through a bullhorn, "Okay....the boys will fill in the garbage hole and the girls will cover it up"
When we didn't emerge from our beds soon enough to suit my mom, she came up right to our trailer door, turned up the volume on the bullhorn until it squeeled with feedback and blasted us, "I SAID! THE BOYS WILL FILL IN THE GARBAGE AND THE GIRLS WILL COVER IT UP!!!!"
I got up, locked the door, and went back to bed. About ten seconds later, I was awaked with a loud, meaty "THUNK". I looked up to see the business end of a pick poking through the splintered door. Buddy Murphey's eye poked out from under his pillow. His muffled voice came through the covers, "I think she's serious"
I spent the rest of the day shovelling garbage into a hole while listening to Robert and Buddy invent a new brand of humor that has since become widely known as "Yo Momma So..(fill in the blank)"
By the time we finished filling in the garbage pile, we stunk and we were thoroughly disabused of any notions we had previously held about how neat it would be to spend a week surrounded by all the girls in the stake. For those young men who have not had my experience, let me state that, the moment the young women of the stake hit girls camp any pretense of fashion or hygiene goes right out the window.
They stop wearing makeup, plucking eyebrows, shaving legs, armpits or even wearing deodorant. In fact, just like one of those old black and white werewolf movies, you can actually see them transform into beasts before your very eyes!
It was Thursday and my mom had decided to bundle up everyone's dirty clothes and take them into town to wash at the laundromat. When she came back, all the clothes were dumped on a picnic table in one huge unisex pile.
Buddy, Rob and I had to dig through a pile of girls undies and padded bras looking for our duds. Every once in a while a beehive would come up to us with a disgusted look on her face holding up a pair of threadbare whitey tightys and, stretching the waistband for emphasis on each syllable ask, "are these yours?"
As I looked through the pile and pondered my humiliation, a plan for revenge began to formulate. I stuffed a few bras and panties under my shirt. I could see that great minds thought alike because I caught Rob and Buddy in the same activity.
Later that night, we hatched a plan on getting those purloined unmentionables up the flagpole, which sat directly in the middle of the girls sleeping area. We decided that a diversionary tactic would be utilized.
We gathered up as many pinecones as we could stuff in pillow cases and began a midnight assault on the girls' slab. We had planned a blitzkrieg of pinecones during which I would slip through their line of defense and run the panties and bras up the flagpole.
What we had not planned, was that the girls would see us gathering pinecones, correctly interpret our intentions, and have a stash of their own missles ready and waiting.
About eleven thirty that night, The Great Pinecone Raid of 1973 began. We emerged from the woods, our pinecones at the ready, and announced our presence with the tradional screams and yells employed by pirates and vikings which quickly turned into full-on boy screams once it became obvious that our intended victims were not only waiting for us but armed to the teeth as well.
We had depended upon surprise to be our ally but that notion soon disappeared , we quickly realized that we were outnumbered a hundred to three and we were about to be annialated. It is no shame, under such circumstances, to retreat as quickly as one can. I turned and ran down the path I had come from as quickly as I could; forgetting, in the process, that there was a branch that crossed that path about five feet above ground. (I was, at the time, five foot ten) When I got to the spot of the branch I was in full flight mode. The branch hit me in the throat which had the affect of immediately stopping all forward progress my body was making from five feet above the ground on up.
From five feet on down, adhering closely to the principles of physics Newton had discovered centuries before, my body continued on until it could go no further. At that point all forward motion was transferred to the branch which acted as a pivot, swinging my feet up until I was on a horizontal plane with the branch.
It was at this point, that gravity once again decided to manifest itself and slam me back onto the ground. knocking every minute molecule of breath from my body.
I had heard that Marines will stand over a fallen comrade and fight to the death, their motto being "no man left behind". My own comrades employed a different philosphy, known as "every man for himself" and continued running and screaming away.
In a perverse way, their cowardice had the affect of bringing our plan to fruition; for while the girls passed by me chasing the other two deep into the forest, I had enough time to catch my breath, slip back to the flagpole and complete my mission.
The cherry on top of all of this was that, by the time I got back to the trailer, the boys were barracaded inside while the girls surrounded the trailer, pelting it with rocks and pinecones. My mom was busy calling off the hounds (either figuratively or literally depending upon how one viewed the now more hirusite female youth of our stake)
My mom brought all the commotion to a complete stop by shouting at the top of her lungs, "THE BOYS ARE NEVER COMING TO GIRLS CAMP AGAIN!!!!!" (no bullhorn necessary here)
I threaded my way through the crowd, past my mom, and in as a bewildered and innocent voice as I could muster asked, "I was in the latrine....what's all this about?"
In my fifteen years on earth, I had done many things to incite my mother's anger. I had watered the wisteria bush with a gasoline can. I had waxed the linoleum floor with furniture wax (my mom slipped and broke her tail bone) I had impaled Keven McCreary's hand to the fence with an arrow.....I had NEVER seen her more angry than that night.
