Climbing Into Adulthood
I have lived my life as one long series of escalating procrastinations. I used to say that by the time I got out of high school I would have figured out what I wanted to do with my life. As graduation neared, I started to realize how badly I had misjudged matters and instead predicted that I would have things firmly in hand once I had gotten a little bit of college under my belt. Once my freshman year yielded little more than scars[1] and a growing distaste for the Periodic Table of the Elements, I amended my claim once again. The mission, I decided, would give me what it took to set me on my life’s path. Two years of dedicated service to the most important cause there is would undoubtedly narrow my focus and sense of direction to the point where the rest of my life would effortlessly stretch out in front of me like a slip’n slide on a hot day.
Needless to say, I was wrong. So very wrong. If wrong were money, I would have been rich. If wrong were nuclear weaponry, I would have been sought after by underdeveloped hostile terrorist nations and destroyed by fictional action heroes. If wrong were direction and purpose in life, I would have been right.
Instead, some two months after returning home from the Mexico City East Mission, I found myself with improved organizational skills, a mastery of the Spanish language[2] and a dedicated passion to street vendor tacos, but very little in the way of answers. Despite my lofty expectations, I was still waking every morning to the same question I had asked myself in one form or another every morning since leaving elementary school: Now what?
But for now, the direction I was heading in life didn’t concern me nearly as much as the direction I was heading tonight, which was south.[3] Toward Springville. In the passenger seat of Zak’s car. Terrified.
“This party’s gonna be sweet!” Zak shouted over the sound of his tires bursting into flames.
There were several potential reasons for terror, but only one good one. Springville itself, the proud home of cows, quaint quilting shops, butter churns, my creepy Uncle Shadron and not much else, while perfectly harmless as a transition, was absolutely mortifying as a destination.[4]
“You sure about that?” I yelled back, tightly gripping the seat handle as though it had the slightest chance of saving me from the fiery doom I was already envisioning. “This group might not represent our best chances, lady-wise.”
Also terrifying was the horrendously bad call that was my taking a passive role in our trip to Springville. Zak, being from Idaho, took a more survivalist approach to driving than I was comfortable with. He drove as though not only were other motorists the Enemy, and thus to be defeated and if possible destroyed at all costs, but that the road, traffic regulations and possibly the car itself were not to be trusted either.[5]
There was a pause. “What, you think they’ll remember the chokeslam?”
Two years of service in the New York City South Mission hadn’t made Zak any less unintentionally entertaining than he was before, and he was still my best friend. I was noticing, however, that conversations between us were significantly more one-track than they had been pre-mission.
“So, when do you think you’ll get married?” Zak asked me as he hurtled through another stop sign, only narrowly avoiding a collision with two old ladies, a small band of orphans and a cow.[6]
I had no answer for him. Actually, I did have an answer for him, but it pointedly avoided the topic of marriage and instead zeroed in on creative imagery describing what I was going to do to him if he didn’t slow the car down and start treating traffic signs with the respect they were due.
Zak, however, was not to be deterred. “Seriously bro, what are you thinking? A year? Two?”
I gave Zak the same answer I had given my mom: “What for? Personally, I feel marriage is overrated.”
Zak’s reaction was immediate and irate.[7] The car screeched to a stop[8] and he stared at me, unbelieving. “Dude, you don’t mean that, do you?”
“Well, not really, but I guess I’m just not seeing marriage as that much of a priority right now.”
Zak was dumbfounded. He could not have been any more horrified had I chosen that moment to pull a kitten out of the glove compartment, douse it with kerosene and casually ask for a match.
“Didn’t your mission president tell you anything when you finished the mission?”
Indeed he had. In fact, his exact words were, “Elder, you have been privileged to serve the Lord in His most important calling for two years, and now you are going home to spread the tremendous blessings you have received in every way you can. Don’t screw it up.”[9]
“It’s not that I’m not generally in favor of marriage,” I calmly explained to my friend, who at this point, had he been a cartoon, would have had smoke pouring out of his ears and in serious danger of his entire head swelling up balloon-like, only to explode with a comical “pop.” “In fact, I love marriage. Marriage is awesome. I just don’t feel that I’m all that ready for it yet. And I doubt I’ll be ready in a year, and probably not in two or three years.”
