A Three-Decker Sauerkraut and Toadstool Sandwich, With Arsenic Sauce.

I have a couple of absolutes at my house. First, we don’t cheer for the Utes, but only slightly less well known is this: We do NOT do Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I don’t want Christmas music playing, I don’t want to see Christmas lights, I do NOT want Hallmark Christmas movies on my TV until AFTER I’ve had my Thanksgiving.

This (perfectly rational and appropriate) position has earned me more than my share of name-calling. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been called the Grinch or Scrooge. People seem to get particular joy in trying to get a rise out of me (I’m looking at you, Marien). The thing is that I cannot really disagree. When we watch A Christmas Carol, I listen to Ebenezer complain about music and cheer and everything associated with Christmas and I sympathize with him. (Side note: hands down, the best version of the Christmas Carol in movie form is the Muppets Christmas Carol. It freaks Marien out a bit (she’s not a muppeteer), but it is absolutely hilarious. I love it, BUT NOT UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING!)

Like Dr. Seuss's Grinch, I bemoan all the noise Noise NOISE NOISE! I struggle a lot with the commercial side of Christmas, the very thing that brings many people so much joy. When the radio stations begin playing Christmas music right after Halloween, I block the stations on my car stereo. Even after Thanksgiving, I steer clear from those stations because I can really only handle about 2 days of Madonna singing "Santa Baby." Then I’m ready to scream. (OK, the truth is I can't handle even 20 seconds of that song, regardless of whether its after Thanksgiving. It's the rest of the modern standards that drive me crazy within 48 hours.)

I am notoriously bad about getting presents. Don’t get me wrong, I love to give gifts. I really put a lot of thought into gifts that I think would be most appreciated. But I’m usually out running from store to store on the day before Christmas looking for things at the last possible minute. Of course, that means I’m crowding aisles along with hundreds of my fellow procrastinators, not all of which share my sunny disposition, which only leads to more yuletide dissatisfaction.

I haven’t always been this way. For a long time, I really loved the pre-Holiday traditions of Christmas in the Fontano household. My parents raised us doing Twelve-Days of Christmas for friends and neighbors. The best job one could get would be delivering twelve-days, because it meant (i) you got to stay up late, (ii) you got to go outside, in the dead of winter, late at night, and (iii) you got to creep up to people’s houses, stealthily crunching through icy remnants of winter storms, strategically placing that night’s gift and then RUNNING FOR YOUR LIFE so that they wouldn’t catch you. (Note: that was fun even in Hawaii, which lost all of the winterized elements of the night.)

Clorinda and I don’t do twelve days. We tried, but she is not (by her own admission) a “crafty” person, and although I am generally a walking pinterest board, it simply doesn’t happen. We do other “secret Santa” stuff, but it’s different.

Another Fontano tradition is Christmas stories. My mother compiled LOTS of Christmas stories that became absolute favorites: "For the Man Who Hated Christmas", "Trouble at the Inn", and "An Exchange of Gifts" all come to mind.* My mom would read a different story, sometimes two or three, every night before we would all be sent off to bed. Even as a teenager I would sit and listen.

[SPOILER ALERT!] I would cry when Mike’s family put white envelopes on the tree, cry again when Wallace Purling invited Joseph to stay in HIS room, and cry one more time when Marty slammed into the electric fence.

[* I've pasted copies of the stories after the blog entry. It's my gift to you.]

My kids don’t have the same attachment to those stories that their old man does.

And so on Sunday I found myself in the kitchen making fudge (yet another Fontano tradition) and listening to It’s a Wonderful Life playing in the next room. Although it was Jimmy Stewart's voice, I heard myself when George Bailey complained about being stuck in a town he didn’t want to be in, in a house that was old and drafty, and about having all those kids. [Just kidding about the kids part. Kind of.]

Tonight the part of Jim Fontano will be played by Jimmy Stewart, in the form of George Bailey.

I guess that means my adversaries will have yet another name to call me, although I don’t think calling somebody “George” or “Mr. Bailey” has quite the same impact as “Grinch” or “Scrooge.” Alas.

As I recognized myself, I thought more about being a Grinch, and a Scrooge as well. I was discouraged. It was the Sunday before Christmas and I was still the pre-conversion Grinch/Scrooge/George Bailey. I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas. I was tired of the same. old. routine. Christmas had lost its novelty to me. More importantly, I had lost the spirit of Christmas.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, it finally came. It came later this year than any year in the past. Even today I was at Target getting stocking stuffers and buying shaving cream for my son. The aisles were crowded with people who didn’t want to be there. The checkers clearly had lost all will to live (who can blame them, really?). I had to park way out toward the highway because there was no room in the inn, er, in the parking lot for the gargantuan rental SUV (I needed Wallace Purling to say, “Jim, come back! You can have my stall!) 

Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.

I returned home, we had a huge take-out-Chinese-food-Christmas-Eve Dinner (thank you Alina!), and then we migrated to the living room. After everyone (else) had decorated the tree, my father-in-law sat down at the grand piano and started banging out the carols. We sang all the classics, from We Three Kings to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, everyone was singing as Cloyd pounded out the notes. Someone asked whether I Heard the Bells was in the book. It was, and as we sang I started to feel the cries trying to break free. The words of the third verse sounded like me:

And in despair I bowed my head:“There is no peace on earth,” I said,“For hate is strong and mocks the songOf peace on earth, good will to men.”

Finally, a Christmas carol that understands me. And then this:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Sweetly, quietly, the Spirit testified that it was true. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep. He knows me and my struggles and frustrations, and he brings peace to my soul.

A few minutes later I thought I’d make it tough for my father-in-law. Toward the back of the book I found a carol that was filled with flats and notes galore, and I flippantly suggested the song on page 75, more in hopes of getting a laugh than actually singning. I forgot how talented Cloyd is, and he started playing O' Holy Night. The family joined in and sang along:

O holy night! the stars are brightly shining,It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth;Long lay the world in sin and error pining,Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn;Fall on your knees, Oh hear the angel voices!O night divine, O night when Christ was born!O night, O holy night, O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand,So led by lights of a star sweetly gleaming,Here came the Wise Men from Orient Land.The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger,In all our trials born to be our friend.He knows our need, To our weakness is no strangerBehold your King, before Him lowly bend!Behold your King, before Him lowly bend!

Surely He taught us to love one another;His law is love and His gospel is peace;Chains shall He break for the slave he is our brother,And in His name all oppression shall cease.Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,Let all within us praise His holy name;Christ is the Lord, Oh praise His name forever!His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

I stopped singing and instead listened, not just to the voices of my daughters sitting next to me, or of the rest of the family surrounding the piano. I listened to the words and the message of the song. Indeed, I am a witness that Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, was born in a lowly stable over 2000 years ago. He is my friend and he knows my needs. He brings strength to me in my weakness.

Even when my heart is two sizes too small. Even when I complain about towns I don’t like or houses that aren’t my ideal. He softens my heart and fills me with love and peace.

Merry Christmas all you Whos down in Whoville! Merry Christmas Bedford Falls! And God bless us, everyone.

===============

For the Man Who Hated Christmas.

By Nancy W. Gavin

It's just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past ten years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas--oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it--overspending... the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma---the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way.

Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended; and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church. These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes. As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears.

It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford. Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat.

Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, "I wish just one of them could have won," he said. "They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them." Mike loved kids - all kids - and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse. That's when the idea for his present came. That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church. On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me. His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years. For each Christmas, I followed the tradition--one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.

The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal its contents.

As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn't end there.

You see, we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more.

Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad. The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing to take down the envelope.

Mike's spirit, like the Christmas spirit will always be with us.

==========

Trouble at the Inn

By Dina Donahue

For years now, whenever Christmas pageants are talked about in a certain little town in the Midwest, someone is sure to mention the name of Wallace Purling.