As we sat up the rest of the night, we pondered our fate in the morning. We decided that our only hope of salvation lay in retrieving the bras and panties I had run up the flagpole. We drew straws, I got the short one and since I had partially exhonerated myself from the previous night's fiasco, I felt it was my duty to go without protest.
I made my assault just before dawn. I had planned it just when I felt everyone would be asleep and my mom, whom I knew would be up all night keeping vigil, would be most vulnerable. I got safely through the girls sleeping area and got the lingerie down from the flagpole and was almost back to the trailer when my mom's voice called out,
"Tom! what are you doing up so early?"
"Nothing...just couldn't sleep, mom!"
I continued on...Rob came out of the trailer and watched from a few yards away and out of my mom's line of sight.
"You tell the rest of those boys that I expect them to get up for devotional...no sleeping in!"
"I'll tell them mom!" I mouthed for Rob to take the bundle of undies I had secreted under my shirt
"And tell them no more shenanigans or that's it!"
I looked at Rob, pleading with my eyes for help...he just shook his head. Buddy showed up next to him and looked at me standing there out in the open. I made a break for it and something slipped out of my shirt. My mom called after me..
"What did you just dro.........THAT'S MY BRA!!!!"
The three of us evaporated into the woods.
Later that day, my mom marched out onto the ball field with her bull horn. She had set up a table with sandwiches and chips and soda. She then turned up the volume on the bull horn and announced, "THE BOYS WILL NOW COVER OVER THE PIT"
We came out of the forrest, ate our lunch, and grabbed the shovels.
Later on, when we got back to Corpus, my mom got up in church and reported on Girls Camp. She stated with glowing pride how the girls had dug a pit and buried a mountain of garbage for thier camp project.
I had to be physically restrained.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Kicking and Screaming
A lot of people ask me how a 6th generation native Texan such as myself came to be in Wisconsin. The answer I usually give them is "I came here kicking and screaming". Let me back up and explain a bit more. It's all the fault of my friend Robert Ghormley.
Rob and I knew each other when I lived in Corpus Christi. Our parents were best friends and we became best friends. In fact, Rob has gone beyond the status of "best friend" and has entered the status of being a friend who can lay claim to one of my kidneys and as much bone marrow as he can carry. I only afford this status to a select few so don't ask me if you're in the club.
Rob and I are such good friends that his wife and mine are best friends as well. When we first started visiting the Ghormleys here in Wisconsin, Rob (who was branch president) called my wife and I into his office at the church and laid the classic Ghormley Guilt Trip on us.
I've often said that Jews and Catholics only THINK that they do guilt. They're amateurs when it comes to Mormons and the best I've ever seen it done is in the Ghormley household.
If you ever spent the night there (and I did on several occasions) family prayer at bedtime was a kind of 'round robin' affair wherein everyone said a prayer. It was in these prayers that the guilt trips came out mainly because, if this wasn't said in a prayer, you'd interrupt and talk back. But, seeing as how this was a sincere prayer between the petitioner and The Lord. You had to pretty much shut up and say 'amen' at the end.
The only saving grace in this was that, if you were the last person in line, you got a whack at a rebuttal or two so when Dr. Ghormley prayed, "...and Lord, please tell Tom that he really needs to lose some weight...", when it came YOUR turn to pray, you could say..."...and Lord, please tell Dr. that he needs to mind his own damn business!"
So when Rob closed the door to his office and took out his handkerchief, I could tell that the guilt trip was coming. He first began by rehearsing the fact that we were the best of friends and then he brought our parents into the equation, recalling how THEY were the best of friends. Then he went on about how we were really needed in Wisconsin and would we consider moving up to be here with them. My reply was immediate,
"no"
"no?"
"no"
"why not?
"lots of reasons"
"give me one"
"Okay...I have a lot of metal in my butt and it freezes up here"
But my friend was not to be deterred.
"Will you at least ask The Lord?"
"no"
"no?"
"no"
"why not?"
"lots of reasons"
"give me one"
"I only bother The Lord when I'm not sure of something and I'm sure I don't want to move to Wisconsin"
But Rob would not give up and so, after about six months of his pestering me, I promised that I would take the matter before The Lord. It was one of the shortest prayers of my life. It went something like this...
"Heavenly Father..."
"Yes. I want you to move to Wisconsin"
"Wait...no....lemme get the rest of the question out..."
When I came out of our bedroom, I announced to my wife that we were going to move to Wisconsin and her immediate response was to inquire exactly what I meant by "we". I think her exact phrasing was, "What do you mean, 'we'? Do you have worms?"
After a few minutes of back and forth with my wife's stout refusal to come to Wisconsin, I finally said, "well we have an Adam and Eve Garden of Eden thing going on here because I promised Rob I would ask The Lord and I did and I'm moving to Wisconsin."
My dear wife decided that she would see for herself and disappeared into the bedroom. Her experience must have been similar to mine because she came back out a few moments later and complained, "you just HAD to ask, didn't you!"
But the truth is that, even though we came here kicking and screaming, we love it here. Oh sure, there are drawbacks. Taco Bell is the best Tex Mex around and when you complain about the quality of Mexican Food up here the conversation usually goes something like this.
"what do you miss most about Texas?"
