Jennifer’s children wanted a dog. That is normal for children, and Jennifer decided that maybe it would be good for them to learn responsibility. So Jennifer sat down with them and talked to them about how important it would be that the dogs were . . .
Sometimes it is hard to find humor in our current situation. But I got an email the other day with an ad regarding having to stay at home during the pandemic. It was about exercise equipment. It started by saying, “Let’s talk about the elephant . . .
Earl was a hard-working, family-oriented man. He, his wife, and their children ran a little country store in a small western town. In the area where they lived, there was a lot of excitement about a new branch of the railroad that would be coming through.
When the rail line work started, many new people came. Most of these were families of men who were working on the railroad. Earl’s business increased significantly. But bringing the goods in was costly. Until the rail line was finished, everything had to come over the mountain on mules and wagons.
Earl tried to keep his prices fair. He only added enough markup on goods to pay his costs and take care of his family. But many people complained about the prices at Earl’s store. Most of these were people who had come from other towns much farther south. These towns already had train service and didn’t have the added transportation costs.
Earl and his family had endured the anger and name-calling for some time when the flu epidemic hit. Of all the families in the town, his family was hit the hardest. Many people came in and out of this store, and many carried the flu. Soon, Earl’s whole family was sick.
Though Earl worked from morning until night taking care of his family, he tried to keep his store open as much as possible. He knew the people of the town depended on it. But Earl lost four of his six children, and his wife was bedridden. There were days he had to shut the store to bury his children or just take care of his family. This added more to the anger he received from those who came to town only to find the store closed.
One day, when Earl was driving to the cemetery with the body of his two-year-old daughter in a small pine box, a crowd surrounded his wagon. They started yelling things at him about being rich while others struggled, and him not caring about anyone else. Suddenly, the crowd went crazy. Someone pulled Earl from the wagon, and men began beating him.
Almost instantly, the railroad foreman was there. He knew of the losses Earl had in his family and had even helped Earl bury some of his children. The foreman angrily hit and kicked his way into the circle, single-handedly forcing the men to stop. The foreman helped Earl to his feet, then climbed onto the wagon and held up the small coffin as he spoke.
“You bunch of fools! You blame Earl for your problems when you don’t even know what real problems are. In this box lies the body of his youngest daughter, the fourth of his children he has had to bury. Which one of you would be willing to trade him places? Which of you would be willing to take his store in exchange for those you love?”
The foreman then turned to one of the men who was foremost in the beating. “How about you, John? You haven’t lost a single family member to the flu. Which one of your children’s lives would you like to trade for Earl’s store? How about Timothy or maybe little Susan?”
John couldn’t even look at the foreman as he shook his head. The foreman asked a similar question of others and received a similar response.
“Well, then,” the foreman said, “when you imagine how much better you think it is for someone else, I’d suggest you consider what it would be like to walk in their shoes all the way, not just on the parts of their journey that you like.”
The foreman reached out a hand and pulled Earl back onto the wagon. He then turned to the crowd. “I suggest you get back to your work. As for me, I plan to go to the cemetery and help dig a small grave.”
As Earl and the foreman drove to the cemetery, no one returned to their work. Instead, they followed the wagon. As many men helped dig the small grave next to the three new markers that were already there, no one said a word. But as Earl fell to his knees sobbing when the little wooden box was placed into its place, people in that small country town were changed forever.
As years passed, people who came to that town said there was never a town with more compassion. The old-timers would nod and say it was because those who lived there had to learn the hard way what it was like to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Coach blew his whistle, which brought us to a stop. His favorite conditioning exercise was to have us run on our hands and knees back and forth across the wrestling room. He started us off by blowing his whistle and ended the exercise in the same way. . . .
We looked at available surgery dates. I wanted to get it done before Christmas so I would have more time to heal before going back to work in January. But I needed to move the harp for my daughter until December 22nd. That only left December 24th for the surgery date. I had the nurse schedule it. Later, when I met with my family, I let them know.
“Can we have Christmas on the 23rd?” my daughter asked. “If we have it on Christmas right after you have had your surgery, you will probably be grouchy. I’d rather not have my father be grouchy on Christmas.”
I told her I didn’t think I would be grouchy, but agreed to celebrate Christmas on the 23rd, anyway. It ended up being a nice day. We opened presents and then invited another daughter that lived close by to bring her family and join us when we went out to eat. We scheduled it so her husband could come from work during his lunch hour. It was fun.
The next day, as I headed to the hospital, I must admit that all I could think about was when I was 45, and my tonsils were removed. For two hours before being wheeled back, I was in a room where the broken tv could not be shut off and was locked onto a channel that played only Barney reruns.
By the time they came to get me, I was feeling like, “Just shoot me now!”
However, this time the room I was put in for surgery preparation didn’t even have a tv. I was okay with that. Many people came in to take my vitals and talk to me about recovery. Four of them asked me which shoulder was being operated on. When I told them it was my left, they marked it with a marker.
As the fourth person made his mark, I said, “Don’t you trust the other three people who marked it already?”
He laughed. “A person can never be too careful.”
After he left, I told my wife Donna to hand me a marker.
“Why?” she asked.
“I think I ought to put marks all over me just to confuse them.”
She did not think that was even funny and made sure there were no markers anywhere in the room. She said that removing my access to markers was her part of being careful.
Eventually, I was wheeled into the surgery room.
The anesthesiologist leaned over me. “It will take about ten minutes for you to fade off to sleep.”
Ten minutes, nothing. I was out almost instantly after he said it, and if I said anything past that point, I want to make it clear that I can’t legally be held responsible for it. The next thing I remember was having someone patting me, calling me by name, and asking me how I was doing.
“Did you get the number?” I groggily replied.
“Of what?” she asked.
“Of the license plate of the truck that hit me.”
I heard my wife laugh. “I think he’s going to be fine.”
And I’m not admitting that I was grouchy. But my daughter was probably smart to have had us celebrate Christmas on the 23rd.
And the bullet? Well, it remains in my arm as a souvenir of some exciting day from my youth. I just wish I could remember which day.
A good friend of mine, Blaine, was a World War II veteran. He was one of the most patriotic men I knew, even if he had many reasons not to be.
As a young man, Blaine, like many others his age, found himself embroiled in the bitterness of war. After . . .
When I first met my wife, she was a music major and played in a dance band. I was in athletics. My children have tended to follow their mother’s interests more than mine. Every one of them is an excellent musician.
To be honest, I do play the harmonica, . . .
I knew that Brent had gone on an extended vacation, so when he returned, I asked him how it went.
“Well, I learned some things about myself, and I also learned some things about my family and what not to do,” he said.
When I asked him what he meant, . . .
My cousin Becky loves gardening about as much as I do. We often compare notes on what works and what doesn’t.