Wally's performance in one annual production of the Nativity play has slipped into the realm of legend. But the old-timers who were in the audience that night never tire of recalling exactly what happened.

Wally was nine that year and in the second grade, though he should have been in the fourth. Most people in town knew that he had difficulty keeping up. He was big and awkward, slow in movement and mind.

Still, Wally was well liked by the other children in his class, all of whom were smaller than he, though the boys had trouble hiding their irritation when Wally would ask to play ball with them or any game, for that matter, in which winning was important.

They'd find a way to keep him out, but Wally would hang around anyway—not sulking, just hoping. He was a helpful boy, always willing and smiling, and the protector, paradoxically, of the underdog. If the older boys chased the younger ones away, it would be Wally who'd say, "Can't they stay? They're no bother."

Wally fancied the idea of being a shepherd in the Christmas pageant, but the play's director, Miss Lumbard, assigned him a more important role. After all, she reasoned, the innkeeper did not have too many lines, and Wally's size would make his refusal of lodging to Joseph more forceful.

And so it happened that the usual large, partisan audience gathered for the town's yearly extravaganza of crooks and creches, of beards, crowns, halos and a whole stageful of squeaky voices.

No one on stage or off was more caught up in the magic of the night than Wallace Purling. They said later that he stood in the wings and watched the performance with such fascination that Miss Lumbard had to make sure he didn't wander onstage before his cue.

Then the time came when Joseph appeared, slowly, tenderly guiding Mary to the door of the inn. Joseph knocked hard on the wooden door set into the painted backdrop. Wally the innkeeper was there, waiting.

"What do you want?" Wally said, swinging the door open with a brusque gesture.

"We seek lodging."

"Seek it elsewhere." Wally spoke vigorously. "The inn is filled."

"Sir, we have asked everywhere in vain. We have traveled far and are very weary."

"There is no room in this inn for you." Wally looked properly stern.

"Please, good innkeeper, this is my wife, Mary. She is heavy with child and needs a place to rest. Surely you must have some small corner for her. She is so tired."

Now, for the first time, the innkeeper relaxed his stiff stance and looked down at Mary. With that, there was a long pause, long enough to make the audience a bit tense with embarrassment.

"No! Begone!" the prompter whispered.

"No!" Wally repeated automatically. "Begone!"

Joseph sadly placed his arm around Mary and Mary laid her head upon her husband's shoulder and the two of them started to move away. The innkeeper did not return inside his inn, however. Wally stood there in the doorway, watching the forlorn couple. His mouth was open, his brow creased with concern, his eyes filling unmistakably with tears.

And suddenly this Christmas pageant became different from all others.

"Don't go, Joseph," Wally called out. "Bring Mary back." And Wallace Purling's face grew into a bright smile. "You can have my room."

Some people in town thought that the pageant had been ruined. Yet there were others—many, many others—who considered it the most Christmas of all Christmas pageants they had ever seen.

==========

An Exchange of Gifts
By Diane Rayner

I grew up believing that Christmas was a time when strange and wonderful things happened, when wise and royal visitors came riding, when at midnight the barnyard animals talked to one another, and in the light of a fabulous star God came down to us as a little child. Christmas to me has always been a time of enchantment, and never more so than the year that my son Marty was eight.

That was the year that my children and I moved into a cozy trailer home in a forested area just outside of Redmond, Washington. As the holiday approached, our spirits were light, not to be dampened even by the winter rains that swept down Puget Sound to douse our home and make our floors muddy.

Throughout that December, Marty had been the most spirited, and busiest, of us all. He was my youngest; a cheerful boy, blond-haired and playful, with a quaint habit of looking up at you and cocking his head like a puppy when you talked to him. Actually, the reason for this was that Marty was deaf in his left ear, but it was a condition that he never complained about.

For weeks, I had been watching Marty. I knew that something was going on with him that he was not telling me about. I saw how eagerly he made his bed, took out the trash, and carefully set the table and helped Rick and Pam prepare dinner before I got home from work. I saw how he silently collected his tiny allowance and tucked it away, spending not a cent of it. I had no idea what all this quiet activity was about, but I suspected that somehow it had something to do with Kenny.

Kenny was Marty's friend, and ever since they had found each other in the springtime, they were seldom apart. If you called to one, you got them both. Their world was in the meadow, a horse pasture broken by a small winding stream, where the boys caught frogs and snakes, where they would search for arrowheads or hidden treasure, or where they would spend an afternoon feeding peanuts to the squirrels.

Times were hard for our little family, and we had to do some scrimping to get by. With my job as a meat wrapper and with a lot of ingenuity around the trailer, we managed to have elegance on a shoestring. But not Kenny's family. They were desperately poor, and his mother was having a real struggle to feed and clothe her two children. They were a good, solid family. But Kenny's mom was a proud woman, very proud, and she had strict rules.

How we worked, as we did each year, to make our home festive for the holiday! Ours was a handcrafted Christmas of gifts hidden away and ornaments strung about the place.

Marty and Kenny would sometimes sit still at the table long enough to help make cornucopias or weave little baskets for the tree. But then, in a flash, one would whisper to the other, and they would be out the door and sliding cautiously under the electric fence into the horse pasture that separated our home from Kenny's.

One night shortly before Christmas, when my hands were deep in dough, shaping tiny nutlike Danish cookies heavily spiced with cinnamon, Marty came to me and said in a tone mixed with pleasure and pride, "Mom, I've bought Kenny a Christmas present. Want to see it?" So that's what he's been up to, I said to myself. "It's something he's wanted for a long, long time, Mom."

After carefully wiping his hands on a dish towel, he pulled from his pocket a small box. Lifting the lid, I gazed at the pocket compass that my son had been saving all those allowances to buy. A little compass to point an eight-year-old adventurer through the woods.

"It's a lovely gift, Martin," I said, but even as I spoke, a disturbing thought came to mind. I knew how Kenny's mother felt about their poverty. They could barely afford to exchange gifts among themselves, and giving presents to others was out of the question. I was sure that Kenny's proud mother would not permit her son to receive something he could not return in kind.

Gently, carefully, I talked over the problem with Marty. He understood what I was saying.

"I know, Mom, I know! … But what if it was a secret? What if they never found out who gave it?"

I didn't know how to answer him. I just didn't know.

The day before Christmas was rainy and cold and gray. The three kids and I all but fell over one another as we elbowed our way about our little home, putting finishing touches on Christmas secrets and preparing for family and friends who would be dropping by.

Night settled in. The rain continued. I looked out the window over the sink and felt an odd sadness. How mundane the rain seemed for Christmas Eve! Would any royal men come riding on such a night? I doubted it. It seemed to me that strange and wonderful things happened only on clear nights, nights when one could at least see a star in the heavens.

I turned from the window, and as I checked on the ham and homemade bread warming in the oven, I saw Marty slip out the door. He wore his coat over his pajamas, and he clutched a tiny, colorfully wrapped box in his hand.

Down through the soggy pasture he went, then a quick slide under the electric fence and across the yard to Kenny's house. Up the steps on tiptoe, shoes squishing; open the screen door just a crack; place the gift on the doorstep, then a deep breath, a reach for the doorbell, and a press on it hard.

Quickly Marty turned, ran down the steps and across the yard in a wild race to get away unnoticed. Then, suddenly, he banged into the electric fence.

The shock sent him reeling. He lay stunned on the wet ground. His body quivered and he gasped for breath. Then slowly, weakly, confused and frightened, he began the grueling trip back home.

"Marty," we cried as he stumbled through the door, "what happened?" His lower lip quivered, his eyes brimmed.

"I forgot about the fence, and it knocked me down!"