"Decent Mexican food"
"Really? Because I know a really GREAT Mexican food Rest..."
"No you don't"
When we first started visiting, we attended a branch function at Noah's Ark. It is the world's largest outdoor water park in Wisconsin Dells..the place where water parks were invented and perfected.
When we first got there, we sat with the rest of the branch in a small pavillion that we had reserved and ate luch and socialized. Rob's son, Dylan was having a pretty good time with his friends and he had never been to a waterpark and so he didn't know what he was missing. All he knew was that he was enjoying himself right then
SO when Rob grabbed Dylan and started for the rides, all Dylan understood was that he was being taken away from something he liked...and he reacted like any four year old would react, he tugged at his father's grasp and went towards an unknown destination kicking and screaming.
Once he got to the water, he had the time of his life. After a while though, it became apparent that he was getting a bit too cold. He needed to get out and warm up a bit. So Rob dragged his son kicking and screaming back to the pavillion.
As I watched all of this, I realized how the difference in understanding between Rob and his four year old son was a lot less than the difference in understanding between me and Heavenly Father.
I watched a loving father take his son kicking and screaming to a place the father knew his son would enjoy and when it became too much for him, I watched that same father drag his son kicking and screaming away for his own good.
and I wondered how often Heavenly Father had done the same to me.
Rob and I knew each other when I lived in Corpus Christi. Our parents were best friends and we became best friends. In fact, Rob has gone beyond the status of "best friend" and has entered the status of being a friend who can lay claim to one of my kidneys and as much bone marrow as he can carry. I only afford this status to a select few so don't ask me if you're in the club.
Rob and I are such good friends that his wife and mine are best friends as well. When we first started visiting the Ghormleys here in Wisconsin, Rob (who was branch president) called my wife and I into his office at the church and laid the classic Ghormley Guilt Trip on us.
I've often said that Jews and Catholics only THINK that they do guilt. They're amateurs when it comes to Mormons and the best I've ever seen it done is in the Ghormley household.
If you ever spent the night there (and I did on several occasions) family prayer at bedtime was a kind of 'round robin' affair wherein everyone said a prayer. It was in these prayers that the guilt trips came out mainly because, if this wasn't said in a prayer, you'd interrupt and talk back. But, seeing as how this was a sincere prayer between the petitioner and The Lord. You had to pretty much shut up and say 'amen' at the end.
The only saving grace in this was that, if you were the last person in line, you got a whack at a rebuttal or two so when Dr. Ghormley prayed, "...and Lord, please tell Tom that he really needs to lose some weight...", when it came YOUR turn to pray, you could say..."...and Lord, please tell Dr. that he needs to mind his own damn business!"
So when Rob closed the door to his office and took out his handkerchief, I could tell that the guilt trip was coming. He first began by rehearsing the fact that we were the best of friends and then he brought our parents into the equation, recalling how THEY were the best of friends. Then he went on about how we were really needed in Wisconsin and would we consider moving up to be here with them. My reply was immediate,
"no"
"no?"
"no"
"why not?
"lots of reasons"
"give me one"
"Okay...I have a lot of metal in my butt and it freezes up here"
But my friend was not to be deterred.
"Will you at least ask The Lord?"
"no"
"no?"
"no"
"why not?"
"lots of reasons"
"give me one"
"I only bother The Lord when I'm not sure of something and I'm sure I don't want to move to Wisconsin"
But Rob would not give up and so, after about six months of his pestering me, I promised that I would take the matter before The Lord. It was one of the shortest prayers of my life. It went something like this...
"Heavenly Father..."
"Yes. I want you to move to Wisconsin"
"Wait...no....lemme get the rest of the question out..."
When I came out of our bedroom, I announced to my wife that we were going to move to Wisconsin and her immediate response was to inquire exactly what I meant by "we". I think her exact phrasing was, "What do you mean, 'we'? Do you have worms?"
After a few minutes of back and forth with my wife's stout refusal to come to Wisconsin, I finally said, "well we have an Adam and Eve Garden of Eden thing going on here because I promised Rob I would ask The Lord and I did and I'm moving to Wisconsin."
My dear wife decided that she would see for herself and disappeared into the bedroom. Her experience must have been similar to mine because she came back out a few moments later and complained, "you just HAD to ask, didn't you!"
But the truth is that, even though we came here kicking and screaming, we love it here. Oh sure, there are drawbacks. Taco Bell is the best Tex Mex around and when you complain about the quality of Mexican Food up here the conversation usually goes something like this.
"what do you miss most about Texas?"
"Decent Mexican food"
"Really? Because I know a really GREAT Mexican food Rest..."
"No you don't"
When we first started visiting, we attended a branch function at Noah's Ark. It is the world's largest outdoor water park in Wisconsin Dells..the place where water parks were invented and perfected.
When we first got there, we sat with the rest of the branch in a small pavillion that we had reserved and ate luch and socialized. Rob's son, Dylan was having a pretty good time with his friends and he had never been to a waterpark and so he didn't know what he was missing. All he knew was that he was enjoying himself right then
SO when Rob grabbed Dylan and started for the rides, all Dylan understood was that he was being taken away from something he liked...and he reacted like any four year old would react, he tugged at his father's grasp and went towards an unknown destination kicking and screaming.