Zak’s face had by this time resumed its standard color. “Dude, if not now, when? You just finished your mission. You’ll never be more responsible or celestially-minded than you are now.”
“Hey, even if that were true, do you really feel prepared to be married? You know that once you get married, it’s over. Your Xbox time goes down drastically, 2 a.m. Slurpees become virtually nonexistent. Instead, you think about mortgages and children. Can you handle that?”
Zak was silent for a moment, gathered his thoughts with a pained expression, and said “Well, you’re right, but … don’t you think it’s time to, y’know, grow up and stuff?”
This from the man who had once rigged a dry ice bomb to the underside of his bumper to see if the resulting explosion would turbo boost his car.[10] Heck, even as recently as the MTC he had been the first guy[11] to jump into an ice cream sandwich eating contest.[12] And now he was telling me to grow up? I bristled, and I grabbed the door handle even more tightly than previously as Zak gunned the engine and resumed our descent into Springville.[13]
I was annoyed at Zak, but probably a little bit more annoyed than he deserved. It was my first post-mission day back in Provo, and I was already in the advance stages of culture shock. Little things, like the old taco shack being replaced by a hot dog stand and the old SFLC being replaced by a giant gaping crater, only added to the feelings of just waking up from a cultural coma that I had been experiencing for the past two months.[14] Imagine, if you will, a man slipping into a coma in the early-90’s and waking up a decade later in the middle of Jamie Foxx’s 2004 Academy Award acceptance speech: “Wait a minute: the guy in drag from In Living Color? With the weird lips? Really?” That was me.
Zak was supposed to be a refreshing constant. He and I were officially roommates now, having only lived across the hall from each other freshman year. Our first encounter in two years that morning had resulted in a fierce man-hug, followed by ten minutes of awkwardness. A year of friendship followed by two years of roughly comparable experiences notwithstanding, when you come back from another country to find that everything has changed, it’s scary to imagine that people may have changed as well.
And then Zak suggested we head to the Golden Corral for lunch, and all was right in my world once again. Alternatively known as the Elysian Fields, Valhalla, or Heaven, the name “Golden Corral” was apparently decided upon after someone decided that the more accurate “Golden Trough” was unmarketable. For the most part your standard all-you-can-eat feedbag, the Golden Corral distinguishes itself by emphasizing gravy as a replacement for less filling garnishes, such as butter, ketchup, salad dressing, whipped dessert topping, etc.
I was loading up my third helping of chipped beef and Zak was figuring out how to steal honey butter in his backpack when we saw Peter Sykes and Phil Channing on the other side of the room, devouring a unique Golden Corral delicacy of French fries smothered in gravy. Many high-fives ensued.
And then they told us about Springville. More specifically,[15] they told us about the party in Springville, the one that had started as a perfectly innocent excuse to abuse the trust of some vacationing grandparents, but had quickly evolved into something I had been hoping to avoid for as long as I possibly could: the Freshman Ward Reunion.
Let it be said that I held nothing personal against the greater majority of the survivors of my freshman ward. That said, let it also be said that I held no great affection for the greater majority of the survivors of my freshman ward. Instead I was more indifferent toward them, and viewed this reunion with much the same interest as most people would view a reunion with the people they waited in line next to at the Sonic last week, the difference being that the people at the Sonic wouldn’t be offended when you didn’t remember their names. I know that a lot of BYU alum carry a great deal of nostalgia with regards to their freshman ward, but apparently a year which primarily concerned itself with Vanilla Coke and hitting my friends in the head with chairs didn’t allow for a great deal of ward bonding. Bear in mind that my reunion with Zak, my best friend, started out awkward and uncomfortable. I had no desire to go through that again, with each of 200 individual people, many of whom I had never like that much in the first place, over the course of a few hours.[16]
But Zak was excited, and I was too full of mashed “potatoes” to argue: we were going to Springville.