I hugged his muddy little body to me. He was still dazed and there was a red mark beginning to blister on his face from his mouth to his ear. Quickly I treated the blister and, with a warm cup of cocoa soothing him, Marty's bright spirits returned. I tucked him into bed and just before he fell asleep, he looked up at me and said, "Mom, Kenny didn't see me. I'm sure he didn't see me."

That Christmas Eve I went to bed unhappy and puzzled. It seemed such a cruel thing to happen to a little boy while on the purest kind of Christmas mission, doing what the Lord wants us all to do--giving to others--and giving in secret at that. I did not sleep well that night. Somewhere deep inside I think I must have been feeling the disappointment that the night of Christmas had come and it had been just an ordinary, problem-filled night, no mysterious enchantment at all.

But I was wrong.

By morning the rain had stopped and the sun shone. The streak on Marty's face was very red, but I could tell that the burn was not serious. We opened our presents, and soon, not unexpectedly, Kenny was knocking on the door, eager to show Marty his new compass and tell about the mystery of its arrival. It was plain that Kenny didn't suspect Marty at all, and while the two of them talked, Marty just smiled and smiled.

Then I noticed that while the two boys were comparing their Christmases, nodding and gesturing and chattering away, Marty was not cocking his head. When Kenny was talking, Marty seemed to be listening with his deaf ear. Weeks later a report came from the school nurse, verifying what Marty and I already knew. "Marty now has complete hearing in both ears."

The mystery of how Marty regained his hearing, and still has it, remains just that--a mystery. Doctors suspect, of course, that the shock from the electric fence was somehow responsible. Perhaps so. Whatever the reason, I just remain thankful to God for the good exchange of gifts that was made that night.

So you see, strange and wonderful things still happen on the night of our Lord's birth. And one does not have to have a clear night, either, to follow a fabulous star.

Don’t Shoot!

About 15 years ago, we were sitting in the family room of our little rabbit hutch at BYU watching TV. Clayton was about 2, I would guess. TNT or TBS or one of those was showing Air Force 1—you know, the show where President Harrison Ford’s plane is hijacked by some Russian terrorist types. And President Harrison Ford kicks their Commie butts and then narrowly escapes before the plane goes crashing down into the ocean.

Oh, sorry. SPOILER ALERT! I suppose I should have said that before the previous paragraph. My bad.

Anyway, as with any good cold war movie, there was a lot of gunplay in Air Force 1. Edited for TV, of course.

Clayton wandered into the room and saw what was on TV. Well, he didn’t see what was on. He didn’t comprehend what was on. It wasn’t “hey Dad, whatcha watching?” We weren’t hanging out, eating popcorn and discussing the finer points of aviation-based anti-terrorism. He was 2. He walked into the family room and saw something on TV, and then he ran back to his room.

Within seconds, he came back out to the family room. I forget what toy he was holding—maybe a hammer (plastic) or golf club (also plastic) or something like that, but whatever the toy was, it had two distinct characteristics: (i) it was not a gun, but (ii) it was a gun to Clayton. He came running to the family room and started shooting everything and everybody. He was acting out exactly what he was watching on TV, without the plane or the Commies or a wife and daughter in peril.

Clorinda and I looked at each other with some measure of surprise. Clayton didn’t have any toy guns. I’m sure my card-carrying-NRA-member friends and family are questioning my parenting skills at this point, but really, why would a 2 year old need a gun? His aim was sure to be terrible and it seems like it would be an accident waiting to happen. He probably couldn’t even load it correctly.

But really, no guns. We hadn’t made any formal decision that our son would never have guns. To the contrary, he’s had all sorts of guns (nerf, super-soaker, and paint-ball all come to mind) throughout his childhood and youth (after age 2), and has gone shooting on numerous occasions with friends and leaders that are gun enthusiasts. His grandfather was career Army and three of his uncles have served or are currently serving in the Army and/or Air Force. No, we certainly weren’t (aren’t) anti-gun.

The remarkable thing to me, though, was JUST HOW READILY INFLUENCED HE WAS BY THE GUNS ON TV.

So why all this gun-speak tonight? I majored in Sociology (the communications classes were all full). I know that most social researchers opine that what we watch on TV does not correlate with our future behavior. I call bull.

Last Friday afternoon, just a couple hours after Clayton had walked home from school, and several minutes after I had picked up my FOURTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER from right outside the school (she attends a magnet school and her bus drops her at Mojave), there was a shooting right off of campus. A 16 year old boy was killed. Dead. Gone. Life over at 16 years old.

When I was 16 l spent most of my time drooling internally about girls in my high school. The closest thing to getting shot was that one time several of us got in a milk war during lunch (ooh, that’s a story—those little ½ pint cartons of milk stored outside for several days get really nasty, and people don’t really appreciate having them thrown at them. Turns out, Vice Principals don’t look too kindly on that behavior, either. Lesson learned.)

This 16 year old is dead.

We learned about the shooting as we were driving out of town to go visit Marien at school. Clayton had texted a friend who responded that she was still at school, and the school was on lock down because of the shooting. On the way out of town, we had been passed by police and ambulance with lights flashing and sirens blaring, heading the opposite direction. Turns out they were on their way to Mojave. My phone and Facebook messenger were buzzing with messages from friends worried about our kids, and I was scouring the internet for any news I could find on the shooting.

The most sobering part of the whole thing to me was that my kids just treated it like it was no. big. deal. Like it happened everyday. Just another neighborhood homicide.

The more I think on this the more I’ve come to conclude that there is too much celebration of guns in our society. I doubt the shooter had just watched Air Force 1 and decided “hey, I should go shoot someone!” No, the press has reported that it was probably gang-related. I can’t say whether the shooter ever watched any gunplay on TV or in a movie, but I see it everywhere. And it’s not a new thing. I was just visiting a client in the hospital yesterday and her brother was watching Bonanza on TV. Nobody questions the morality of Bonanza, but there they were, shooting at each other. Point is, we have embraced gun culture for a long, long time in our society, and it’s coming home to roost.

I am not anti-gun, and this isn’t intended as a gun-control piece. I recognize the futility in any plan that takes guns from law abiding citizens, not to mention the rights protected by the Constitution to keep and bear arms. I don’t think that gets us anywhere productive.

At the same time, the argument that more guns in the hands of citizens will decrease gun violence is silly. Oh, that is the case in some situations—if someone breaks into your house you are definitely in the right to defend yourself, including by deadly force (gunfire) if necessary. One of my dearest friends saved his own and his wife’s life in just such a manner. But the shooting on Friday—what are you going to do, arm a bunch of high school kids so that if one of them shows up with a gun the rest can shoot him or her? I don’t want to live in that society.

I don’t know the answer, but I’m pretty sure that like what it did to my 2 year old all those years ago, media that celebrates guns leads to kids that emulate what they see on TV or in the movies. I don’t think the arguments of either the left or right address that problem: the right exascerbates it by constantly arguing against anything that looks like gun control, and the left simultaneously (and hypocritcally) argues for strict gun laws AND puts out the very movies and TV shows that celebrate the guns they decry on the evening news.

Mostly though, I’m just still in shock that my kids narrowly missed being right there in the middle of a gunfight. At school.

Lord of the Flies

Last weekend Clorinda and the ladies had a “Super Saturday” craft fair thing at the church. I brought Kathryn over, along with several items that Clorinda had (conveniently) forgotten. Somehow I ended up there. All. Day. Long. I’m sure it was a strategic effort by Clorinda to trick me into helping clean up after the activity.

Somebody left the door between the kitchen and the outside wide open, so for about six hours, every fly in the greater North Las Vegas area had free access to the kitchen. And they had a party. I started noticing the flies about 2:30, and spent the next hour killing them (don’t tell PETA) or sucking them up with the vacuum (also don’t tell PETA). I’d estimate it at 60 flies or so over the course of the hour.