Once he got to the water, he had the time of his life. After a while though, it became apparent that he was getting a bit too cold. He needed to get out and warm up a bit. So Rob dragged his son kicking and screaming back to the pavillion.
As I watched all of this, I realized how the difference in understanding between Rob and his four year old son was a lot less than the difference in understanding between me and Heavenly Father.
I watched a loving father take his son kicking and screaming to a place the father knew his son would enjoy and when it became too much for him, I watched that same father drag his son kicking and screaming away for his own good.
and I wondered how often Heavenly Father had done the same to me.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Treasures in Heaven
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
-Matt. 6:19-21-
I don't know how many of you feel like those scriptures refer to good works. I used to anyway. I don't anymore though.
I don't know when or where or what the impetus was for the change but I now believe that those scriptures refer to those incidents in our lives which promote spiritual growth.
There is a favorite movie of mine. We've all played the game where you're to imagine being stranded alone on a desert island, and you could choose five movies. Which would you choose? First and foremost on my list would be, "To Kill a Mockingbird" I love this movie for so many reasons. Atticus Finch, for being someone who never forgot his manners. After the trial, when his world had crashed down upon him, as he was relating to his neighbor, Miss Maudy, his loss. Sheriff Tait came driving up and asked to speak with him. Under the circumstances, anyone would simply turn and start speaking to the Sheriff but Atticus first turned to Maudy and asked, "Would you excuse me for a moment?"
When his daugher and his son had been attacked and his son was laying in bed. When we first get a look at Boo Radley...anyone would excuse Atticus for not remembering the gentilities that were obviously ingrained within him but, even then, his first words were words of introduction that might be used at a cotillion, "Miss Jean Louis Finch? Mister Arthur Radley" I love how, of all the people in town, Atticus refused to call his neighbor, "Boo" but insisted upon granting him the dignity of his proper name.
Emily Post once said that manners are not meant to restrict us, but to free us. To let us know how we are to act in any situation so as to allow others to feel comfortable around us. Whenever I think of that quote, I think of Atticus Finch and how he always seemed comfortable in every situation..in command of himself and everything around him because he never forgot his manners.
One of the other things I like about the movie is the opening sequence...The one where the little boy takes out a cigar box of toys and trinkets and begins to look at and examine each and every one..a broken watch, a pen knife, a few marbles and crayons...as the sequence progesses, we come to realize that this is no mere box of trinkets, this is a casket of treasure. Each one of the items is important to the boy for some reason or other. We get the feeling that, by opening up and looking at and polishing his 'treasure', the boy becomes more grounded in his life.
I guess that opening sequence of that movie has had as much an impact as anything else in making me realize that Christ was not talking about good works, he was speaking of good experiences.
One of the things that life has taught me is that, while spiritual experiences might be strong and, for the moment, overwhelming, if we do not relive them through purposefully remembering and relating them to others, they soon fade and dull and lose thier significance in our lives altogether.
Spiritual experiences do not have much of a shelf life. Like hot house flowers, unless they are carefully tended, they will wilt and fade. Perhaps that's why we are asked to share our testimonies once a month.
Oddly, one of the things that made me come to realize this was a negative spiritual experience that I had on my mission. One that, for reasons which will become obvious, I did not often share with others. I only do so now to illustrate my point of spiritual experiences unshared and untended soon dull and vanish.
I had this experience while with with a companion and we went through it together. We lost touch after our mission. As the years progressed, whenever I thought about the experience, I would not dwell upon it and my mind would tell me that it couldn't really have happened...that I must have imagined it...that I must be embellishing in my mind what really happened.
When I reconnected with my companion after a couple of decades, I tentatively broached the subject of what happened to us on that night and quickly got a return email, "Oh thank goodness you remember it too! I thought I was going crazy and imagining things".
I have debated, in my mind, the wisdom of telling this story. At the risk of appearing melodramatic, let me warn anyone reading that this story, quite frankly, scares people. Probably more so because it is true. It is the story of the night when my companion, Elder Shrack, and I became certain that there was a God because we came face to face with his opposite number.
This story took place in the town of Sassari on the island of Sardegna. It was in one of the farthest reaches of the mission. Getting there required almost 24 hours of travel on a couple of trains and a boat. We did not have phones in our apatments. As such, the only contact we had with the mission office was a weekly call we made at the telephone exchange office to our Zone Leaders on the southern tip of the island and weekly reports mailed in.
We shared a massive apartment with another companionship. It was huge. One of our favorite things about the apartment was a huge salon with ornate deorations and painted ceilings. There were a few dozen mattresses in that room that we arranged on the floor every P-Day and had tag-team wrestling matches.
Another reason we loved this apartment so much was that it was so huge, you could literally go and be alone with your thoughts for a while...a rare commodity while being a missionary. Most apartments were so small that you were literally in each others face 24/7.