“How do you do on your tomatoes?” she asked.
“Oh, I do okay,” I said.
“Do you do anything special?”
“Not really,” I replied. . . .
My daughter was in her mid-teens—those years when young people think that their parents don’t know too much. She chafed at the requirements of home, having to do chores, having a set time for bed, and eating what everyone else in the family ate . . .
My roommate, David, was dating a girl named Annie. She was beautiful, with blonde hair that hung down past her shoulders, and she had big blue eyes. But what made her especially beautiful was her kindness. David would invite her to join us in games . . .
It was the day after Thanksgiving. As a police officer, Samuel was preparing to go on patrol, but he had to fill out the required reports first. Paperwork was the thing he hated most. He much preferred to be out on the streets. He finished his reports . . .
About halfway between the two schools was a small town. It was small even by Idaho standards. In fact, it was so small that it consisted of only one house and a café. But as small as it was, it was on the map. Blue Dome, it was called.
Probably the reason it was on the map was because there wasn’t anything else for miles around. It was a lone outpost in an area with interesting trails leading up into mountains with intriguing names like Diamond Peak, Copper Mountain, and Skull Canyon. But I found my greatest interest in the lives of the old couple that ran the café.
I was a young teenager when I first met them. I was traveling on my first athletic trip. We had a long day of wrestling, then headed home at around 9:00 at night. It was late when we made it to Blue Dome, but the open sign still showed, so our bus pulled to a stop. As the team members spilled out of the bus and into the café, I looked at the hours that were posted and realized the café was just ready to close. But after we entered, the little old couple worked hard cooking and serving as if they planned to stay open all night.
I didn’t have much money, so I sat on a stool at the counter apart from the others and ordered a water.
“Nothing else?” the old man asked.
“I don’t have a lot of money,” I said.
After everyone else was served, he came back over and asked if there was anything else he could do for me.
“Well,” I slowly said, “there is one thing. I’d love to know your story and the story of this place.”
He smiled. “I sometimes get that request from adults, but I think you’re the first young person who has ever asked.”
My memory has faded over the years, but I think I remember that his name was John. He told me how he met his wife and how they settled in this out-of-the-way place. He talked about his family and about running the café. When my teammates needed something, John would slip away to serve or to help his wife and then return and continue his stories.
Once everyone else was heading to the bus, I put the little bit of money I had on the counter.
“Water’s free,” John said.
“Then take that as a tip for the stories,” I said. “I would come here just for them.”
John smiled and brought his wife over and introduced her to me. She looked as old as John, but to see their eyes sparkle when they looked at each other was more beautiful than any young love.
All the others were on the bus when Coach came in and called me to hurry. I joined the others, and they teased me about my “old friends.” But on the way home, I thought about the wonderful couple I had met.
After that, every sports bus I traveled in on that long road stopped at Blue Dome, and I spent my time visiting with John. On the last one, as everyone hurried out, John stopped me before I left.
“Have you signed our wall?” he asked.
I looked at where he was pointing and saw a wall with hundreds of names. I shook my head.
He handed me a marker. “You better sign it.”
The team impatiently waited while I signed the wall. And I received the usual teasing, but I didn’t care. I liked my old friends. But it was only about a week later when I read the bad news in the paper. The café had burned down and John had died in the fire.
And now, though it has been a long time, sometimes when I travel that road I will stop at Blue Dome. There is nothing left to see but a crumbling old cabin and the café foundation. But there are lots of memories, and I like to take the time to stop and remember an old friend.
He was a state champion wrestler and competed in college athletics. He also lived for eighteen months in New York when he was 19 – 21 years old.
Daris and his wife, Donna, have ten children and were foster parents for several years. He has also worked in scouting and cub scouts, at one time having 18 boys in his scout troop.
Daris is now a math professor and his classes are well known for the stories he tells to liven up discussion and to help bring across the points he is trying to teach.
His plays, musicals, and books build on the characters of those he has associated with, along with his many experiences. He also writes a popular weekly newspaper column called “Life’s Outtakes” that are short stories from his life and the lives of those he has known. His scripts and books are much like his stories, full of humor and real life experiences.
He has had his plays translated into German and French and performed in many countries around the world.
His plays have won many awards including the National Theatre Co-op Award, the Deseret Dramatic Award, semifinalist in the Moondance Film and Theatre Festival, and his book, The Three Gifts, has won the Editor’s Choice Award.
“That’s just about the most amazing thing ever!” he said.
This buffet lunch was the last part of our scouting high adventure. As we had planned the week, the boys made one request that was out of the norm from other high adventures I had been on. They had asked to eat out at some restaurants. The boys and leaders had worked hard on fundraising, putting flags at every home in our community on all of the main holidays. People who could afford to donate had been generous. So, amidst all of the boating, fishing, and camping, we ate at a Mongolian grill, a restaurant famous for its big pancakes, and ended the week at the all-you-can-eat buffet.
While I was paying for our entrance into the buffet, Jason was busy checking out the chocolate fountain. By the time I joined everyone at our table, he had a plate full of chocolate covered marshmallows and strawberries. He set it in front of me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“I did these for you,” he replied.
“Why didn’t you do them for yourself?”
“You know my parents don’t want me to eat sugar,” he said.
It was true that he avoided sugar, except for chocolate milk. Even so, he still had more energy than any boy I knew. I wondered what he would be like if he did eat sugar.
“They do look good,” I said. “But I better eat other food first, or my blood sugar will spike.”
I got a plate of salad and some roast and potatoes. When I finished that, I ate the chocolate-covered marshmallows and strawberries. I went back for shrimp and chicken and returned to find another plate of chocolate-covered strawberries. I didn’t even have to ask who had done it.
“Jason, what’s this?” I asked.
“It’s so much fun dipping them in the chocolate; I made you some more.”
I looked at my plate of food and the chocolate-covered strawberries, and I considered that I would need a bloat needle if I ate all of it.
“No more,” I said. “I might be able to eat these, but don’t you dare make me any more chocolate covered anything.”
I ate my shrimp and chicken and slowly made my way through chocolate covered strawberries. I had just finished the last one when Jason came back with an ice-cream cone with ice-cream about a foot high. He was carefully balancing it to keep it from falling. He held it out to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“We’re having a contest to see who can make the highest cone. So far, I’m winning.”
I took it, but said, “No more, Jason. I mean it. I’m going to be sick now.”
I hate to see food go to waste, so I slowly ate it. I had just reached the bottom and knew I couldn’t even look at another food item when I saw Jason filling another ice cream cone. I went over to him.
“Who’s that for?” I asked.
“You,” he replied. “Someone beat my record, so I have to go higher.”
“I am not eating it!” I said. “You make it; you eat it!”