Insert a memory sequence here. I don't know, a couple of wavy lines....

A little over three years ago, Marien came back to my room to chat with me. She was laying on the bed and, right in the middle of a very important conversation, the topic of which escapes my mind right now, she blurted out, “whoa!, that fly’s ninja! It was there now, but it was right over there…” But as she turned to look at the former landing spot, she discovered that the fly was still there.

And then there was another.

And another.

And another.

Flies were (quite literally, it turns out) coming out of nowhere. OK, so as it turns out, it wasn’t nowhere. It was the carpet. They were coming out of the carpet in my bedroom. By the dozens.

Marien screamed and ran from the room, slamming the door behind herself. I was on my own. I quickly put on the camouflage and the night goggles and armed myself with a flyswatter, sans the camouflage and night goggles. I’m pretty sure I was in shorts and a t-shirt, and I was barefoot. But I was on the warpath.

I smacked flies on the wall and flies on the window. I smacked them on the ceiling and the bathroom mirror. Flies on the dresser, flies on the exercise bike (OK, I should be honest here. Considering that it spends exponentially more time holding up my clothes than exercising my fat rear end, the bike should probably be called a “chifferobe.” Perhaps if Tom Robinson could come by and bust it up for me, I’d have some more space in the bedroom and I could start exercising. Or not). And then I discovered them rising from the carpet. What the what? (It was like that scene in Thriller where the dead rise from the grave and do a synchronized dance routine. Except they were flies, not zombies. And there was no dance routine. And I didn't have a red leather outfit with lots of zippers OR yellow contact lenses. Otherwise, it was exactly the same as Thriller.)

I grabbed the vacuum. And I armed the hose attachment. This was war.

Flies were getting sucked up left and right. They were slow. Really slow. Downright sluggish. It was like they were drunk, just kind of fly-stumbling around my bedroom. It kind of removed the challenge of the hunt, but I was OK with that. I did not want flies in my bedroom. I do not like them, Sam I Am.

Despite my incredible hunting prowess and the sucking power of the vacuum, the flies kept bringing in reinforcements.  I couldn’t figure out from whence they were coming, so I commenced recon. (Did I use that right? I should ask my brother-in-law, but I’m too prideful to admit that he knows something I don’t know. Flip. It’s probably wrong. I’m just saying I started watching their moves to figure out where their base was. Roger that.)

I realized that they were crawling from the carpet near one corner of our bedroom. It made no sense. All that was in that corner were the aforementioned chifferobe, a small dresser, and a bag with some papers Clorinda had dropped there about three weeks prior, from a merit badge class she had taught up at a scout camp.

I moved the bag and gagged. It was swarming with flies and maggots.

Clorinda had come to a young mens' encampment up on Mt. Charleston about three weeks prior to teach a Citizenship class to the boys. She arrived at lunch time, and we gave her a brown-bag lunch so she would have a little nourishment before teaching the class. Wanting to get set up, she put the lunch into her bag and hiked up to the amphitheater where the class was to be held. She taught her class, packed up her stuff, and headed home where she brought the bag in to the bedroom and dropped it on the floor near the chifferobe.

So here’s something interesting:

The female housefly can lay up to 500 eggs at one time, though she deposits each egg individually. The ideal incubation location for a housefly egg is in something warm and moist, such as manure…. [Or a sandwich.] The eggs gestate for 24 hours before the flies hatch.  

Once the egg hatches, the housefly emerges in its larval stage. It is also known as a maggot at this point. The maggot looks like a legless worm, with a pointed end (the mouth) and two spiracles (breathing holes) at the back end. Maggots eat continuously over a period of four to five days. [Especially if there’s a sandwich available, ‘cause everyone likes sandwiches.] Before their metamorphosis into the next stage of development, the maggots migrate to a drier, darker location. [Such as under a chifferobe.] 

At the start of the pupal stage, the fly is approximately 8 mms long. As the pupa ages, the pupal skin will change colors from yellow to red to brown, and then black. If temperature is optimal, the pupa matures in two to six days, though it can take up to 17 days in colder climates. [In case you’re wondering, it takes about 14 days in an air-conditioned bedroom.]  

When the housefly emerges from the pupal stage, it has attained full maturity and now looks like a fly. [Although it may appear to be an intoxicated zombie fly.] The adult housefly is ready to reproduce within five days of maturity…. [There’s a joke here, but this is a family blog, so I’ll refrain.]  

Most houseflies die within one month of maturing from the pupal stage. [Or within minutes of showing up in my bedroom.] They can die from cold, lack of food and old age. Humans can assist the process by application of insecticides and fly strips. [Also, flyswatters and vacuum cleaners.] To manage fly infestation, cover open sources of excrement or rotting vegetables, such as animal housing or compost bins. [Better yet: don’t bring those things into your bedroom!] Killing adult flies will not eliminate the source of contamination unless you remove any viable breeding grounds for the flies…. (http://www.ehow.com/about_6169737_life-cycle-houseflies.html)

For the love of Pete, I had to get that stupid sandwich out of my house. Out it went. I took the liberty of drenching the inside of the bag with bug spray, then tied it off in two other plastic bags, and put it in the garbage can outside. And then I resumed the attack. It took a long time, particularly since I was fighting the battle alone. Killing flies is one thing, but if there’s a show on Nickelodean, well, don’t bother me with trifles. There will be blood tonight!

By my count, I killed or sucked up over 160 flies that night. That doesn’t count the swarms of flies and their little pupa friends hanging out in Clorinda’s bag, nor does it account for any that were sucked out of the floor directly by the vacuum. [The real part of the vacuum, not the wand that was so Jedi in the one-on-one battles.] Clorinda, who conveniently was not home that Thursday night, said she killed another 40 or 50 the next day. That is WAY to high a number for my liking.

There is one silver lining to all this. This occurred the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. We went out of town over that weekend—in fact, I think we left Friday night. Had those little buggers decided to wait just 36 hours longer to, and I quote, “emerge from the pupal state,” we would have returned home to HUNDREDS OF FLIES IN OUR HOUSE. 

I think I would have pulled a Marien and just run away at that point.

On Ranches and Shadows and Creeks

The year was 1998. Clorinda and I had one child and were expecting, any moment, our second. I was self-employed and on what I call my “sabbatical” from college. Yeah, I know those are generally reserved for professors, but I was in my twenties, so I knew everything already. Being self-employed is great except for on payday. Everyone else gets paid first, which means that sometimes you have to tell your wife that there’s no money that week. Clorinda had taken a really early retirement from the school district to stay home and raise our kids, which is how we wanted it.

Looking around, I realized I was not on a trajectory headed for great things. Or even one that would allow me to provide for a wife and two kids. I decided I needed to go back to school before the kids were old enough to know we were poor.

I applied to BYU as a transfer student and this time they decided to let me in. (Let’s just say that hadn’t been so generous when I applied as a B- student out of high school.) We sold our house MUCH quicker than we’d anticipated (clearly underpriced it) and we moved out in February 1999.

As I drove out of town for the last time, I thought it would be a cold day in, well, in Las Vegas before I ever came back to Las Vegas. There really wasn’t much I liked about Vegas. It was hot. Really hot. Africa hot. As a fat guy, I don’t do heat. As a skinny guy I didn’t do heat, either. I have never been a partier, so the Vegas lifestyle didn’t hold much for me. I figured I had come to Vegas solely to meet Clorinda and get married, and having done that, I was free to leave for good.

Sometimes, God has other plans.

I pushed really hard in school to get done. I did my junior and senior years of college in about 14 months. I majored in sociology, which I loved but which also meant I was qualified to either (a) go to graduate school or (b) get a job at the GAP. Since the GAP wouldn’t have me, I decided to go to law school. I did law school in two and one-half years, and graduated in December 2002. While graduating early had its perks, one of those was not employment. The legal industry tends to hire on an academic year, so most places were looking to hire in April and for employees to start in July or August. BYU was fully prepared to kick me to the curb (how’s that for gratitude for all those tuition dollars?) and I needed a job.