And I was committing one of the grave sins of any social excursion: I was leaving myself without an escape plan. Zak was obviously far more excited about this party than I was, and allowing him to drive meant there would be no way for me to leave once the inevitable misery set in. I was in for a long night. The last time I had fallen into this trap, I spent forty-five minutes buzzing the brownie table and utterly failing to strike up casual conversation, and the next three and a half hours playing Street Fighter II with the host’s 14 year-old brother.[17]
And now another wrinkle was popping up on the disheveled dress shirt that this evening was turning out to be: some combination of Zak’s driving and my fourth helping[18] was performing an elaborate ice dancing routine in my stomach. My innards were riddled with nausea, and all I could think about was how much more interesting this party was about to get:
STRANGER: Hey, didn’t I sing in the choir with you?
ME: Well actually I’m not much of a BLOOORRCCCHHHH!!!!
Springville’s civic sprawl wasn’t making me feel any better. A drive down Springville’s Main Street[19] gives it the appearance of the Brigham Young-approved “All straight lines, every street at right angle” school of urban design, but turning off into the residential areas reveals a sloping, confusing, M.C. Escher-esque maze of interlocking semi-paved roads, hills, stagecoach trails and the occasional antique cannon. It was as though Springville had pulled out a Van Gogh painting, stared for a while at the disorienting swirl patterns and said, “Hey, that looks like a great idea for a traffic grid!”[20]
By the time we got to the party I had to crawl out of the passenger seat. The only thing more blurry than my vision was my face. But Zak and I had left our earlier differences behind over a spirited discussion of the respective merits of Superman and Batman vis a vis a fight between them, specifically concerning which of the two combatants would prevail,[21] and my Boise Buddy just looked too happy walking toward that party for me to ask to go home now. Nobly, boldly, some might say heroically, I soldiered on.
Only to see my loyalty casually discarded like a Christmas tree on January 2nd. Zak hurried on ahead of my shambling, nauseated shuffle and virtually sprinted into the house,[22] never to be seen again.[23] As I watched him disappear into the crowd, I managed to glimpse one last betrayal: he had popped his collar. I would have heard my heart breaking if it hadn’t been drowned out by Jimmy Eat World.
Deprived of a wingman, and receiving confirmation given by a hallway mirror that my now-pallid complexion gave me an excellent chance of being cast as the Ghost of Christmas Future should the party spontaneously morph into a performance of “A Christmas Carol,” [24] I gave up my last lingering hope of enjoying the evening.
Fortunately, the party wasn’t limited to the members of our old ward. I say fortunately not because I wanted to meet new people,[25] but because it gave me the chance to pretend to be one of those new people. I could already see the possibilities:
STRANGER: Hey, weren’t you in my freshman ward?
ME: No.
Sadly, my raging conscience, my inability to lie convincingly and my frustrating refusal to keep the “sub” in “subtext” led instead to an evening full of conversations such as this:
STRANGER: Hey bro, remember me?
ME: Ummm … sorry, no.
STRANGER: I lived across the hall from you.
ME: Uhh …
STRANGER: And we were in the same Book of Mormon class.
ME: Welll …
STRANGER: And we played together in that flag football tournament.
ME: Umm … Wait, were you the guy that never showered?
And this:
FEMALE STRANGER: Hey, were you in our freshman ward?
ME: I think so, but I’m sorry, I’m not so good at remembering people.
FEMALE STRANGER: That’s okay, I wasn’t around much.
ME: Oh really? Why’s that?
FEMALE STRANGER: I was engaged at the time, so I spent most of the time with my fiancée.
ME: Oh, so you’re married?
FEMALE STRANGER: Well, not anymore …
ME: Oh, I’m sorry… (desperately looking for a way to soften the situation) Well, it could have been worse. You could have had kids, right? It would have been rough for them growing up with divorced parents.
FEMALE STRANGER: Actually, my ex-husband’s mom is watching our daughter right now.
ME: … (sets self on fire rather than continue this conversation)
And this:
STRANGER: Hey dude, how’s it goin’?
ME: Excuse me, do I know you?
STRANGER: You were my home teacher.