“But I don’t eat sugar,” he replied.
“You eat chocolate milk, and ice cream is just frozen chocolate milk, so it’s yours,” I replied.
He grinned and nodded. He piled that one higher than the one he made for me, and he ate it. He then made another one even higher and ate it, too.
And when we headed home, I realized I had made a big mistake telling him to eat the ice cream. We had to ride home with him, and his energy turned nuclear. By the time we got home, I was not only sick, I was going crazy. It’s no wonder his parents didn’t want him eating sugar.
I was around camp most of the morning and saw nothing unusual, but, when everyone returned for lunch, Gordy’s painted candies were missing. He demanded everyone show him their hands, but the only person with any paint on himself was Gordy from his sloppy paint job. He couldn’t try this technique again since everyone now knew what he had done. But it didn’t matter to him, because, in his mind, everyone was guilty, and he wasn’t reluctant about saying so.
“Okay, Gordy,” I said, “calm down, and let’s try to analyze this.”
“That’s stupid,” he replied. “Just because you’re a math professor doesn’t mean you can solve something like this by logic.”
“No,” I said, “but sometimes the answers are different from what a person may think. And, often, they are right in front of a person’s face.”
“And if it is Gordy’s face,” Devin said, “then it could be a really ugly answer.”
“Ha, ha,” Gordy replied. “Thousands of comedians out of work and I get stuck with you.”
“Let’s consider some things,” I said. “Gordy, did you zip your tent shut when you left?”
“Of course.”
“Was it still shut when you came back?”
“Almost,” he replied. “The zipper was up about four or five inches.”
“Was it the same way last time when you lost the Oreo?”
“Yes.”
“If a thief wanted to remain unsuspected,” I said, “I’m sure that he would have tried to leave things exactly the same.”
“So why only leave it up four to five inches?” Tanner asked.
I thought about it for a minute as the whole troop stared at me, acting like I was going to get some kind of revelation or something. And then, suddenly, I did get one. I smiled as the answer began to come to me. “Maybe it was up only four or five inches because that was all the thief needed,” I said.
“That’s stupid,” Gordy said. “Obviously he couldn’t crawl in that hole. And I put the candy at the far back of the tent so he couldn’t reach his arm in and grab it.”
I smiled, and that seemed to build the suspense and curiosity for everyone. “Gordy, were there any other signs or anything?” I asked.
“Well, the thief dripped a little paint in the tent,” Gordy replied.
Everyone followed as I went to look at the evidence. Upon inspection, I shook my head. “That’s not dripped paint.”
“What is it?” Mort asked.
Instead of answering, I scanned the trees. The boys looked up, trying to see what I was looking for. Finally, I saw it. I smiled as I answered them. “It wasn’t dripped paint; it was footprints.”
“Footprints?” Gordy questioned.
I had seen a squirrel often watching us. But now, its paws and whole underbelly were red. I pointed at it. “There’s your thief.”
Gordy looked up and saw the red paint on the squirrel. He walked over to the tree, and sure enough, the ground was littered with candy wrappers. He shook his fist at it. “You dirty little thief!”
The squirrel shook his fist back and shouted “Chi, chi, chi!”
“You little beggar!” Gordy yelled. He picked up a stick and threw it up at the squirrel. The stick came right back and hit Gordy on his foot. He started jumping around and hollering.
“Squirrel 10, Gordy 0,” Devin said.
And, thus, was solved the case of the scout camp bandit.
During this time of year, in the west, we are often faced with dry conditions leading to major wildfires. This year, here in Idaho, we had an extremely wet spring. That is great for getting the crops off to a good start. But toward the middle to the end of June, the weather turned hot and dry. We haven’t had a good rain for a month or more.
The problem with this is that the heavy spring rains also made the grass and shrubbery proliferate. But then when the rains quit, and the sun heated everything, the grass and shrubs dried and became tinder for a fire. It made for a dangerous situation. Add to that dry lightning storms, lightning strikes with no rain to quell the sparks, and the fire season turned explosive.
The dry rangeland to the north of us, thousands of acres of sagebrush and prairie grass, was in this exact situation. Fires started, presumably from some dry lightning strikes. Soon the fire was burning at high speed across the range. The fire crews rushed to save a small town that was in the fire’s path. However, they didn’t have resources to try to save the cattle that grazed this land.
This is where the wonderful part of the story comes together. The ranchers, farmers, and anyone else who could, rushed to help those in need. People who work the land are often independent and determined to take care of their own needs, but what nature was throwing at them was more than anyone could face on their own.
Everyone involved came together and made a plan. It was determined what land would be most defensible. All cattle would be driven there and fenced in together. The concern of separating whose animals were whose would have to be dealt with later. While horse riders set out to bring in all of the cattle that could be found, farmers took tractors and disks and harrowed the perimeter of the area where the cattle would be detained, determined to make a stand against the fire. By the time the cattle were rounded up and brought to the protected pastures, a large amount of soil had been turned to cover anything that would burn.
The fire came and burned through, sweeping everything in its path, but it could not cross the harrowed fields. The smoke was heavy and caused the sun to glow red if it showed at all. Farmers with tractors also helped the firefighters, harrowing to create fire breaks around towns and homes in the path of the fire. For a week it was hard to breathe as the fire burned, but when it was finally brought under control, the damage was minimal compared to what it could have been.
This valley is known for the early settlers coming into an arid, inhospitable land, and working together to dig canals that would bring life-saving water to the crops. To survive, neighbor helped neighbor. No single man could do it alone, and when the work was finished, everyone benefitted as the water flowed to all.
The people of this valley showed themselves to be worthy descendants of those early settlers. Even those whose land and homes were in well-irrigated areas and were not threatened by the fire, worked as if their own land were at stake. And everyone who was not needed on the front lines worked as support. It was a wonderful story of community teamwork.
And when all is said and done, there are few stories worth retelling, but this one of community teamwork is one of them.
Underhand fast-pitch softball was big in the communities before World War II, and Dean was a crazy fast pitcher at it, with an emphasis on crazy. His pitches were incredibly fast, but they were also all over the place. He and some of his brothers would play every chance they could, even when they should be home working.
Dean’s mother had grown weary of it all. More than once she had to dispatch one of her daughters to fetch Dean and his brothers from the ball diamond long after they were supposed to be home. She had learned it did no good to send another brother because they would just end up playing, too.
Then the war came, and Dean and his brothers were drafted into the army. Dean soon found himself in Europe. When there were breaks in fighting and all the other things that went along with war, the men would organize softball teams. Dean had a lot of chances to play, and he enhanced his control, and his skill became well known.
Once he came home from the war, there wasn’t a lot of time to play ball. It was time to find work and get on with life. He still played when he could, but the work that was to be had with farm labor skills was not necessarily high paying and meant lots of extra hours to make a living.