Through a series of events, I learned that five new judges had been elected in Clark County in November 2002, all of whom would presumably be looking for law clerks. I applied with all five, was interviewed by three, and was ultimately won in a game of chance by Judge Valerie Adair. On the Monday morning after Thanksgiving, I arrived at school and opened my laptop where I was greeted with an email offering me a job as a judicial law clerk.

Somewhere, God was laughing at me. Well, probably not, but he was letting me know that, for whatever reason, I needed to be in Las Vegas.

Clorinda didn’t (and doesn’t) have the same issues that I had with Las Vegas, and she had already picked out a house for us to buy (go back and re-read my entry about marrying her. There’s a pattern here…). I started work mid December, closed on the house about December 18, and we moved in on Christmas Day, 2002.

Our first day of church was in the Craig Ranch Ward. Steve Hitchcock was the Bishop, Danny York was his First Counselor and Dave Gunnell was his Second Counselor. There was a guy named Mike Montandon in the ward, and Bishop Hitchcock called me Brother Fontandon for about six months. But that’s OK, there are few people I’d rather be confused with than Mike Montandon. Craig Ranch was a whole new experience for us. We had just come from BYU, where our ward consisted of a small section of a large married-student apartment complex. Everyone was about the same age and were either newly married or had been married for a few years and had a kid or two or three. Everyone was active in church, everyone was in school (at least one of the spouses was), and nobody had any money because we were all starving students. It was a pretty homogenous group.

Craig Ranch was different. Craig Ranch had young couples with no kids and old empty-nester couples. It had large families, blended families, and single-parent families. It had life-long members of the Church and recent converts. It had professionals and blue collared workers and students and retirees. It had active members and partially active and less-active and inactive members of the Church. But, like the BYU 102nd Ward, it had wonderful people. We came to love it very quickly.

Almost as soon as we had started to recognize people and learn their names and who was married to whom, the Stake Presidency determined that some changes needed to be made in Ward boundaries in the Stake. (For those of you not LDS, Mormons organize congregations a little differently from many other churches. It is done geographically, approved by the First Presidency of the Church (the President of the Church and his two counselors). An individual congregation is a “ward.” A “stake” is a group of wards, usually 8-10, and is presided over by a Stake Presidency (again, a President and two counselors).)

In May, 2003, we (and our neighbors) were moved from the Craig Ranch Ward to the Shadow Creek Ward. The Stake moved another chunk of people from the Hidden Canyon Ward into Craig Ranch.

The change was abrupt, but it was not terribly hard for us. We had only been in Craig Ranch for 5 months at that point and hadn’t made many strong friendships. Most of those we had made lived in our neighborhood, so they were moving with us. Dave Gunnell became the new Bishop of the Shadow Creek Ward, with Nolan McClain as his First Counselor and Adam Murray as his Second Counselor. About a year later, the Murrays moved to Idaho and Bishop Gunnell called Chris Adams to be his new Second Counselor.

I was asked to teach Sunday School (which I loved) and early morning seminary (which I also loved). (Another aside: seminary is also different in the LDS church. It is a religion class for high-school aged students held each day before school. The course of study rotates between Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Church History. I was teaching Old Testament. [Real wrath-of-God type stuff! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!] I took the same classes 25+ years ago at the Hawaii Kai chapel right down Lunalilo Home Road from Kaiser High School.)

My sociology degree proved helpful in this new ward. Shadow Creek was demographically different from Craig Ranch. Although there was still a diversity of ages, etc., the Shadow Creek demographic was definitely a younger married crowd. Most of the people were close in age to us, or a little younger, and there were kids everywhere. There were more white collar workers and students in Shadow Creek than there had been in Craig Ranch, but not as many older, established families. It was fun for us and for our kids.

I did the seminary thing for one year, and was still teaching Sunday School about two years later. North Las Vegas had experienced a huge real estate boom, and what had been a ward of about 400 people two years earlier had grown to over 1000 members. We filled the chapel, the entire cultural hall (Mormon-speak for gymnasium), and out into the foyers. Bishop Gunnell could not keep track of all of the members, and the Stake President determined it was time to split Shadow Creek and create a new ward, the Sierra Ranch Ward.

Because Bishop Gunnell resided in the boundaries of the new Sierra Ranch Ward, he was called to be the Bishop there. Shadow Creek got a new bishop, Ed Blackham. He called Phil Christensen as his First Counselor and Paul Braithwaite as the Second Counselor. He also called Cody Noble to be the Elders Quorum President (and another aside: the Elders Quorum, together with the High Priest Group, is the men’s organization in the church.) Cody, probably not thinking straight, asked for me to be his First Counselor, and Cody Hughes to be the Second Counselor.

I didn’t really know Cody Noble. I knew Cody Hughes—he was a dental student at UNLV and we had enjoyed a long adversarial relationship as to which profession was the higher calling, lawyers or dentists. I guess I’m an anti-dentite. Anyway, Cody Noble was also an attorney, but he had moved in during the boom and was just one of the masses that I had not yet gotten to know. He became one of my dearest friends and remains so today. As for Cody Hughes, well, he helped me to soften my stance a bit on dentists (I’ll actually go to a dentist now and then). I love that guy, too, although I don’t see him nearly enough.

I served with the Codys for about twenty months. We were sitting in Stake Conference in February 2007 and the Stake Presidency announced that Paul Braithwaite had been called to a Stake calling. Immediately I knew that I would be called to replace Paul in the Bishopric, and that prompting proved correct. Brother Christensen was also released, and Lance Bohne was called to be Bishop Blackham’s First Counselor at the same time.

Three short months later, while sitting in a training meeting for Bishoprics, the Stake President announced that more changes were coming to the Stake. Some wards had continued to grow, while others were shrinking. He announced that a special meeting would be held about ten days later for four wards, including the Shadow Creek and Craig Ranch Wards. Driving home that night I had a lot of questions, not the least of which was why? Why had I been called to be in the bishopric for only 3 months? It did not make any sense to me. It soon would.

At the meeting, my neighborhood, which had previously been cut-out and moved to Shadow Creek, was moved back to Craig Ranch. Craig Ranch also received an entirely new Bishopric. Mark Brown was called to be the Bishop. Mike Avance was the First Counselor. And some bum named Fontandon Fontano was called to be the Second Counselor. All of us were from the “new” part of the ward.

Much of Craig Ranch had changed since I’d attended there four years earlier. Demographically, it still looked the same, but a lot of the familiar faces had moved out and new ones had taken their place. It was odd to sit up on the stand at church and look out over a congregation where I only knew a few of the people.

There was a lot of excitement, mingled with frustration and maybe a little resentment, with the changes to Craig Ranch. I think some people were hurt that nobody in the new Bishopric was from the “old” part of Craig Ranch, but the vast majority of the people were warm and welcoming. My kids quickly made new friends, and our little family soon felt right at home in Craig Ranch.

I loved the new calling. I got to work with the Primary and with the Young Men and Young Women. We had secret handshakes and special greetings and goofy nicknames for each other. (It was there that I was nicknamed “Gibby” by some thoughtful young women. “That’s Brother Gibby to you,” I would respond. I had no idea what “Gibby” meant until one day that my girls were watching iCarly on TV and some fat dorky kid was named Gibby. Thanks a bunch Sidney, Shelby, and Nicole!) There were Young Women’s recognition nights and Eagle Scout courts of honor. There were youth conferences in Panaca and service projects at retirement homes. There were ward talent shows and Christmas parties.