My companion and I had been concentrating upon reactivating people in the branch. In every italian city, there is an area that missionaries referred to as "the gut" It was the oldest part of the city with buildings that looked like they were designed for a movie featuring Romeo and Juliette.
We were in such a building, calling upon an inactive member when the groundwork of our experience was laid.
When we knocked on the door, the mans wife answered. When she saw who we were, her eyes got wide and she reached out and practically dragged us into the apartment. I must say, it was quite a different experience than we were used to in door approaches.
When we got into the apartment, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rising. I was terrified and a quick look at my companion and our hostess let me know that they were just as terrified.
The lady of the house spoke up asking us if we were missionaries. We told her we were.
She then related to us that her husband no longer considered himself a member of our church and, in fact, no longer was a Christian. She said that he had started dabbling in Satanism and was now practicing that religion.
When we expressed a measure of incredulity, she pointed to some evidence in the corner..an area that looked like a shrine with an marble alter. There was some evidence on the alter that small animals had been sacrificed. (I know...I had trouble believing it myself and I was looking at it) The lady of the house asked us if we could cast the spirits from her home.
Casting out demons isn't really a lesson that they teach you at the MTC (LTM in my day) We had no idea what to do and so we thought we would offer a prayer.
Have you ever been swimming underwater in a river and heard rocks click together? You know how you don't really "hear" the sound with your ears but it seems like you hear it at the stem of your brain? Both my companion and I, during that prayer, heard voices in that same way...not in our ears but at the stem of our brain.
Trust me, I am fully aware of the rammifications that might come if I admit to "hearing voices in my head" but there's no getting around the fact that such was the case.
There is a scripture in The Book of Mormon that describes Christ praying:
And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father
3 Nephi 17:17
A lot of people have trouble fathoming that a person could hear words and yet not write them. I don't. Because, at the opposite end of the spectrum, even though I heard the words in my head, I really don't have a way to describe to you how horrible and threatening and frightening they were.
My companion finished our prayer and returned home for the evening..too frightened to even discuss what had happened to us.
For several days afterwards, I began to notice a phenomenon in our apartment. Where previously we all loved being able to be alone, I noticed that nobody would be alone anywhere for any reason. As a matter of fact, nobody went anywhere except their own bedrooms, the kitchen, or the bathroom.
One night, I snapped awake. One moment I was deep asleep and the next I was wide awake. Even thoughI was awake and in my bed, I had the sensation that I was moving..it was if I were in a roller coaster, some open air means of transport and I was travelling through a tunnel at a tremendous rate of speed.
The feeling was not unpleasant but the strangeness of the situation terrified me. I tried to imagine what was going on and I caught hold of a single thought...either my spirit was leaving my body, or another spirit was trying to get in.
Once I got hold of that thought, I began to concentrate, very hard, on trying to make the feeling stop. I prayed inwardly and concentrated so hard that I literally sweat through my bedclothes.
Eventually, the feeling stopped. Actually, what happened was that the "ride" I was on slowed until it stopped and then started "moving" again in the opposite direction. At one point, the feeling of movement stopped altogether and I had a settling or a "whompff" type of feeling.
I was terrified beyond all reason. I eventually got up the nerve to roll over. When I did, I saw that the room was dark but there was something even more dark right beside my bed. I screamed and my companion awoke and turned on the light.
"Did you see it?" He asked.
I nodded that I did.
"I've seen it three nights in a row"
We left the apartment and went to call our zone leaders to tell them our situation. In an almost cavalier manner, they said, "Cast them out"
"Hey! we TRIED that buddy!" I screamed into the phone, "They just followed us home! If you wanna come take a crack at them, be my guest!"
We left the apartment and spent the night at the church. We only returned for our things. We were never bothered again.
I related this story to a sister in one of my wards who had ten years later served in the same mission, in the same town, and, as it turns out, had lived in the same apartment. Her eyes grew wide as she heard my story and related a similar instance that had occured to her companion and she.
Beleieve it or not, I don't relate the story to scare people. I do so because, despite the intensity of the experience (and the negative nature of the experience notwithstanding...it was the most POWERFUL experience of a spiritual nature, I had ever encountered)
But the fact remains that, despite the power of that experience, because I did not cause myself to remember and relive it, I soon began to doubt its veracity and wondered if I had not imagined the whole thing. It was only wehen asking people who shared the same or similar experiences that I realized what a short shelf life spiritual experiences of any nature have.
Perhaps that's what the veil of forgetfulness is...simply time without the means of remembering and sharing the experience of heaven. I don't know.
What I DO know is that positive spiritual experiences are to be shared, and shared often. Both for the benefit of the hearer and, more importantly, for the benefit of the teller
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
-Matt. 6:19-21-
I don't know how many of you feel like those scriptures refer to good works. I used to anyway. I don't anymore though.
I don't know when or where or what the impetus was for the change but I now believe that those scriptures refer to those incidents in our lives which promote spiritual growth.