Some big construction jobs started, and the jobs paid well, but the competition was fierce. One big construction firm was building a large commercial lodge at Jackson Lake. They decided that it would be good promotion for the company and the lodge to form a fast-pitch softball team among their workers. But in their first game, they were trounced soundly by a local team.
Those managing the construction crew didn’t feel it looked good for their team to be beaten, and especially not as badly as they were. They started searching around for better players, and Dean’s name came up. A company representative traveled over one-hundred miles from the construction site to St. Anthony, Idaho. When Dean was offered a construction job at a much higher wage than what he received where he was currently working, he jumped at the chance.
In the next game, Dean, pitching for the construction crew team, struck out many of their opponents, but there were still holes in his team. In the times the ball was hit, Dean watched too many misses by the shortstop. Dean went to the office to see the construction foreman.
“We needed a good shortstop if we are going to have a really good team.”
“Do you know one?” the foreman asked.
“My brother, Glen.”
“Has he worked construction before?” the foreman asked.
“Not any more than I have,” Dean answered.
The foreman turned to the administrative person in the office. “Hire his brother.”
Glen was hired, and the team did well. Dean and Glen were also learning construction. But the catcher couldn’t hold on to some of the pitches that Dean threw at him.
The foreman pulled Glen aside. “Can you catch the pitches your brother throws?”
“I can if I am the one that tells him what to throw,” Glen answered.
“You work that out with him, then,” the foreman said.
The team started doing better, but they came close to losing a couple of times. They were coming up against some even tougher teams, and a competitor company sponsored one of them. The foreman watched the team and realized that some of his players were good at construction, but they were only mediocre at softball. This time he went to Dean.
“Do you know any others that are good at softball?” he asked.
“I have other brothers and cousins,” Dean replied.
And that’s how Dean’s mother came to admit that softball might have a place after all.
Our community is rural, and talk among the men soon turned to crops and cattle. From there it turned to milk cows and how much time they took. At one point, Doug, one of the men there, turned to me.
“Daris, didn’t you grow up on a dairy farm?” he asked.
“I sure did,” I replied. “And I had milk cows until recently. How about you?”
“I had one once,” Doug replied. “It actually came in quite useful.”
He then told me the story. He said that on the Saturday he got off of his honeymoon, his father-in-law showed up. He was driving a truck with a single cow in the back.
“This cow is yours, Doug,” the father-in-law said. “I’m giving her to you as a dowry for my daughter.”
Doug thought that was a down-right gentlemanly thing to do. He graciously accepted the cow. But Doug began to wonder when he saw the grin on his father-in-law’s face.
Doug locked the cow in the old barn and fed her. That evening, he milked her. She was gentle, and there seemed to be no problem, so Doug just passed off his father-in-law’s grin as friendliness.
The next morning, Doug had an early morning meeting at the church. He decided to go to it, and then come home to milk. When he returned from the meeting, he was in for a surprise. The cow had busted her way out of the barn, and that is not figuratively. She truly busted down part of a wall.
Doug drove up and down the road, and finally found the cow about a mile away, mowing his neighbor’s yard. The neighbor was not too keen on the free mowing job, and even less so about the free fertilizer the cow left on his doorstep.
Doug finally got a rope on the cow, and the minute he did, she took off down the road at full speed with Doug in tow. It was embarrassing enough to be flying down the road like a kite, but the cow had to make sure she looped through everyone’s yard so they all would see Doug as a human ballast on the end of the rope. The cow dragged Doug right past his house and finally came to a stop in a deep ditch. She then turned to sneer at him, and Doug was sure she was asking him what he planned to do about it.
Doug finally got the cow home and milked her. He was late for church, and found his predicament and morning run was the talk of the community.
That night when Doug went out to milk the cow, all was well. But the next morning he found she had busted another hole in the barn wall and was gone again. Doug was so mad he could hardly speak. He was sure his father-in-law had given him the cow because he knew she would do this. He went in to ask his wife.
“The stupid cow is out again,” Doug said.
“Oh, you mean, Lucy?” she replied. “You know she got her name because she was always on the loose-ee.”
Doug’s wife laughed, but Doug didn’t think it was funny.
“But I did find a good use for the cow,” Doug said to me.
“What was that?” I asked.
“The next day was the auction, and I found out that a cow sold for just enough money to buy a newly married couple a nice television,” Doug said. “And that was the only useful purpose I have ever found for a milk cow.”
One little girl raised her hand. “Yes,” she said. “She’s smiling.”
“Yes, she is smiling,” the teacher replied. “But, can you see anything else that makes her different from you?”
The children looked and looked and strained to see a difference. Finally, another little girl raised her hand. When the teacher called on her, she said, “She’s dressed in summer clothes instead of big, thick winter clothes.” No matter how long the teacher asked them about the difference, the children could not see anything of importance.
I smiled as I thought of an experience with my own little daughter, Elliana. When she was five years old, she was invited over to play at the home of a family that was new to the area. The mother, father, and their four biological children were all Caucasian, blue-eyed and very blond. They also had a sweet little African American daughter that they had adopted.
My wife, Donna, had grown up in Los Angeles and had lots of friends from other races and nationalities. I lived in New York for a time and grew to love people from almost every religion and region of the world. But our children had not had any such opportunities. The culture here in Idaho is not very diverse. Donna was concerned that our daughter might be surprised at the mix in the family, and innocently say something she should not. So, she simply told her that one child in the family was adopted.
“What does ’dopted mean?” Elliana asked.
“Well, when a child is adopted into a family, they are not born to the mother of that family, but to another mother,” Donna replied. “But if that child’s mother can’t take care of them, the other family takes the child into their home and loves them as their own.”
This was not really a new concept to Elliana, as we had been foster parents before, so she smiled and said, “That is so nice.”
Elliana went over there and played most of the day. There were four girls and one boy in the family. The girls played dolls with Elliana and did lots of girl things, but when they all played soccer in the backyard, the little boy joined them. They had lunch, and cake for dessert and all sorts of good things.
When Elliana arrived home, we asked her how it went. “It was the most fun ever,” she said. “They have really pretty dolls, and we played soccer in their great, big yard.”
Then Elliana stopped and looked at her mother. “Momma, which one in their family was ’dopted?”
“Well, did you notice that one child was a bit different from the others?” Donna asked.
Elliana thought for a moment, and then she smiled. “Oh, yes, there was one that was different.”
“And what was the difference?” Donna asked.
Donna hoped to make this a teaching moment, sharing with our daughter about how wonderfully diverse people are. But, instead, we were the ones that learned. We learned that children aren’t born with ideas of differences, but it is something we build in our hearts as we grow older.
