As I begin this, I’m taking a brief respite in my room. We have a good chunk of the ward in our apartment tonight for “small-groups FHE”, where two homes host different groups. This as opposed to one large FHE activity at the chapel. (For some definition of “large”; this ain’t your BYU singles ward here.) And as the other group’s event got canceled due to inclement weather, we’ve got quite a lot of people here.
I’ve gotta put up a disclaimer for this post, it contains a bit of griping. I promise I’m a generally good-natured fellow.
As for the title of the post, almost a week ago I was at Institute, at a lesson taught by one of the senior missionaries in the area. It was essentially a marriage prep class, and he gave some pieces of advice that I take extreme issue with.
First of all, he conveyed a story about some area authority traveling on a plane, spotting a young couple a few seats ahead. The guy was engrossed in some mobile game, and the gal was leaning her head on his shoulder, massaging his neck and hair. And this guy’s reaction was to mentally shout at the guy, “WAKE UP!!! SHOW SOME AFFECTION!!!” Which, I guess, sure, that might be nice, but what’re you doing judging this couple just from this scene? If this traveling elder’s being internally consistent in his passing of judgement, this young fellow must show never-ending devotion, never have any time to himself, lest he draw the righteous indignation he obviously deserves.
So the lesson’s not off to a great start. Then, the teacher offered this bit of advice for young married couples. “Go move two hours away from everyone you know, and especially your parents.” He went on to tell horror stories of his own parents and their intrusion into his and his wife’s boundaries. Now, I guess that would’ve been nice for him, but as general advice it’s completely off, in my opinion. You want to take two people who’ve just made an incredible adjustment to their way of life, and tear them away from their entire support group, friends and family alike? What about when kids come into the picture? Grandparents are an incredibly valuable resource in that regard.
One more gem. And this was told by his wife. A story about how her husband had come home from work one night and was eagerly greeted by his kids and the family dog. His wife was hard at work doing dishes. He walks up, gives her a kiss, then remarks, “How come you’re not excited to see me? Even the dog is more excited.”
Mhmm. Comparing your hard-working wife to an emotional dog.
Well, it did, the story had a happy ending, the wife agreed and changed her ways. I guess this is all just a generational thing. Whatever.
On Wednesday we had the first of a series of Star Wars movie nights. I went on a date with a girl who’d never seen any of the movies, so of course we needed to fix that. I really wanted to try the Machete Order: IV, V, II, III, VI. We had a great turnout, everything was going smoothly. And then the opening crawl started. And people were still talking. I tried shushing, but to no avail. I tried pausing the movie when we couldn’t even hear the dialogue, but to no avail. I tried pointing out that we had people here who were watching for the first time, and even got one of the chief chatters to acknowledge “that’s his way of saying ‘shut up!'”, but to no avail. They. Would. Not. Stop. Talking.
It was absolutely infuriating to sit through that. In fact, afterwards one of the noisemakers acknowledged, “I’ll be quiet during a new movie, but I’ve seen that one so many times, so, y’know.” So these people for whom this was also a new movie, they just don’t matter, do they? Not one bit? Incredibly rude and selfish, to ruin the first experience they’ll have with Star Wars, because you just had to point out “oh, here it comes, here’s the line, it’s so funny!”
I’ll continue holding these things because the show must go on, but from now on I think I’ll be up front about it: I don’t care if you talk, but if I hear any off-topic chatter from people who’ve already seen the movie, I’m pausing it, with no exceptions. I figure after the third or fourth time people will get the message. Or I just don’t invite the noise-makers; but I kinda want them to be aware of the effect they’re having on the group. Like that guy yesterday in church who was banging away at his laptop keyboard during a video presentation in class. Sometimes I want sounds to have a visual representation, a rapidly-expanding sphere to help these people know just how far their noise carries.
Anyways. Just had to get that off my chest. They’re all sweet spirits, honest.
On Friday I attended the birthday party of a friend, whose actual birthday was the following day, but couldn’t be celebrated then due to a talent show. It was the sort of party where you can’t hear yourself think, can’t have a private conversation; kind of like what’s happening out in my living room, actually.
I met up there with a friend who’s over here visiting from Germany. She was actually booked to leave back to Berlin the following day, so this was her last hurrah. While the rest of the birthday bunch headed off to an improv comedy event, she and I split off and explored Seattle a bit. We later met up with another friend, and ended up staying out till 5am. My gosh. I’m glad there were no police officers on the highway on my way back, because I was honestly driving like a drunk, veering off into neighboring lanes. I evidently lived to tell the tale, however.
Right, so the reason that birthday party happened on Friday was because of a talent show on Saturday. Which was under the purview of the Service & Activities committee, which I co-chair along with a very competent gal. We spent what seemed like the entire day prepping for it. My roommate arranged for his band to play, which contributed to the complexity. But also the technical impressiveness of the set-up, since they were well-equipped to facilitate a musical event. Well, that is true, but it turns out that a family in a neighboring ward is just chock full of audio-techies, and they brought their equipment as well, resulting in an interesting interconnect of equipment, but an excellent sound design.
So that was exhausting. Luckily I didn’t need to be at church until 1pm the next day. There they announced that we were having small-group FHE at our apartment. Well, they announced they were having it at “Michael’s apartment”, you can get the address for Michael’s apartment from him, Michael will tell you all how to get to his apartment. He’s understandably a much more extroverted guy, I get that, I was just a bit miffed, as the one who furnished the place and who’s paying a vast majority of the rent. Heh, I even ran into a couple friends in the ward as I was getting back to my apartment after work, who were here for FHE. “Oh, you live here too? With Michael?”
I am glad though that my roommate’s on his feet and has his own “place” in the ward. And to be entirely fair, Facebook postings included both our names.
Yesterday evening I watched The Cokeville Miracle for the first time. Interesting stuff. That night I stayed up to hopefully snag a set of Paris Temple open-house tickets. Not knowing when they were to become available, we could only see that reservations would open “on Monday”. Well, midnight counts, technically. So at 11pm my time I furiously refreshed the page, but no joy. Hmm, the other pending open house invitation said it’ll be open up at 10am – on a different day, but it was a fair guess that the same time would hold for this reservation set as well. And in a couple more hours it would become 10am in Paris. So I stayed up till then. I was quite tired, but my strategy was to stay out in my living room with the heat off; I dozed, sure, but the cold woke me up frequently enough that I was able to check at 10:10am Paris local time. Still, no joy. It wasn’t until this morning at 10am MST that reservations became available, at which point Dad and I tag-teamed it to snatch the tickets at the earliest opportunity. Hoo-rah.
Well it sounds like enough people have left that the ambient noise level is manageable again. I’ll leave you with a very cool motorcycle I came across the other day at work.
Love ya! Can’t wait to see Dad and Mattie in Europe!