It wasn’t all fun and games. There was a lot of ministering. Many nights spent in members’ homes, offering simple words of encouragement, giving blessings, or simply listening and sharing comfort. There were talks and lessons and testimonies. Craig Ranch had become our home.

In 2010, Bishop Brown was transferred to San Antonio and the bishopric was released. My old name-nemesis Mike Montandon was called to be the bishop, and he called Nolan McClain and Whitney Te’o to be his counselors. Mike is a big man (about 6’5”) with an even bigger personality. He loves to tell stories and has one for seemingly every situation. He has a great capacity to love and lead people and was a great choice to succeed Bishop Brown as the Bishop.

I was called to serve in the Young Men, which was a great change. I loved those boys, one of which was Clayton. But that change lasted only a short while. In February 2011 I was called to serve in the Stake Young Men's organization, meaning that much of my time was spent with Young Men leaders from other wards. I served with Andrew Webb, who was the president, and Boyd Nelson, the First Counselor. I learned much from these two great men, and had some remarkable opportunities to serve. In September 2012, Andrew was transferred to New Mexico and Boyd was called to the Bishopric of his ward, and I was left without a calling.

That lasted only a short time. I was soon teaching Sunday School in the Gospel Principles class (a class for new and returning members and those investigating the Church). I absolutely loved the class. Teaching simple truths and watching as people grasp them and accept them was such a source of joy for me. I was also teaching in High Priest Group, working with the young men as a Scout Committee Chair, and working at the Temple. I was plenty busy.

In June 2013, Brother McClain grabbed me and asked me to serve as the Ward Mission Leader. I would work directly with the full time missionaries (you’ve seen them—the ones with white shirts, conservative ties, and black name tags that ride around on bikes and talk to everyone they see). I readily accepted the call and immersed myself in the work. I was blessed to work with 17 missionaries over about 28 months. More than that, I was able to work with incredible individuals and families that were being taught by the missionaries. I loved it. I loved everything about it. It was the best calling I had had since I had worn the name tag 23-25 years ago (Oklahoma, O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A!).

In September I was released and received a new calling on the Stake High Council. Clorinda had been called in the end of July to serve as the Relief Society President (yet another aside: the Relief Society is the women’s group in the Church.) We were both really busy in our new callings.

All the while the ward continued to be our family. New members moved in and others moved out. The new ones became fast friends and the old ones would come back for special occasions. So many eternal friendships. And then everything changed.

On Sunday we had a regional broadcast from Salt Lake. After the broadcast concluded, President Turner from the Stake Presidency read a letter inviting all members of the Stake to attend a meeting at the Stake Center that evening at 6:00 where all ward boundaries in the Stake would be realigned. High Councilors and Bishops were asked to come at 4:00 for an early meeting.

At about 4:10, President Stewart began sharing the new boundaries with the High Council and Bishops. The first thing from his mouth was that the Shadow Creek and Craig Ranch wards would be dissolved and would cease to exist.

Wait. What?

I don’t think I heard that right.

Be dissolved?

Cease to exist?

What?

I’m not sure who snuck that 2x4 into the room, but I felt it crushing my face. Proverbially, of course. I didn’t follow much more in the meeting. My mind was somewhere else. I was sitting directly behind Bishop Montandon, who had received the news only minutes before in a separate meeting with President Stewart. I think he and I were lost in very similar emotions as we learned that the ward in which we had each invested so much was no more. It was a blur.

The 6:00 meeting was more of the same. I had responsibilities associated with my calling, so I just kind of blocked the emotions and did what I needed to do. Kathryn and Clorinda were hit really hard by the news, and Marien (who learned about it via text message) was distraught. We had grown up in Craig Ranch and Shadow Creek, and they no longer existed. We had given our all in both wards, but increasingly so in Craig Ranch, and now both wards were gone. It felt like all of our efforts were for naught. We were being separated from the lion’s share of the ward and being moved to the Civic Center Ward. The others were moved into Hidden Canyon. There were a lot of questions.

Yesterday I read a talk from Elder M. Russell Ballard given at October’s General Conference entitled “God is at the Helm”. He spoke of holding fast to the “old ship Zion”, stealing a phrase from Brigham Young. Elder Ballard talked about how we can deal with difficult questions or circumstances in our lives:

“Looking for human weakness in others is rather easy. However, we make a serious mistake by noticing only the human nature of one another and then failing to see God’s hand working through those He has called. 

“Focusing on how the Lord inspires His chosen leaders and how He moves the Saints to do remarkable and extraordinary things despite their humanity is one way that we hold on to the gospel of Jesus Christ and stay safely aboard the Old Ship Zion.”

Later, describing the heartache he and his family endured when three of his grandchildren passed, he taught that we must “[hold] on to the gospel truths with both hands.” When we do, “[o]ur questions [will be] answered with comfort and assurance through the Atonement of the Savior.”

Then, last night at High Council, we had a missionary report from Megan Knowles, who just returned from New Mexico. She talked for a bit about working in Winslow Arizona [such a fine sight to see] and how she and her companion had really built up the area and had several people preparing for baptism, when she was suddenly transferred. She said initially she resented the change, but she came to know that it was not about her or her efforts, it was the work of the Lord and it was his kingdom.

And then I really understood. Craig Ranch and Shadow Creek were my homes, but they were just divisions of the greater whole. The Kingdom of God on Earth is my home. My efforts were not all for naught. But I am going to miss Craig Ranch. A lot.

I’m going to miss the Woodin boys shaking my hand each week and sitting behind me in Sacrament meeting, I’ll especially miss Jefferson’s random, unintentionally hilarious comments (“Mom, did you throw away my massive collection of cups?!”). I will miss watching the Harms act like newlyweds, only 50+ years too late. I will miss the hugs from Victoria and the singing-hellos from Dani. I won’t miss Josh’s fish handshakes. I’ll miss the Rosses and their three crazy-cute-cookie-cutter daughters. I’ll miss chicken-on-the-hill and pig-in-the-park. I’ll miss Breakfast-for-Christmas parties and YM/YW service dinners. I will miss Relief Society service auctions. I’ll miss Cherien Fontandon. I’ll miss the awesome discussions in High Priest Group. I’ll miss occasionally butting heads with, well, you know. I’ll miss Steve Heath’s rockstar image and Darlene being his groupie. I’ll miss the Halls and the Endsleys (but I expect an invitation to the Temple for both of your families!). I’ll miss new families like the Jacksons and the Blacks, and old timers like the Brooks and the Brooks. I’ll miss my hair-twin John Moore and his Ute-wife Janie. I won’t miss Wade Blake constantly telling me I’m the next bishop (‘cause I’m not!), but I will miss his sweet wife and family. I’ll miss Josh and Sabrina and Mitzi, although I suspect I won’t miss Sabrina that much since she’s always at my house. I’ll miss learning from Jim Olive and I’ll miss Mike Montandon’s “I was doing something stupid when” stories. I’ll miss checking off each week that someone makes a comment about me over the pulpit.

I didn’t list you, please know that I will miss you too. You are my family and I love you. I've just gone on too long... Happy Trails Craig Ranch and Shadow Creek. See you in the funny papers.

At Farmers Only Dot Com

Do you ever watch those commercials for dating sites and wonder what if? When the guy from eHarmony gets talking about the 29 different dimensions of compatibiliity, I wonder if Clorinda and I were to sign up would we match on even 1 or 2 of them. More than one person has questioned what she is doing with a bum like me, which is understandable. She's smart and beautiful and nice and human. It's her fault, though.

So in 1995, I moved to Las Vegas to go to UNLV (don't worry--I've since repented). I'd never been to Las Vegas, but it was a good chance to try something new. I attended the University Ward (congregation) on campus and started to make some friends. Well, I started to follow people that I recognized around and hoped that they would acknowledge my existence, with varying degrees of success.