For, in answer to the question, Elliana just laughed and said, “It’s obvious, Momma. One was a boy.”
Juan would eat a hot pepper and say, “Where I live, we eat chili peppers like you eat M&M’S.”
Of course, living in Buffalo, New York, the most famous spicy food was Buffalo Chicken Wings. Juan issued a challenge to the rest of us, claiming he could eat hotter chicken wings than anyone, and he dared us to prove otherwise. In our group of a dozen young men, four decided to take the challenge.
There were a few places in Buffalo, all of which claimed to be the restaurant that first made chicken wings. Juan told the challengers to choose whichever one they wanted.
One of the challengers, Donaldson, chose the restaurant based on the hotness factor. This restaurant claimed to have chicken wings from super-super mild to what they called “hot death.” On a day off from work, the twelve of us went there to eat and watch the challenge.
Though most of us didn’t plan to be part of the competition we thought we would see how far up the hotness scale we could go. We started by ordering a platter of the super-super mild. We each ate one. They were barely spicy, and I liked them. We ordered a super mild next. This burned slightly for me, and some of our group went no hotter. Next was the mild. When I tried that, tears rolled from my eyes, and I decided I was happy to end there.
Most of us quit at that level, but the four challengers and Juan kept going. But as the temperature increased, one by one the challengers, eyes watering, dropped out. There were still three heat levels left when the last challenger conceded victory to Juan. As each person reached their hottest level, there would be lots of gulping of pop or anything to try to wash away the burn, and Juan would point at the person and say, “Gringo,” and laugh.
After the last challenger dropped out, all pitched in and bought a platter of “hot death,” and Juan, to our great admiration, ate every wing on it.
Juan’s victory was the talk of our meetings for about a week. Then, one day, Donaldson received a package from home. In it was a note from his mother to share it with all of us. It was full of cookies and something else that Donaldson said was his favorite treat. There were twelve small vials of sweetened cinnamon and a package of toothpicks. Donaldson showed us that he loved to dip the toothpick into the cinnamon and then lick it.
We each took our cinnamon and followed his lead. It was really good, and soon we were all licking our cinnamon toothpicks. But that was when something interesting happened. Juan licked his the first time, and his eyes grew wide, and he started to scream. He rushed to the kitchen sink and started gulping water and trying to rinse his mouth. Finally, he turned to us.
“You trick me!”
“It’s just cinnamon oil,” Donaldson said, dipping a toothpick and licking it off.
Juan walked over to Donaldson and jerked the bottle from his hand. He picked up a new toothpick, dipped it in the cinnamon, and licked it. Again, his eyes grew wide, and he screamed and ran to the kitchen sink. He still thought it was a trick, so after Donaldson showed him again, and licked off a toothpick, Juan grabbed the toothpick out of Donaldson’s mouth, and to our disgust, licked it, too. Once more we watched Juan scream and run to the sink.
“It must just be a difference of spices that we are used to in our culture,” I said.
When Juan finally pulled his mouth away from the water faucet, Donaldson pointed at him and said, “Non-Gringo,” and we all laughed.
So, Donaldson had an extra container of cinnamon for himself, and Juan never teased us again.
On Tuesday of one week, I had been asked by the congregational leaders to take a new assignment with the young men. The announcement would be given in the church meeting on Sunday, and as usual, everyone in the congregation would be given a chance to either support or express their concern about the assignment. But as I was coming into the church that Sunday, one of the congregational leaders stopped me and told me they had changed their mind. They had felt inspired to ask me instead to be the person who would teach the children music.
The members of our little country church have certain idiosyncrasies, and one of them is a strong distinction between what men do and what women do. A man teaching the children music would be like assigning him to play on a female sports team. But I had been taught by my father that if a call came from church leaders, a person should accept it and heaven would help him overcome his inadequacies. So, with great apprehension, I accepted.
I wondered what the members of the congregation would say. I was particularly nervous about the assignment since my wife was a music major in college, and I didn’t even know if I was on pitch half of the time. The only thing going for me was that I loved children.
It would be a full week before it would be announced to the congregation. That just gave me more time to worry about it. I wondered what my children would think when they learned that their dad, who couldn’t sing right half of the time, would be teaching music. I talked to my wife about it, but we didn’t mention anything to our children other than to tell them that I was getting an unusual assignment.
When the next week came, and the announcement was made, it went worse than I expected. Instead of the solemnity that usually exists with these announcements, the congregation burst into laughter, starting with my own children. It was to such an extent that the head congregational leader, whom we call “The Bishop,” had to pause the meeting for everyone to calm down. Once the laughter stopped, the meeting was restarted, only to have everyone once more burst into laughter. This time The Bishop spoke to the congregation about how sometimes they, the leaders, felt directed to do unusual things.
No one expressed any concern about the assignment, so it was to officially start the next week. I thought it might be good for me to watch what the current music teacher did. But the minute I stepped into the children’s meeting room, one of the ladies in charge handed me the song book.
I shook my head and handed it back. “I don’t start until next week. I just came to watch.”
She shoved the book back to me. “We don’t have anyone for you to watch. So get up and lead.”
Nothing I said would change her mind, and she would not accept no for an answer, so I soon found myself trembling in front of forty children. We sang a song that I have known since I was a boy, but in my flustered state, I mixed half of one verse with half of another. I finally stopped the music.
“Maybe we should try that again,” I said.
One little eight-year-old girl raised her hand. When I called on her, she asked, “Are you going to be our new music teacher?”
“Yes,” I replied.
The little girl rolled her eyes. “That really stinks,” she said. “You mess things up.”
And with that, I thought, “I hope heaven has more confidence in me than I do.”
With Christmas coming, the men and women decided to have a friendly competition. It was all in the sake of doing good and lifting the hearts of friends and neighbors who needed to know that someone cared about them. The women challenged the men to see who could do the most good deeds. The loser would be responsible for the community Christmas dinner.
The competition would be based on the number of events that were done and the total number of hours put into the projects. If each group won one, it would be considered a tie.
Samuel, the community leader, called a meeting of the men to discuss different projects that were needed. He started the meeting and opened the floor for discussion.
“One of the first things we need to do is to make sure everyone has a good supply of wood for winter,” Ben said.
Everyone agreed that this was the highest priority. Samuel asked if anyone knew where we could get wood.
“There are lots of old trees along the fence that runs through my pasture,” Harold said. “I would love to have them cut down and cleaned up.”
A time was set for the wood project, then other ideas were suggested. These included shoveling snow, since the forecast said it was imminent. The young men said they’d clean yards for the elderly. Projects were lined up through November and most of the way to Christmas.