There is a favorite movie of mine. We've all played the game where you're to imagine being stranded alone on a desert island, and you could choose five movies. Which would you choose? First and foremost on my list would be, "To Kill a Mockingbird" I love this movie for so many reasons. Atticus Finch, for being someone who never forgot his manners. After the trial, when his world had crashed down upon him, as he was relating to his neighbor, Miss Maudy, his loss. Sheriff Tait came driving up and asked to speak with him. Under the circumstances, anyone would simply turn and start speaking to the Sheriff but Atticus first turned to Maudy and asked, "Would you excuse me for a moment?"
When his daugher and his son had been attacked and his son was laying in bed. When we first get a look at Boo Radley...anyone would excuse Atticus for not remembering the gentilities that were obviously ingrained within him but, even then, his first words were words of introduction that might be used at a cotillion, "Miss Jean Louis Finch? Mister Arthur Radley" I love how, of all the people in town, Atticus refused to call his neighbor, "Boo" but insisted upon granting him the dignity of his proper name.
Emily Post once said that manners are not meant to restrict us, but to free us. To let us know how we are to act in any situation so as to allow others to feel comfortable around us. Whenever I think of that quote, I think of Atticus Finch and how he always seemed comfortable in every situation..in command of himself and everything around him because he never forgot his manners.
One of the other things I like about the movie is the opening sequence...The one where the little boy takes out a cigar box of toys and trinkets and begins to look at and examine each and every one..a broken watch, a pen knife, a few marbles and crayons...as the sequence progesses, we come to realize that this is no mere box of trinkets, this is a casket of treasure. Each one of the items is important to the boy for some reason or other. We get the feeling that, by opening up and looking at and polishing his 'treasure', the boy becomes more grounded in his life.
I guess that opening sequence of that movie has had as much an impact as anything else in making me realize that Christ was not talking about good works, he was speaking of good experiences.
One of the things that life has taught me is that, while spiritual experiences might be strong and, for the moment, overwhelming, if we do not relive them through purposefully remembering and relating them to others, they soon fade and dull and lose thier significance in our lives altogether.
Spiritual experiences do not have much of a shelf life. Like hot house flowers, unless they are carefully tended, they will wilt and fade. Perhaps that's why we are asked to share our testimonies once a month.
Oddly, one of the things that made me come to realize this was a negative spiritual experience that I had on my mission. One that, for reasons which will become obvious, I did not often share with others. I only do so now to illustrate my point of spiritual experiences unshared and untended soon dull and vanish.
I had this experience while with with a companion and we went through it together. We lost touch after our mission. As the years progressed, whenever I thought about the experience, I would not dwell upon it and my mind would tell me that it couldn't really have happened...that I must have imagined it...that I must be embellishing in my mind what really happened.
When I reconnected with my companion after a couple of decades, I tentatively broached the subject of what happened to us on that night and quickly got a return email, "Oh thank goodness you remember it too! I thought I was going crazy and imagining things".
I have debated, in my mind, the wisdom of telling this story. At the risk of appearing melodramatic, let me warn anyone reading that this story, quite frankly, scares people. Probably more so because it is true. It is the story of the night when my companion, Elder Shrack, and I became certain that there was a God because we came face to face with his opposite number.
This story took place in the town of Sassari on the island of Sardegna. It was in one of the farthest reaches of the mission. Getting there required almost 24 hours of travel on a couple of trains and a boat. We did not have phones in our apatments. As such, the only contact we had with the mission office was a weekly call we made at the telephone exchange office to our Zone Leaders on the southern tip of the island and weekly reports mailed in.
We shared a massive apartment with another companionship. It was huge. One of our favorite things about the apartment was a huge salon with ornate deorations and painted ceilings. There were a few dozen mattresses in that room that we arranged on the floor every P-Day and had tag-team wrestling matches.
Another reason we loved this apartment so much was that it was so huge, you could literally go and be alone with your thoughts for a while...a rare commodity while being a missionary. Most apartments were so small that you were literally in each others face 24/7.
My companion and I had been concentrating upon reactivating people in the branch. In every italian city, there is an area that missionaries referred to as "the gut" It was the oldest part of the city with buildings that looked like they were designed for a movie featuring Romeo and Juliette.
We were in such a building, calling upon an inactive member when the groundwork of our experience was laid.
When we knocked on the door, the mans wife answered. When she saw who we were, her eyes got wide and she reached out and practically dragged us into the apartment. I must say, it was quite a different experience than we were used to in door approaches.
When we got into the apartment, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rising. I was terrified and a quick look at my companion and our hostess let me know that they were just as terrified.
The lady of the house spoke up asking us if we were missionaries. We told her we were.
She then related to us that her husband no longer considered himself a member of our church and, in fact, no longer was a Christian. She said that he had started dabbling in Satanism and was now practicing that religion.
When we expressed a measure of incredulity, she pointed to some evidence in the corner..an area that looked like a shrine with an marble alter. There was some evidence on the alter that small animals had been sacrificed. (I know...I had trouble believing it myself and I was looking at it) The lady of the house asked us if we could cast the spirits from her home.
Casting out demons isn't really a lesson that they teach you at the MTC (LTM in my day) We had no idea what to do and so we thought we would offer a prayer.