And unfortunately, this:
SURPRISINGLY ATTRACTIVE FEMALE STRANGER: Hi.
ME: (standing up straighter and doing everything possible to get some color back in the face) Hi.
FEMALE STRANGER: Do you know someone from the old 151st ward?
ME: Actually, I was in the old 151st ward.
FEMALE STRANGER: Oh, I’m so embarrassed! I thought I remembered everyone.
ME: Don’t feel too bad. I didn’t go to many activities.
FEMALE STRANGER: But you do look a little familiar …
ME: It would be unfair to expect you to remember everyone.
FEMALE STRANGER: I’m remembering something …
ME: I myself have a lot of problems remembering names and people from so long ago.
FEMALE STRANGER: Wait, were you the guy that got chokeslammed through a pile of pizza boxes at the ward talent show?
There’s no guarantee that my conversational performance would have been any better that evening had I not been one extra brownie, a patch of dirt and a conveniently-located shovel away from an early grave, but as I rarely have such a grand opportunity to shift the blame away from where it usually lies,[26] I will do so now. Thanks to what was now a nigh-engulfing wave of nausea mixed with a nasty undertow of lightheadedness, I had been at the party for only a little over two hours and already several contenders to the coveted title of Sean’s Most Awkward Conversation Ever[27] had emerged. I was sick, I was tired, I had insulted (unintentionally[28]) half of my old ward, and my roiling stomach made the snack table (normally the most appealing part of any party) completely useless. I wanted to leave.[29]
But, just as I had feared, I couldn’t. I hadn’t been able to talk to Zak since we had gotten there, and from what I had seen of him from a distance,[30] he was in no mood to leave. Evidently a two-year mission had made Zak a master at the art of striking up intimate conversations with complete strangers.[31]
The night wore on, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I arrived at the point when there was absolutely nothing at that party that I could possibly find more pleasant than lying down in the backseat of Zak’s car and napping until he was ready to leave. Unfortunately, the car was locked, and Zak had vanished. I asked around, and while no one knew exactly where he was, it was suggested that he might have been one of a group who had left the house to play a game of late-night Sardines[32] in a park adjoining the house. I mumbled a few sickly profanities and took off into the night.
The park was easy to find, and fortunately so were the game’s participants. Fifteen or twenty of them were wandering about aimlessly with frustrated a look on their faces,[33] every last one of them seemingly ready to be any place that did not involve them wandering around an empty park in the middle of the night. I approached them.
ME: Hey, any of you seen a big dopey-looking white guy with an
erect shirt collar and a moderately-priced haircut?
COMPLETE STRANGER (I think. It was dark.): (with a certain degree of bitterness in his voice) Not yet.
As if to disprove any assertion I may have made earlier about it not being possible for the night to get any worse, Zak was “It.” What’s more, he was evidently a little too good at the job, having gone off to his hiding spot some thirty minutes previously, and if the large number of searchers as any indication, he was still alone there.
Cursing my lot in life,[34] I joined in the hunt. And I continued to hunt, even as bit by bit the hunting party started to break off and head for greener pastures, where they could bathe in the luxuriant pleasures that accompany situations in which one does have to look through pitch-black wooded areas looking for elusive, possibly invisible Idahoans. I wished I could join them. I would have, but Zak still had the keys.
Twenty minutes later, I was alone. In the dark. Without car keys. I was angry, but I wasn’t nearly as angry at Zak as I was at the sudden realization that I was trapped dead-center in the midst of a disturbingly appropriate metaphor for my life. So I did what any sane person does when faced with brazenly mocking existentialist thought: I took a running start, leaped into the air and dropkicked a tree.
I waited for the slow crack and subsequent thundering crash that I hoped would accompany my monumental explosion of foot-propelled fury. Instead I heard a rustling, and a whispered, “Bro?”
“Zak?” I asked with what I hoped was just the right mix of mystification and disgust. “Did you hide in a tree?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”[35]
“Probably your best idea ever, but I’ve got a better one: let’s go home.”
“How about you come up here instead?”
His time in the tree had evidently driven my poor friend insane. “How about just you stay up there and toss me your keys?”