Through that time we worked hard. I chopped wood, shoveled snow, and raked and cleaned. Almost every weekend and many evenings I joined with the men or the boys doing some service work. While we were doing our part, the women were baking food and taking it to people to cheer their hearts. Families who had more shared with families who had less. This work did as much for those who provided it as for those who were the beneficiaries. By Christmas the glow of the spirit of the season could be felt in every home.
Just before the day of the community dinner, everyone recorded their hours as best they could remember. Everyone had gotten so caught up in the spirit of sharing and giving that the contest was almost forgotten. But in a fun way, everyone wanted to see who was going to be responsible to organize the dinner.
After the hours and work were all submitted, they were tallied, and both the men and the women met together. I was sitting up front near Samuel, and he asked me to start the meeting while he looked over the report. After I had given the preliminaries, and reminded everyone about the community Christmas dinner, I turned the time over to Samuel.
Samuel stepped to the microphone to address us. “Men,” he said, “I have looked things over and the women have much better figures than we have.”
His phraseology caught me by surprise, and I started laughing. Samuel turned to glare at me, and I covered my mouth to try to hold back my mirth. No one else seemed to find it funny.
John, the old man next to me, chided me. “Daris, it’s rude to laugh when Samuel is speaking.”
I repeated Samuel’s words to John, and his eyes lit up with understanding of what I found so funny. He, too, started to laugh. “That’s rich,“ he said. “Like it really takes much looking things over to see that the women have better figures than we have.” Then he laughed harder.
Samuel turned to glare at John and me. And since no one else laughed, John and I were assigned to be in charge of the Christmas dinner. But the women all helped because, besides having better figures, they were also better cooks.
When the Boy Scouts came around wanting to rake his leaves, he shooed them away, telling them he was capable of doing his own yard work. When he hurt his back, the men of the community wanted to help him stack his wood, but Cyrus wouldn’t hear of it. Even if he could only carry one small stick of wood at a time, he was determined to do it himself.
One fall day there was a big Agriculture Expo at the local university. Though Cyrus was retired from farming, the monotony was driving him crazy, so he decided to go.
“Take some food with you,” his wife said, as he was heading out the door. “You know how you get at those farm things, staying for hours. And since you get dizzy when you don’t eat for a long time, you’ll need something.”
Cyrus didn’t like the implication that he was old and feeble. He only pretended to take something, and then he slipped out and was on his way. Once at the Expo, Cyrus was in the world he loved. He knew half of the people walking around the big football field where the agriculture exhibits were displayed. New tractors, combines, hay equipment and every sort of tillage machine was there.
The time went by quickly, and Cyrus started realizing he was beginning to feel that dizzy, low-blood-sugar feeling. He decided to visit one of the food booths. But they were on the far end of the football field, and there was a lot of things to stop and look at on his way.
He was getting fairly close to the hamburger stand he was aiming for when, suddenly, everything went black. When Cyrus came to, he was lying on the artificial turf with paramedics leaning over him. No matter how much Cyrus complained, they insisted he had to go to the hospital just to be safe. That made Cyrus mad, but he didn’t have much choice. When he finally got to the hospital, they checked him over and felt he was okay to go home.
As he was reaching for the phone to call his wife, he was so mad that he mumbled, “I think I’m going to go home and shoot myself.”
He, of course, didn’t mean it, but the hospital staff was trained to take suicidal threats seriously. So they took him, hollering, back into the hospital. He was informed that they legally had to watch him for forty-eight hours.
If he was mad before, it was nothing compared to his attitude now. He called his wife, and she hurried over. But he still had to stay for the full two days. He was upset, and for forty-eight hours he made everyone’s life miserable until they were as happy as he was to have him leave. When he was finally told he could go home, he was about to march out when the hospital staff informed him that hospital policy required them to wheel him out in a wheelchair.
That was the last straw. He stormed out before they could stop him. But just after he stepped outside, he slipped on the newly snow-covered sidewalk, fell and broke his hip. Back into the hospital he went, riding, not in a wheelchair, but on a gurney. This time he spent a couple of weeks. When he was finally released, he humbly accepted the wheelchair ride.
As his wife walked beside him, she asked, “Cyrus, have you learned anything from all of this?”
“Yes,” Cyrus replied. “I have learned that there is a time to keep my mouth shut.”
“Hey, everyone, how would you all like to join us for a game of Murder in the Dark?”
“What’s Murder in the Dark?” I asked Donna.
“Oh, it’s a fun game,” she answered. “I’m sure you’d love it. Come join us.”
We went over to the black box theater. It was a room about twice the size of a normal classroom with bleachers on one side, and the rest was open floor space for the actors. Everyone took a seat on the bleachers while the actor who invited us gave the rules.
“Okay, for those who haven’t played murder in the dark before, the rules are easy.” He held up a bowl. “Papers are put into the bowl, one for each person. One paper will have a black dot. The person who gets it is the murderer. We then shut out the lights, and the murder wanders around the room. If he grabs someone, they are dead and have to sit on the bleachers. When the first person dies, he or she calls out one. As each successive person dies, they call out the next number. When half of the people are dead, the game ends. Anyone who doesn’t die is a survivor and scores a point.”
“There’s one other thing,” a girl added. “The murderer has to hold onto you for three seconds. If you can get away within three seconds, you’re not dead.”
There were twenty-two people in the room. The papers were put into the bowl, and we each drew one. Then the lights were turned out. In the dark, every once in a while I would hear a scuffle, then a number would be called out. Once eleven was called, the lights came on.
I looked around the room. Donna was sitting on the bleachers. She had lost in that round. I hadn’t felt the murderer touch me at all. I had bumped into a few people, but each of them darted away from me as fast as I had from them.
Everyone drew a paper for round two. The lights went out, a few scuffles occurred, and a few numbers were called. Suddenly, I felt someone grab my shirt. I was on the varsity wrestling team, and we practiced hand control at nauseam. Without even thinking, my reflexes kicked in. I grabbed the person’s wrist and threw him across the room. I wasn’t dead, but someone was groaning.
The person said, “I’m the murderer, and I think I was just killed. Turn on the lights.”
The lights came on, and there on the floor about twenty feet from me was one of the actors. I thought I surely couldn’t have tossed him that far, but I realized that adrenaline can do crazy things.
“So what happened?” somebody asked.
“I don’t know,” the murderer replied, as he slowly pulled himself to his feet. “All I know is I grabbed somebody, and in the next instant I was flying across the room.”
“Was it under three seconds?” a girl asked in a snickering tone.
“It was so fast it must have been a half a second,” he replied.
Everyone wanted to know who had gotten away. I was embarrassed and wanted to remain anonymous, but my shirt hung open, all of the buttons ripped off, so I raised my hand.
One girl looked at where I stood compared to where the murderer was and gasped. “You threw him that far?”
I just shrugged. “Natural reflexes, I guess.” They continued to stare at me, so I said, “How about I sit out this round and say I died?”