Have you ever been swimming underwater in a river and heard rocks click together? You know how you don't really "hear" the sound with your ears but it seems like you hear it at the stem of your brain? Both my companion and I, during that prayer, heard voices in that same way...not in our ears but at the stem of our brain.
Trust me, I am fully aware of the rammifications that might come if I admit to "hearing voices in my head" but there's no getting around the fact that such was the case.
There is a scripture in The Book of Mormon that describes Christ praying:
And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father
3 Nephi 17:17
A lot of people have trouble fathoming that a person could hear words and yet not write them. I don't. Because, at the opposite end of the spectrum, even though I heard the words in my head, I really don't have a way to describe to you how horrible and threatening and frightening they were.
My companion finished our prayer and returned home for the evening..too frightened to even discuss what had happened to us.
For several days afterwards, I began to notice a phenomenon in our apartment. Where previously we all loved being able to be alone, I noticed that nobody would be alone anywhere for any reason. As a matter of fact, nobody went anywhere except their own bedrooms, the kitchen, or the bathroom.
One night, I snapped awake. One moment I was deep asleep and the next I was wide awake. Even thoughI was awake and in my bed, I had the sensation that I was moving..it was if I were in a roller coaster, some open air means of transport and I was travelling through a tunnel at a tremendous rate of speed.
The feeling was not unpleasant but the strangeness of the situation terrified me. I tried to imagine what was going on and I caught hold of a single thought...either my spirit was leaving my body, or another spirit was trying to get in.
Once I got hold of that thought, I began to concentrate, very hard, on trying to make the feeling stop. I prayed inwardly and concentrated so hard that I literally sweat through my bedclothes.
Eventually, the feeling stopped. Actually, what happened was that the "ride" I was on slowed until it stopped and then started "moving" again in the opposite direction. At one point, the feeling of movement stopped altogether and I had a settling or a "whompff" type of feeling.
I was terrified beyond all reason. I eventually got up the nerve to roll over. When I did, I saw that the room was dark but there was something even more dark right beside my bed. I screamed and my companion awoke and turned on the light.
"Did you see it?" He asked.
I nodded that I did.
"I've seen it three nights in a row"
We left the apartment and went to call our zone leaders to tell them our situation. In an almost cavalier manner, they said, "Cast them out"
"Hey! we TRIED that buddy!" I screamed into the phone, "They just followed us home! If you wanna come take a crack at them, be my guest!"
We left the apartment and spent the night at the church. We only returned for our things. We were never bothered again.
I related this story to a sister in one of my wards who had ten years later served in the same mission, in the same town, and, as it turns out, had lived in the same apartment. Her eyes grew wide as she heard my story and related a similar instance that had occured to her companion and she.
Beleieve it or not, I don't relate the story to scare people. I do so because, despite the intensity of the experience (and the negative nature of the experience notwithstanding...it was the most POWERFUL experience of a spiritual nature, I had ever encountered)
But the fact remains that, despite the power of that experience, because I did not cause myself to remember and relive it, I soon began to doubt its veracity and wondered if I had not imagined the whole thing. It was only wehen asking people who shared the same or similar experiences that I realized what a short shelf life spiritual experiences of any nature have.
Perhaps that's what the veil of forgetfulness is...simply time without the means of remembering and sharing the experience of heaven. I don't know.
What I DO know is that positive spiritual experiences are to be shared, and shared often. Both for the benefit of the hearer and, more importantly, for the benefit of the teller
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Thank You
This letter has been a long time coming. I want to thank you for the part you played in helping my daughter become the amazing young woman that she is today. Maybe you won't have occasion to read this blog but I want to thank you nevertheless.
When we first moved into your town, you and my daughter were just starting high school. You became friends and were close all thoughout the summer. Then a boy you had a crush on since grade school started to date my daughter.
We didn't know you had a crush on the boy. Perhaps, if we had known, steps might have been taken to avert what happened next but by the time we found out, it was too late.
It started with rumors and innuendo. Concerned parents in the ward began to call us and tell us that they had heard our daughter was behaving unseemly in public with the boy. When we asked our daughter, she denied that anything of the kind was taking place. We took our concerns to a sister in the ward who also taught at the school. She told us that nothing of the kind was happening. But by the time we found out the truth, a lot of damage was already done. People like to believe anything juicy they hear about someone else. On more than one occasion, my wife and I entered a room in the chapel where my daughter was the topic of discussion only to see the talk come to a quick and embarrased halt.
It would have been bad enough had it just been the youth engaged in this gossip but, sadly, adults were often present as well.
We narrowly avoided disaster when a friend of the boy who was dating our daughter told us of plans you had made to purposefully place our daughter in a compromising position with the boy during a party you were all to attend. It appears you wanted to find some way...any way you could make all the things you had said about her true.
At first, my wife and I did not want to believe that another member of the church could be capable of something like that but then the boy showed us the emails you sent him where you outlined your plans. We were heartbroken.