“I can’t leave yet.”
“Dude, I’m tired, I’m sick, I’ve spent the entire night talking to people I can’t remember and probably never wanted to meet in the first place and I want to leave. Let’s go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why the crap not?”
And suddenly I realized why the crap not. Zak was not up there alone. Somebody had found him, most likely somebody female, and having a girl all to himself was just too rich an opportunity to pass up. Really, the only weird thing at work here was that Zak had actually asked me to climb up into the tree with him. That was a little creepy.
“Hola,” whispered a female voice from the branches above. And suddenly there were at least two weird things at work here.
“Hola,” I said back. “Who is that?”[36]
“My name is Sara,” she answered back. “Can I leave now?”
It was at this point that I decided that, absent Sara perched on a branch dressed in a green horse costume, my night could not possibly get any more surreal. I clutched my bloated stomach and shimmied up the tree.
“Dude, what were you saying to her?” Zak asked as I heaved myself onto a limb.
I ignored him. “So, how long have you been up here?”
“Since a minute or two after I started searching.”
“You must have been having some fun up here in the tree, huh?”[37]
“Not really. My English isn’t so good, and I don’t think he speaks Spanish.”
“Dude, have you been sitting up here in silence this entire time?”
“Not the entire time. I speak a little Spanish.”
“He says he speaks a little Spanish.”
“Is that what that was?”
“Hey, is she cute?”
“How should I know? It’s dark”
“You speak Spanish.”
“You want me to ask her?”
“What’s going on?”
“He wants to know if you’re cute.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I have no idea.”
“Is he cute?”
I pride myself on always knowing when to gut out a difficult situation, when to put my shoulder to the wheel and face adversity head-on in order to do the right thing. I also know when I’m talking to two crazy people in a tree. “Zak, give me your keys. I’m going to go die peacefully in the passenger seat of your car.”
“C’mon man, just stay a little bit longer.”
“You seriously want me to translate your flirting?”
“Dude, try to take this a little seriously. This could be my future wife here.”
I could stands no more. I opened my mouth, ready to chew Zak the biggest new one he’d ever been chewed. I almost felt sorry for the pitiful, cowering shadow of a man that would soon be driving me home. Lucky for him, I puked instead.
“This has been a very strange night.”
And then I puked again.[38]
“Bro, are you okay?” Zak asked tenderly, reaching out with his hand to steady me in case I was about to follow my stomach juices on their gravitational path
“ARE YOU CRAZY??!!” I roared.
“I know what that means.”
I continued, not about to let a little vomit stand in the way of a richly-deserved verbal beat-down. “YOU’VE KNOWN HER FOR A HALF HOUR, ALL OF WHICH HAS BEEN SPENT HIDING IN A TREE, YOU CAN’T SEE HER, YOU DON’T EVEN SPEAK HER FREAKING LANGUAGE, AND YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT MARRYING HER? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”
Zak was silent for a moment,[39] then looked up with a mournful expression[40] and said, “I know, you’re right, I’m crazy, but it’s just … don’t you feel like everyone’s passing you by?”
I was even in less of a mood for philosophical discussions than I was before I ruined my shoes, but I figured it was only fair that I extend a little post-berating mercy: “What do you mean?”
“I mean, everybody else seems like they’ve got things all figured out. They know where they’re going, what they want to do in life. They’ve done things. You know there’s a girl from our freshman ward who’s been married, divorced and had a baby already?”
“I did know that, actually.”
“And I just feel like I’ve got nothing.”
“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I feel a little out of place.”
“Sorry, we’re having a moment. I’ll try to wrap it up. But dude, you’re doing pretty good for yourself. You finished your mission, you’re going to school, and I saw you tearing it up at that party.”
“Ah, I wasn’t doing that good.”
“Oh. They remembered the chokeslam, didn’t they?”
“Bro, who’s gonna forget the chokeslam?” But he was smiling now. Memories of past glory always have that effect.