My big night came in mid-February. The ward was going to the Las Vegas Temple to participate in baptisms, and since I didn't have anything going on (heck, I still couldn't get people to talk to me), I signed up to go along. I was asked to perform confirmations, so there I was sitting in the room when this tall, slender beauty walked in and took a seat. She handed me a slip of paper with the name GATRELL, so that I'd get it right. "Is it guh-TRELL?" I asked.

"It's GA-trell" came the reply. And those were the first words I ever heard Clorinda speak.

I was fascinated by this tall brunette. She was certainly not caught up in herself, which was refreshing. She shunned the typical accoutrements of 20-something life. She was a math teacher (1st eHarmony fail) who favored Europe over Hawaii (second eFail).

But I was slightly obsessed by her.

As luck would have it, I had found a friend (thanks Wendell for taking pity on me) who happened to run with the same group that Clorinda did, so I started hanging out with her. Except that she didn't hang out with us. She was filled with excuses for not going to get Thai food ("I have to go to bed because I have to teach in the morning") (never mind that we went at 6:00) or the movie ("I have to go to bed because I have to teach in the morning") (but it's Friday) or to make late night prime-rib-runs ("I have to go to bed because I have to teach in the morning") (what does that have to do with getting prime rib at 11:30 at night?). I was starting to think that she like math more than any normal person should.

And then I saw the light--I knew just what I had to do. I had a math class at UNLV that was--how do I say this delicately--a disaster. The teacher was from India or Pakistan or some neighboring country. His mastery of the English language was considerably better than my Hindi, but it was certainly a far cry from the Queen's English. Add to that the fact that he lectured for the entire class period while facing a white board and writing out math problems. I was in serious danger of turning my college experience into something like my high school experience, which was not a good thing. I asked Clorinda for some help.

She said yes.

And then, just a few days before I was supposed to go to her apartment for the help, it clicked. All of the math made sense. So I did what any good, honest, red-blooded American college male would do in that circumstance. I played dumb.

Clorinda did an amazing job teaching me finite math. I think she caught on that I didn't really need the help, probably because I watched her a lot more than I watched the math problems she was working out on the paper. But it was good--she confirmed what I already knew--I had figured out the math! Woohoo!

That was our first date, and like all good first dates, it led no where. Clorinda had to get to bed early  because she had to teach in the morning. (Swear words).

Having figured out finite math, I now understood that the school year was finite, meaning it would end at some point and take with it Clorinda's (really lame) excuse for not going out with me. On Memorial Day 1995, the ward had an activity where we learned to country-swing dance (I am amazing, by the way, but I've retired, so you'll just have to take my word for it). The last day of school that year was going to be that Friday, and knowing that Clorinda really wanted to see King Arthur's Tournament at the Excalibur (you know, I could do a whole blog entry or seven about how tacky this town is. Whatever), I asked her to go. Having lost her excuse (thank you Clark County School District) and being presented with the opportunity to go to a show she really wanted to see on someone else's dime, she was forced to accept.

When Friday came around we went over to the show. It was great fun, and we got to eat like midieval peasants. Apparently, midieval peasants did not use silverware. Or napkins. They just ate large portions of chicken with their hands. I tried to hold Clorinda's hand, but it slipped right through from all the grease.

After the show we walked around and talked. We sat by the pool at the Tropicana and dipped our feet in the water. About 11:00, a couple who had clearly been knocking back the adult beverages that night came to join us. I say join us, but really they were soliciting us to join them in a little skinny dipping. This preceded the "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" days, so we were less than inclined to join in the festivities. (eFail no. 3.) (Just kidding.)

That was Friday. On Saturday we went to Lake Mead with a bunch of people from the ward. Sunday was church and related activities. Monday I worked, but we had FHE that night and then went to Sam's Town with some friends. On Tuesday, Clorinda boarded a plane for Germany (an obvious eFail no. 4). She came by my apartment before she left to say good-bye, but that was it. For nine (9!) weeks she was in Europe and elsewhere. And I was in Las Vegas, still chasing the cheap-prime-rib dream.

I did a little dating, though not much, while she was gone. We certainly were not an item, let alone an exclusive item. She came home for ten days in the end of July/beginning of August. I stayed at home on Friday night awaiting her arrival. When she finally showed up, she dropped by the apartment but wouldn't even come inside. It was a "hi, I'm back" visit that lasted all of about two minutes.

I wasted a Friday night in Vegas for that? (eFail 5.)

Saturday morning I drove my butt over to her apartment to ask her to go out that night. We did. And we went out just about every day the rest of the time she was in town. But that was only a week and a half. And then she was gone again.

Her dad was a career man in the Army and had been in Germany for 5 years. He had been transferred to Carlisle Pennsylvania, and Clorinda's brother was returning home from his mission to Bulgaria, so Clorinda was headed East to see him.

Fast forward to the end of September. On a Saturday morning, we went to Zion National Park in Utah to do some hiking with some friends. They stayed out in Logandale, but Clorinda and I headed back to Las Vegas for a friend's wedding reception that night. After the reception ended, we headed to Clorinda's apartment to watch movie. I don't remember the movie at all, because we never got around to watching it.

Clorinda was in the mood to talk.

And talk she did. For about two hours, she explained to me the five (5) things (this was pre-eHarmony, so there were only five) she was looking for in the perfect man. Devilish good looks (obviously), highly intelligent (duh), more money that Bill Gates (wait, what?), really great shoes (?), and NOT from Idaho (whew). I had barely passed!

OK, so those weren't the five things. It was five completely different things. She was looking for someone who loved his family, loved the Lord, was sophisticated (?), had a sense of humor, and was intelligent. Thankfully, the finite math class had not convinced Clorinda that I did not qualify under two or more of her qualifications. She finished (for real, it took like two hours) and then turned and looked me straight in the eyes and said, "You have all five." And then she stared.

After a few seconds, I realized I'd forgotten my line. I looked to the wings, but there was nobody there to prompt me, so I said the only thing I could think of.

"I guess this means we're getting married."

That was late Saturday night. It may have been Sunday morning by that time. That is an important fact.

We attended church Sunday morning, and then we were driving out to my parents' house for dinner. Realizing what we had just committed to do, I realized we would have to tell our parents and suggested that we should maybe decide on a date for a wedding.

"Well," said Clorinda, "my family is coming to Las Vegas in December for the wedding."

Wait, what? But we JUST DECIDED THIS LAST NIGHT! LIKE AT MIDNIGHT!

"Back in August, when I was in Pennsylvania, I made plane reservations for the family to come to Las Vegas in December for our wedding."

Let's talk about August. We'd had fewer dates than I have fingers. We certainly had not discussed the "L" word ("love", if you're confused). But she made plane reservations? Mind you, plane reservations in 1995 were far different than they are today. You couldn't just log on to Travelocity and compare ticket prices across a bunch of airlines. No, you had to physically call the airline, or use a travel agent, or go to the airport and stand in line. LIFE WAS HARD IN THE 90s! But she had done it.

I had been engaged for six weeks and I had no idea. Best six weeks of the entire engagement.

Come December, her family all arrived for her wedding. She, of course, looked radiant. I was devilishly handsome and wasn't from Idaho, so I did my part. We were, in reality, a couple of really naive, young kids, but it's been almost twenty years and we're still going strong.

Today is Clorinda's birthday. She's older than me again, just like she is for two months every year. Happy birthday Clorinda. I don't think that eHarmony would put us together, but maybe they don't have it all figured out over there. I love you.