In an effort to put a stop to all of this, we encouraged our daughter to not see the boy anymore. We had no idea at the time but that was probably the worst thing. When she broke up with the boy, he was hurt and that gave you license to unleash hell upon my daughter. You wrote viscious and disgusting things on her Bebo account page. When she blocked you, you went on as your sister, then apparently you stole or finagled the account passwords of mutual friends and did the same thing under the guise of being someone else...but we knew who it was. Did you really think that we would not notice the same misspelled words and sentence structure? Eventually, she shut down her page altogether.
During this ordeal, her mother and I tried to make some sense of this madness. I was reticent to imagine that the only motive for such behavior was simple jealousy. In a brutish effort to get to the bottom of it all, I accused my daughter of not telling me the whole truth. I demanded that she tell me what had really occured to cause all of this vitriol and poison being directed at her. She broke down crying and told me that she didn't know. One minute you were friends and the next minute you were enemies and she had no idea what she had done wrong.
I wasn't satisfied and so I went through all of the hate mail you directed at her. There was nothing in there that I could see of any kind of an accusation from you. Just invectives and declarations of your hatred. All she had done was be the object of your crush's affection.
I went back to my daughter and begged her forgiveness for not believing her.
It would have been okay if just leaving you alone had been the end of it but what happened next was some sort of weirdness that I thought could only happen in a Hollywood movie. You began a campaign of alienation. You let all of you mutual friend know that, if they were friends with my daughter, they could not be your friends.
Maybe it was because they had been friends with you for so long, maybe it was because they knew what you were capable of and were afraid, or perhaps it was as simple as the fact that my daughter did not demand a decision from them, but for a while, your plan worked. Sarah was completely cut off from all friends at school and at church.
Eventually, she made new friends at school. The kids at church would only speak to her as long as you weren't around. In truth, I find their cowardice almost more disgusting.
If Sarah had a class at school that you were also in, you would have one of your croanies call her and encourage her to change. When she was accepted at BYU-I, you had one of them call even then and encourage her to go to another school because "you've always wanted to attend there". We heard rumors that our daughter was suicidal; that she "hated life"; that she was a lesbian. Almost weekly a new form of hate would be directed at her. When we looked into it, they all had a common epicenter, you. It was as if you were trying to throw anything you could at her to see what would stick. I still can't quite wrap my mind around how full of hatred a person has to be in order to do some of the things that were done.
I think that the hardest part was the alienation at church and seminary. It's especially difficult to get up for class early every morning and force yourself to go when you can tell that the kids who are supposed to be closest to you either hated you or were uncomfortable around you because of that hatred.
She made new friends at school and tried to go on in spite of all of what was happening. But, even though she was a cheerleader and in all of the school plays, because she would not drink or engage in the kind of behavior that you accused her of, she did not attend many parties.
I can't tell you how many times I would pass my daughter's room and hear her crying inside....how many times I would see her seeking solace in prayer or in reading the scriptures...the many times when she would come to her mother and I in tears and wonder when Heavenly Father would answer her prayers and make it all right...all the times when the only advice we could give her was to hang on...to not give in to the hatred...to go on as best as she could and, the answer that always seems trite, "The Lord would answer her prayers in his own due time"
The one bright spot was when a few of the kids that had been your mutual friends decided that they could no longer stand to hear the daily rants against our daughter and came to her asking forgiveness and seeking her friendship once again.
When it was announced that we were moving to a new town, we heard from these two that you went around asking everyone if they were as excited as you were that we were leaving.
I once heard a story about Houdini. How he claimed that he could escape from any jail. Scotland Yard took him up on his challenge and, in a much publicized event, took him into one of their cells, daring him to escape. After checking him and taking all of his clothes as a precaution, they locked him naked in the cell.
But, what nobody knew at the time, was that Houdini had trained himself to be able to halfway swallow and bring up again, a strand of wire. Once alone in the cell, he brought up that strand of wire, formed it into a lock pick, and went to work on the lock.
He worked at it for hours to no avail. Here was a man who could get out of handcuffs as quickly as a person could lock them; who could pick locks and tie knots in string with his toes, who had devoted his very life to understanding the mechanism to virtually every lock in the world so that he could defeat it and yet, despite his best efforts, he could not best the lock in that jail cell.
After hours of trying, Houdini fell exhausted and slumped against the door of his cell, which swung open. It seems that the cell door had been locked only in his own mind.
When I think of you and my daughter, I think of that story. I think of how much each of you missed out on in High School. How she missed out on a lot, but how you missed out on even more. How, if that door to friendship had not been locked in your mind, you could have been friends with one of the finest persons I know; someone who is pretty and kind and sweet and funny and loyal.
I realize that a lot of those qualities were forged in the crucible that you created for her in high school. She came out of the ordeal with her dross burned away, bright and shiny and beautiful. Someone whose testimony was formed when the only friend...the only person she could turn to for comfort and solace besides her parents was her Savior...a much better person than when she went in and, strangely, we have you to thank for it all.
Already, in just a few short weeks, the girls in our new ward have become the kind of friends with my daughter that you two could have been all throughout high school. We see her having fun and smiling and we can see how quickly what you put her through can vanish, and how The Lord does answer prayers and make things better.
The saying "that which does not destroy me, only makes me stronger" seems trite but, nevertheless, I want to thank you for making my daughter strong.
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