“Okay, so you’re directionless. Big deal. You’re not the only one. Just believe me when I tell you two things: 1) You’re in a much better place than you think, and 2) by “a better place,” I don’t mean this tree. This place is terrible, and you’re scaring the nice Latina. Let’s go home.”
“Is he going to be alright?” Sara asked, with an obvious note of concern and apparently forgetting which of us two had just misplaced a pound and a half of fried zucchini.
“I think so. But you should probably give him a hug anyway.”
Like Zak needed the help. I could already see that Zak had unintentionally harnessed in his favor the most potent of all female emotions: pity. He was going to be just fine.
“Dude, tell her I’m good-looking.”
“No. She’ll be mad when she finds out I lied.”
“Tell her!”
“Are you planning your first date for an abandoned mine shaft?”
“Sounds fun.”
“And the second for an underground missile silo?”
“I could do that.”
“The first time she’ll see you in exposed light can be over the altar.”
“That’s my plan.”
“Diggity.”
All three of us started to climb down out of the tree. “Be careful,” I told Sara.
“Don’t worry, I’m good with trees.”
“How are you with vomit?”[41]
We started away from the park and back towards the still-throbbing, but no longer pulsating, lights of the party. “What’s his name?” Sara asked me.
“Zak,” I answered.
“What?’ Zak asked
“Sak-o. That’s a pretty name.”
“American guys don’t really like their names to be referred to as ‘pretty.’”
“That’s too bad. It’s very complimentary in Spanish.”
“Everything sounds better in Spanish.”
“That’s true.”
“Dude, what’s she saying?”
“She wants you to fold your collar back down.”
[1] One emotional, two physical.
[2] Kinda. Learning Spanish in the rougher parts of Mexico City was not exactly giving me the approved “Royal Linguistic Academy of Spain” treatment. Imagine a Japanese tourist learning English principally by wandering around Compton every day for two years and you’ll get the idea.
[3] Literally, not figuratively. I hope.
[4] Unless you’re a cow, a quilt, a butter churn or my Uncle Shadron. For that matter, the cow, the quilt, and the butter churn are probably terrified of ol’ Shaddy too.
[5] This may have been due to the relatively late entry of the internal combustion engine into Idaho, which my sources say didn’t make an appearance on the streets of Boise until sometime in the mid-70’s. Attempts to exorcise it as a demonic entity were fortunately unsuccessful, and electricity and the Copernican model of the Solar System soon entered the state borders as well. Proponents of the metric system, however, are still regularly drawn and quartered for entertainment at Minidoka County Fairs.
[6] Fortunately I was used to this sort of behavior, having just spent two years in the Third World, where stop signs were treated more as decorative icons than any sort of instructional material. Zak did not have this excuse, having served his mission in the U.S., but I would not be surprised to learn that New Yorkers saw pedestrians as decorative icons.
[7] Although, to be fair, not nearly as immediate and irate as my mom’s had been. Apparently mothers do not find the unexpected removal of their potential for grandchildren to be as amusing as I do.
[8] To be fair, the car had arrived at a stoplight. That may have been a coincidence, however.
[9] I loved my mission president.
[10] For the record, it didn’t. March on science!
[11] Sorry. First Elder.
[12] He won 14-12, but I spent far more time in the bathroom afterwards, giving me something of a moral victory.
[13] The light had turned green, but I’m not sure he noticed.
[14] Other contributing factors included 1) the disappearance of VHS tapes, 2) the appearance of digital music and 3) the emergence of Keifer Sutherland as the coolest man in America. Oh, and eleven year-olds with cell phones. That was a big one.
[15] Zak and I were in fact already aware of the existence of Springville, largely due to a freshman year incident involving a wheelbarrow, two pounds of fireworks and one irate group of birdwatchers.
[16] Especially since I had already prepared myself for the far-less-concentrated awkward moments that I would be going through in between-class encounters on campus:
STRANGER: Hey, dude!
ME: (frightened and confused) He …llo?
STRANGER: Hey, what you been up for the last two years?
ME: (panicked, not thinking, grasping at the first words that come to mind)… Cage fighting?
[17] Okay, bad example. That party was awesome.