“You’re okay with dying?” the girl asked.
“Sure,” I replied. Then I called out, “Seven,” as the lights went out, and I made my way to the bleachers.
I truly didn’t mind. Donna was already out, so the bleachers were where I wanted to be anyway.
She works at McDonald’s and, to top off her bad week, she had to work Friday and Saturday shifts. She worked the late shift Friday night until ten o’clock, and then had to be back by six o’clock in the morning. By the time I picked her up from work on Friday, she was exhausted. She had purchased some food so she could eat on the way home and go right to bed. After she finished eating, she drowsed in the car the rest of the way.
After we pulled into our driveway, she sleepily made her way into the house and disappeared into her bedroom. She and I were both up by five o’clock Saturday morning so we could get some breakfast and get her to work on time. When I dropped her off at work, she was not in a good mood.
I went home and wrote homework papers for the doctoral degree on which I am working. I thought that I probably wasn’t enjoying my day any more than she was enjoying hers.
When I picked her up at two o’clock in the afternoon, I wondered what kind of mood she would be in. I assumed she would just come out, plop into the car, and fall fast asleep. But to my surprise, she was totally animated.
“Dad,” she said. “You won’t believe what happened. The minute I clocked in they assigned me to work at back-drive.”
“What’s back drive?” I asked.
“That’s the window that takes the money from people in the drive through. Then the people pull their cars to front drive where they pick up their order.”
“But I thought you hated drive through,” I said.
“I always have before,” she said. “But today was different. It started out bad. It was early in the morning, and it was almost always busy. And when it wasn’t, I had to wash dishes. But then something happened. A car came through, and the man paid for his meal while his son continued searching for coins. After they paid, they didn’t drive to the next window.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“This is the fun part,” she replied. “He asked me how much the order was for the car behind them. I told him, and then he paid that bill. And it was more than his own.”
“Did he know the people in the next car?” I asked.
Heather shook her head. “I asked him, and he didn’t.”
“That was nice,” I said.
“But here’s something even more incredible,” Heather said. “It didn’t happen just once. It happened like a half a dozen times. And another thing that would happen was one person would pay for the next people, and then the next people would pay for the people behind them, and so on. The longest chain was seven cars in a row.”
“Wow!” I replied,
“The one that touched me the most,” Heather said, “was the last chain. It had gone on for about five cars. Then, in the last car there was a mother with five children. The children were hungry, and the littlest ones were crying. When they pulled up to pay, the tired mother was frantically searching through her purse. She finally turned to me and apologized because she didn’t have the money. When I told her that the people in the car in front of her had already paid her bill, she started to cry, and she said she was so grateful.”
Heather was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “There’s nothing like seeing the goodness in people to make me feel happy.”
David turned to Jim and asked, “Jim, did you sign up for a preshow number? I heard that you used to be in a band.”
“Well, you might say that,” Jim replied. “But some cows changed that.”
“Cows?” David asked.
“I was in high school,” Jim said. “There were four of us who decided we were really good musicians. We had big dreams of fame. The father of the band’s drummer told us we could practice in his garage. But after about a week of practice he changed his mind.”
“So then what?” David asked.
“The lead guitarist lived on an old farm. There was an old barn that wasn’t used for anything but storing junk. It also hadn’t been cleaned since the time the cows used it. The lead guitarist’s dad said if we would clean and organize it, we could use it.”
“That was nice of him,” David said.
“I think he just wanted free labor,” Jim replied. “Anyway, it took a couple of weeks after school for us to get it clean. The day we moved in was exciting. We were a long way from anyone who could hear us, and we bragged about getting really good and then surprising everyone. We worked hard at it, too. We practiced every night. The problem was, we were all self-taught, and every practice was a bit different because we could barely read music. But the most annoying part of the whole thing was that when we practiced, the cows in the pastures would come to the barn and moo until we could hardly hear ourselves. Our keyboardist assured us that it was because the cows liked our music and wanted to join in.”
“Was it?” David asked.
“I don’t think so,” Jim replied. “After we got to a point where we thought we were really good, we started trying to find gigs. We performed at a couple of places for free, but were never invited back a second time. We finally got a nonpaying gig at a bar and were paid in all of the Sprite we could drink since we were under age—too young for alcohol. No one cared what we played, and when the people got really drunk, they even tipped us a little bit.
“No matter what we did, we couldn’t find any other place that would let us play. So then our drummer got this big idea. He said we should rent a big theater and invite everyone to come for free. He said we would pack the place and that would give us some recognition.
“We all agreed that it was a good idea. The theater cost one thousand dollars for the night, so we each worked at part time jobs to earn the two-hundred-and-fifty dollars for our share, and a lot of extra for advertising. We rented the theater, made fliers, and posted them all over town. We put it on the marquee, bought ads in the paper, and did advertising everywhere else we could think of.”
“How did it go?” David asked.
“When it was time for the concert to start,” Jim replied, “not a single person had come, not even family and friends. So we opened all the doors and started to play, hoping to draw people in off of the street. After about an hour a lady and her daughter walked in and asked if they could sing. I said, ‘Lady, can’t you see we are having a concert?’ She looked at the empty hall and said, ‘It sounded so bad I thought it must be open mic night.’”
David laughed and said, “Ouch!”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “The drummer then said something which changed our lives forever.”
“What?” David asked.
He said, ‘Guys, do you think that maybe all that time we practiced the cows were really just begging us to quit?” Jim paused and grinned, then added, “And that’s how I ended up in theatre.”
“I am a graffiti artist,” he said.
“Not like the graffiti on buildings and trains, though, right?” I asked.
“Well,” he said slowly, “yes and no.”
By this time the whole class was curious.
“Would you like to expound on that, Wyatt?” I asked.
“When I was a teenager,” he said, “I started out painting train cars with some friends. My friends soon tired of it. But for me, there was an adrenaline rush trying not to get caught. In addition, I found I was good at it. I must admit that I felt proud when I was out driving by my creations with someone and heard them say it was awesome artwork, even as they talked about how wrong it was for someone to do it. And I hated not being able to tell them it was my work.”
“Did you ever get caught?” another student asked.
Wyatt shook his head. “I came close a few times. One night I’m sure the police knew they had me cornered, but they couldn’t find me. It was winter, and I stayed hidden all night. They stayed until the next morning but finally left. I nearly froze to death.”
“Obviously something must have changed,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be telling us this.”
Wyatt nodded. “I had been doing it for around four years when one evening I was out with a girl, and she asked me what I did. When I told her I painted graffiti, she said that was awesome. I had the strangest feeling come over me as I thought, ‘I don’t want to date someone who thinks it’s awesome to break the law.’ Then I realized I was the person breaking the law, and that was worse. I decided I needed to change my ways.”