Hawai'i Nei

A few nights ago I was invited to attend a missionary fireside. For the non-Mormon crowd, a fireside has nothing to do with fires. Or sides. In fact, this particular fireside was in an air-conditioned, brick church building that doesn't permit open flame. I think firesides evolved from FDR's "fireside chats" back in the '30s and '40s, a series of radio broadcasts hosted by the President on Sunday evenings. The Mormons took the concept and ran with it, even though FDR was a Democrat. (That part is a little Mormon humor. A very little.) Now Mormons have little meetings where they get together and listen to someone talk about something. On this occasion, it was a missionary fireside--the speaker was asked to talk about his conversion to Mormonism, and it was for people that were new converts or investigating the church themselves.

The fireside itself wasn't anything remarkable, just a guy telling his story, but his story really brought some memories back to the forefront of my mind. Tom (that was his name (I think it still is his name)) started out by saying that his first introduction to the Church came in Hawaii when he was working in the General Counsel's office at UH. His conversion process took some seven years, beginning in the early '70s, and it involved a handful of people that were dear to me. (NOTE: I didn't know Tom prior to this meeting. I was at the fireside in connection with a new calling I received in church, and the congregation hosting the fireside is not my own.)

My Hawaii story doesn't start in the early '70s. It started in the fall of 1984, when I first attended Albion Middle School. It was seventh grade, and I was moving up in the world. I had accomplished just about everything an elementary student could accomplish at Silver Mesa Elementary (GO EAGLES!). And by that I mean I had offended just about every teacher I had, including the one time that I got in trouble because my teacher thought I was flipping her off when I was, in reality, pretending to pick my nose so as to make a kid named Billy laugh in the middle of math class. I was a misunderstood youth.

Anyway, back to seventh grade. The transition from elementary school thug to middle school nobody was a difficult one for me. Despite my incredible good looks, charming personality, and dry sense of humor, my reality was much closer to Diary of a Wimpy Kid than Alex Rider. OK, so nobody's as cool as Alex Rider, but really, middle school was the worst two years of my life. And seventh grade was the worst. THE. WORST.

Within a few months, I decided that I just needed to not go to school anymore. I made myself sick and basically skipped school for almost two weeks. My anti-social behavior had the unintended, yet predictable consequence of pushing my friends away. My mom eventually caught on to my fake illness and sent me back to school. You know, thirty years later and being a parent myself, I can't imagine how confusing my behavior must have been to my mom and dad. Man, I can't believe I was even allowed to have kids after that. Good thing they didn't administer that test in seventh grade, or I'd still be wishing I could figure out where kids came from.

Although I returned to school, I was not particularly motivated to do two weeks' worth of make-up work. I did a little here and there, including an invention project for one of my classes--a skateboard that had a foot-belt attached to it. Yeah, that didn't help my image.

My mother decided to let me in on a secret, though, in an effort to get me motivated. She and my dad had gotten tickets to Hawaii and they were going to take me and my brother with them. (Now that is a noble cause--give me the sixty-five, I'm on the job.) I was very excited, but very worried, too. Oh, not about school. Forget that stuff. I was very concerned about shorts. What I really needed to know was whether everyone wore OP (Ocean Pacific) corduroy shorts, because that was the stuff right there. Can you say stylish?

Notwithstanding my fashion concerns, we managed to get to Hawaii. I loved it. I loved everything about it. We hit the beach on Oahu, rode a helicopter above Kauai, and watched stingrays swimming in the lagoon below our balcony in Kona. We spent the last day in Waikiki doing more touristy things, and then headed to the airport for a red-eye home. And then the surprise. Our tickets were on PanAm, and PanAm had declared bankruptcy while we were off island and not paying attention to the news. My dad scrambled to get us tickets on another airline and home we went.

I had picked a really nice aloha shirt for myself that I wore to school with my white OP shorts. I was Magnum PI, minus the mustache and Ferrari. And the chest hair. I didn't have chest hair. Yet. I still can't figure out why seventh grade was so difficult for me.

Anyway, about a year later, my folks announced that we were moving the whole family to Hawaii. Moving. To Hawaii. Oddly, I was not happy about that move. I had worked through most of the awkwardness and had made-up with my friends and things were FINALLY looking up, and now my folks wanted to RIP ME AWAY from everything good in my life and move me somewhere 2,995 miles away to an ISLAND in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?! Did I mention I was a confused little 14 year old?

In July 1986 we packed up everything we owned and it all got loaded on a big truck that was going to drive it to Hawaii for us. OK, so that's not true. It was loaded on a truck, but it was going to LA (I assume) to get loaded on a ship and slow-boated to Hawaii, where we could pick it up after we got there. We went the Northern California route so that we could visit my grandparents before flying out.

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, and unbeknownst to any of us, my dad's business partners declared bankruptcy. That put us in a real bind. My parents were not wealthy, and the company was supposed to be paying for our move. They didn't. Suddenly we were in Hawaii with no place to live, no job, no furniture, and only the clothes in our luggage. My parents scrambled and rented a house for us in Hawaii Kai, down at the Southeast end of Oahu. It was not big, but it worked. The lack of furniture worked, too. My brothers would sneak onto the nearby golf course and collect lost golf balls (you wouldn't believe how many people lost golf balls on the short grass right by the hole), and we concocted all sorts of games to play in the sunken family room. Some members of the ward donated a few items of furniture, and we managed to put together something like a presentable wardrobe by hitting the Aloha Stadium swap meet.

All of this, and four more years, came rushing back to my memory while Tom talked about his conversion in Hawaii. (NOTE: I could go on for a long time about Hawaii, but I've spent too much time talking about seventh grade. You know, I don't map these things out--I just kind of type what comes to my mind and see where it takes me. I will revisit Hawaii, as a topic and (hopefully) a vacation destination, but for now let me say that Hawaii changed my life. Some of my dearest friends are from the four years that I spent there. When people ask me where I'm from, I say I grew up in Hawaii, because I did.)

Tom said that his wife had worked with the Stake President (a leader of + ten congregations in a geographic area) and his two sons. I immediately suspected he was talking about James Hallstrom and his sons Donald and James, so I approached Tom after the meeting and asked. Yep, it was the Hallstroms. I asked Tom when he had left, and then mentioned that I had moved to Hawaii in '86, and that Donald Hallstrom had been my Stake President. His father, James, who had been Tom's Stake President, was the Stake Patriarch who gave me a Patriarchal Blessing some 17 years after Tom first started investigating the Church.

We got to talking, and he asked whether I knew Steve Molale. Well, of course I know Steve. His son Kevin was a good friend of mine, and we'd graduated together from Kaiser High School 25 years ago. Tom got excited and expressed his love for Steve, who was the Bishop of the Hawaii Kai 2nd Ward when Tom and his wife were baptized. He explained how Steve had come to give him a blessing and how his (Tom's) decision to be baptized was a direct result of Steve's leadership and counsel. He was taken aback when I shared the news that Steve had passed away earlier this year. Notwithstanding the sad news, the conversation was a fun trip down memory lane.

When my family visited Hawaii last December we took opportunity to attend church out in Hawaii Kai. Steve was teaching the Gospel Principles class, a Sunday School class designed for those investigating the church or returning to activity after an extended absence. It was vintage Steve Molale. He had great stories, probably embellished but certainly entertaining. We chatted about my family and his family, about his wife Pat, who had passed away herself only a short while before. It was a joy to see Steve again, and I was surprised only a few weeks later when a dear friend emailed to let me know that Steve had suffered a stroke, and then a few days later had passed away.

Some people say it's a small world. Others say it's an even smaller Mormon world. I suppose that's true--it doesn't take long to find people who have crossed paths when you're talking to other LDSers. I'm sure glad that I went on a Friday night to listen to Tom Wood talk about his conversion. It gave me a chance to reflect on three great men that had an eternal impact on my life, and on Tom's life, too.

It also gave me a chance to pull out the old OP shorts, put on the vintage aloha shirt, fluff up the chest hair a bit, and take the Ferrari out for a spin. Mahalo Tom.