[18] Gummi Bears + Gravy = Bad Idea
[19] Highlights: Two gas stations, one Little Caesar’s and 27 quilt shops.
[20] Little Known Fact: Early Springville pioneers designed their city this way so that aggressors (i.e. mobs, evil spirits, the invading U.S. Army, etc.) would become confused and would have to stop to ask for directions. The aggressors could then be beaten to death with a wagon wheel.
[21] Batman. In a walk.
[22] You could tell which house we were headed to from the way the front door visibly pulsated with music, lights and red punch. And hormones.
[23] An obvious exaggeration. I saw Zak periodically over the course of the evening, usually chatting with one of a number of girls that I probably should have recognized. My efforts to hit him in the back of the head with a cupcake went unrewarded.
[24] My shambling sick-walk and hunched posture also gave me a great shot at Tiny Tim.
[25] Because I definitely did not want to meet new people. It’s not that I don’t like meeting new people (though I try to avoid it whenever possible), but more that parties, what with the dark and the loud music and gyrating bodies and all, do not tend to showcase me at my best. I’m much better as the person sitting behind you making whispered snide comments in the middle of class. Or as the guy passing along clever essays via e-mail. Or the guy wearing an oatmeal can on his head. Really, anything in which my physical appearance doesn’t play a part will do.
[26] Me.
[27] The previous champion had been crowned only a month earlier. I had been having dinner with an old Seminary friend when we had run into a guy we knew from high school, out with his (very Christian) girlfriend. We invited them to sit with us, and a relatively pleasant conversation had turned to jury duty when the girlfriend spouted, “Oh, I know how to get out of jury duty. Just bring a Book of Mormon with you. Those guys are nuts!” and began to spray her laughter across the room. My friend most likely had a shocked expression on her face, but I was unable to tell, as my view from under the table, where I was rolling after laughing so hard that I fell out of my chair, was somewhat obstructed.
[28] Mostly.
[29] Now seems as good a time as any to explain why I wasn’t hanging out with Pete and Phil. Sometime after getting us to go, they had abandoned their party plans in favor of a night filled with attempts to steal a campus water fountain and, failing at that, attempts to blow it up. Some guys will do anything to get into Police Beat
[30] Sure, “across the room” isn’t much of a distance, but like at any good party, “across the room” that night meant that Zak was 30 people, two stilted conversations, four poorly-executed dance moves and at least ten uncomfortable squeezes away.
[31] Who knew?
[32] For the uninitiated, a Sardines primer: Sardines is essentially Hide-and-Seek in reverse, in which the person chosen to be “It” goes off alone to find a hiding place, then everyone else goes looking for him. As each individual finds “It,” they join him in his hiding place. Soon you have a big crowd of people attempting to hide in what was probably a very small hiding place to begin with, becoming more and more visible to the few remaining searchers, and the game quickly ends with much fanfare and jubilation. Yes, it’s a juvenile, childish game, but it’s also a convenient excuse to crawl into dark places with hopefully multiple members of the opposite sex without anyone’s morality coming into question. You can see why it’d be a big hit at BYU.
[33] No, they did not all have the exact same frustrated look, but they were all variations on the same theme.
[34] In case your memory needs some refreshing, I was a) stranded b) at a party I didn’t want to be at in the first place c) wandering around in the dark d) looking for a friend that I suddenly barely recognized e) who was hiding in a spot that was nigh-unfindable, and, just to round things out, I was f) ready to start puking any second. This is just to here to correct any of you sadly-mistaken readers who might have latched on to the erroneous idea that I was not, in fact, the most miserable person in the history of the universe at this point in time.
[35] I can’t think of a single sentence that would better summarize Zak’s entire life up to that point.
[36] From here on out, assume all italics to be translated from the Spanish. Trust me, it’s just easier this way.
[37] The “huh” may have been in English.
[38] I only mention the second time to make it absolutely clear who was going to walk out with the girl in this situation.
[39] He does that a lot, doesn’t he?
[40] To be fair, I’m only guessing at his expression. It was very, very dark in that tree.
[41] Once again: I was not getting this girl.
10 months ago • Notes