Wyatt said he went to his church leader and explained to him what he had been doing and that he wanted to change.
“The problem is,” Wyatt told his church leader, “I love doing it.”
“Do you love it because of the excitement of doing something wrong, or because it is a creative outlet?” the church leader asked.
Wyatt thought about it and realized there was a little bit of excitement, but that was getting old. It was more the creativity.
“Creativity is a part of human nature,” the church leader said. “You need to take care of the illegal things you have done, but you also need to find another creative outlet.”
Wyatt turned himself in and was sentenced to hours of community service, much of it scrubbing off graffiti or painting over it. But he couldn’t find a creative outlet and could feel the desire to create growing within him. Then one day he heard a business owner talking to a customer.
“We need to paint our shop,” she said, “but I wish I could get someone to paint a logo or picture or something instead of just a boring paint job.”
Wyatt had an idea. By promising to paint over it at his own expense if the owner didn’t like it, he talked her into allowing him to paint a logo in a graffiti style on the building. The evening he started to paint, the police arrested him. He had to get the business owner to explain their agreement before he was released. Wyatt bought a suit to paint in after that so he looked professional. Graffiti art is something that takes some getting used to, and at first, the owner wasn’t sure she liked it. But she got so many compliments that she kept it and grew to love it.
Soon job offers poured in. He even painted cars, pickups, and trucks. He had a waiting list for months of work. He said he even checked with the art department to see if it was possible to major in graffiti art. They had never even considered it before, yet Wyatt ended up making a good living at it while going to school.
As the truck whizzed by me, my thoughts returned to the present, and I smiled and said, “Nice work, Wyatt.”
He opened a gate to allow us to pull closer to the gym where the groups would practice. I unhitched the tent trailer so I could get the harp out, then, drove the van to the door where he was waiting. I lifted the harp from the van, loaded it on the dolly, and rolled into the room where he said it needed to be. As my daughter took a minute to practice, the director told us about the camp.
“This is one of the premiere music camps,” he said. “Students come from almost all of the western United States. We have music people from all over the U.S. come to help and to teach the students. Many of them volunteer and come at their own expense year after year.”
When we finished there, I hitched the tent trailer back up, and we went to the campground. Almost every one of the camp spots were full. We started visiting with the people there and learned that many of them were like us, there for their children to go to the music camp.
Even though we had the music camp in common, the diversity was greater than the commonality. Some parents were teachers like us while others were wealthy businessmen. There were people of different races and from almost every walk of life. Despite the differences, we all soon became friends.
I had to go home for a few days to work and to take care of commitments for our other daughter. When I went back to the music camp for the final concerts later in the week, Elliana had some fun stories to tell.
Her choir teacher was one of the people who had volunteered to help. He was a big, burly man who wore short-sleeve shirts. At the curve of his right arm, where the shirt sleeve ended, part of a tattoo could be seen. At first, because of his size, he made everyone nervous, so no one dared ask him about it. But as time went on, and the students in the choir realized he was just a big, fun-loving softie, their fear of him faded away. Finally, the day came when he asked if anyone had any questions, and one of the students raised her hand.
“What is your tattoo?” the girl asked.
The choir director laughed and pulled up his sleeve. There on this big man’s arm was a Disney tattoo. It had Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and many other Disney characters. The students laughed, having expected something more rugged.
“Why did you get that?” a boy asked.
The orchestra director smiled. “Well, you see, I have always loved everything Disney. In fact, I have taken my choir to the competition there every year. We never did very well, always placing last or close to last. But one year I couldn’t get my class to settle down and work. So I came up with this brilliant idea. I told them if they would work, and if we won the grand prize at Disneyland, I would get a Disney tattoo. I figured it was a safe bet since we had never even come close to winning before.
“My students got in and worked, and we had a great year. I still didn’t think we had a chance of winning since my school was small compared to the other schools we were competing against. But when we got to the competition, my small choir sang with such heart that they had the sound of a choir twice their size. We ended up winning, and, well, that is why I have a Disney tattoo.”
That night, as Elliana’s choir director lead the achoir in an incredible performance, I had to laugh at Mickey’s head poking out to watch from the director’s sleeve.
“Daris, I would like you to teach the lesson next week.”
“Are you going to be gone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I just don’t know how to approach the topic.”
I took the manual, and when I arrived at my home, I opened it up and looked at the lesson. The title was, “The Importance of a Good Marriage.”
Instantly I realized his dilemma. That lesson might work for boys that were sixteen to eighteen, but not for boys who were twelve to fourteen. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to talk about girls. It was just that they didn’t know how to go about it. Conversations around the campfire of that nature were awkward. One boy might start by saying to another, “I think your sister is cute.” At which point the second boy would say, “You must have a mental condition! Don’t get near me. I don’t want to catch it.” And that would be the end of the conversation.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the lesson and had an idea. When Sunday came, speaking to the loudest, most talkative boy, I said, “Gordy, I need you to write on the chalkboard for me.” He happily took his position. I then turned to the other boys. “I want all of you to tell Gordy everything you want in the girl you plan to marry.”
The look of shock on their faces wasn’t unexpected, but eventually Mort grinned and started it off. “She needs to be pretty.”
“Yeah,” Devin said. “And rich.”
Soon the boys were throwing out ideas faster than Gordy could write, and he had to write faster and abbreviate. Within twenty minutes there were four columns with about fifteen things in each. When they had basically run out of ideas and board space, I started the next phase.
“Now,” I said, “you have to narrow it to three.”
“Three?” Dallin gasped. “That’s crazy!”
“You better make sure you keep the three that are most important to you,” I replied. “I may give suggestions, but I won’t tell you what to choose.”
“Well, I suppose that cooking good pies could come off,” Mort said reluctantly.
Some of the boys argued briefly, but eventually Gordy erased it. Gradually the lists grew smaller. When they debated taking off “pretty,” I said, “Guys, you will sit across the table from her all of your life. I’m not saying she has to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she should be attractive to you.” They decided to leave it.
When they debated about the fact that she should be rich, again I gave a suggestion. “When you say she is rich, where did she get her money?” I asked.
“From her dad, of course,” Mort replied.
“And do you think he’s going to give his money to you?” The boys paused and looked at each other. “In addition,” I continued, “if she has had a lot of money, she will expect you to provide for her in the same way.”
Before anyone could even say anything else, Gordy said, “Nix that,” and erased it.
When they finally finished, they had three things which they felt would encompass all other critical items. One, she had to be pretty.
Two, she had to be nice.
And three, she had to be a good mother.
As the boys looked at their list, and thought about what they decided were the most important qualities they wanted in a girl, I asked them the most important question of the lesson.
“And what are you doing in your life to become the kind of man that kind of girl would be interested in?”