Life Lessons: Walking to the Gym

When walking to the gym, I used to walk along the edge of the parking lot. Last week, though, I realized that the edge of the parking lot curves out quite a bit to the right, but the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so I set my sights on the gym and forged straight through the parking lot. This actually saved quite a bit of time.

Life Lesson #1: Always take shortcuts.

This morning, though, I couldn't see the gym in the distance ahead of me because it was foggy. Luckily I knew where it was because I've been there before.

Life Lesson #2: Always do things you've done before, because you know you can.

Calling

The bishop asked me to meet with him Thursday evening. I was a little anxious because I knew he wanted to give me a calling, which meant I'd have to explain to him where I currently stand with the church. Knowing that ahead of time, though--and knowing for the past few months that this conversation would come sooner or later--gave me time to plan ahead how I'd respond.

I continue to attend church in order to support FoxyJ and to be involved in this part of our children's lives, but I don't believe the LDS church has any more claim to truth than any other religion or philosophy. When I asked to be released from my calling in the elders quorum presidency and stopped attending the temple, I felt more at peace with myself than I had in years. A year and a half later, I continue to feel that peace with my decision, despite the difficulty and heartache I know it causes FoxyJ and other faithful Mormons who love me. This continual resolve is significant for me, the man who spends his life questioning every decision he's ever made.

Regardless of my commitment to this sort of Christian agnosticism, though, I've been feeling a little guilty lately for not contributing anything to the church in the way of service. The LDS church, after all, functions only through the efforts of volunteer clergy, where every single member is essentially a member of said clergy. And whether or not I believe in the organization's doctrine, I can't deny that it does a lot of good, particularly for my family. The weight of moving to a new city, away from family and most of our friends, has been lifted tremendously by the built-in support network of the local ward. Basically, I've been feeling like a freeloader.

So when the bishop asked me to serve in a clerical position (i.e. one that wouldn't require me to teach anything I don't believe), I told him more or less all of the above, then said that I'd be willing to accept the calling if he still wanted to give it to me. He said he was (in fact he didn't seem surprised in the least), so long as I'm living according to LDS standards. Being as how I despise the taste of coffee and extramarital sex would be sort of counterproductive to making my marriage work, I told him I am living worthily by that definition, and will continue to do so.

So I have a calling. Assuming, that is, that when the bishop proposes that I be sustained, no one in the congregation objects*. Truthfully, I feel better about this calling, knowing that I was completely honest about my reservations before accepting it, than I have about any other calling I had under the pretense of complete faith.


*This is not entirely impossible, as only a few weeks ago a woman gave a talk encouraging ward members to not be afraid to raise their hands and speak when they object to a calling, and I'm getting the distinct impression that there are members of the ward who know a lot more about me than I have personally told them--which comes as no surprise, all things considered.

Up on Cloud Nine

by Anne Fine

For the readers' advisory class I'm taking from an action figure, one of the assignments was to pair up with another member of the class and perform readers' advisory interviews with each other. Based on a book that my partner told me about, I had to make five suggestions for her, and vice versa. Then, each of us had to choose one of the five suggestions to read. I told my partner about A Separate Peace, a book I read in high school about a boy who pushes his best friend out of a tree. Well, other stuff happens too, but that was the best part as far as I was concerned. So my partner went with that and suggested to me five books I might like, the most intriguing of them being Up on Cloud Nine by Anne Fine.

Up on Cloud Nine is about Ian, who is writing a biography of his best friend, Stolly, while Stolly recovers from falling out a third-story window. Stol, like Finny in A Separate Peace, is a quirky, charismatic liar who can get away with anything. Ian, like Gene in A Separate Peace, seems to be somewhat jealous of his best friend--Ian worries, in fact, that his mother wishes Stol were her son instead of Ian. Unlike Finny, though, Stol was not shoved out the window by his friend; it becomes clear rather quickly that Stol jumped. Much of the story revolves around Ian's attempt to understand why.

At first I was unsure I'd like this book. The first-person narrative is written in a strongly British teenage colloquial voice, quite similar to the voice that endeared Marcus in About a Boy [the movie] to me. For some reason, though, the voice annoyed me in Up on Cloud Nine. As I approached page fifty, I feared I'd have to follow Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50 and stop reading. When I got to fifty, though, and I still wasn't enjoying the book, I decided to ignore the rule. I'd already invested fifty pages of my life in this book, after all, and if I stopped reading that meant I'd have to pick one of the other five suggestions I'd been given and start over from scratch--I simply don't have that kind of time. Besides, the book's only 150 pages total. What did I have to lose?

It turns out I'm glad I broke the rule. Ian eventually grew on me, teen Brit slang and all, and I ended up really enjoying the book. It's not quite A Separate Peace, but then I'm not sure I'll ever find another A Separate Peace, especially considering the fact that the reason I loved that book so much had more to do with where I was at that point in life than it did with the book itself.

Please don't tell Nancy I broke the rule.

Poker Face

This afternoon my boss, InfoMan, asked what I'd thought of a presentation he'd given earlier today. "I don't know you well enough to read your face," he said.

"Few people do," I replied, but I'm not sure even that is true. It's more likely that no one does.

FoxyJ often laments the fact that she has a horrible poker face. If she's bored with what you're saying, you'll know. If she thinks you're the most fascinating person ever, you'll know. If she's upset with you because you've taken the time to blog but not to do the dishes and she's spent the day trying to write a thesis and cook dinner while caring for your screaming baby and your grumpy toddler, you'll know.

On the other hand, I tend to be unreadable. Even FoxyJ, who is arguably the person who knows me best, has a hard time reading my expressions. I snapped at her a few weeks ago for asking if I was upset when I wasn't, but obviously she's not the one to blame for the fact that thoughtful, bored, tired, and upset are all identical on me. The fact that it bothered me so much that she misread me is indicative of an internal conflict that is the story of my life: I desperately want people to understand me and share in what I'm feeling, but I'll be damned if I show you--let alone tell you--what that is. Making matters worse, I'm afraid my overreaction has (understandably) made Foxy hesitant to even ask how I'm doing.

Despite his proclaimed inability to read me, InfoMan did point out today that lately I've seemed a bit more stressed than usual. This is an understatement--the truth is I'm barely able to function these last few days--but were it not so I doubt my stress would be visible at all. I tend not to notice it myself (or acknowledge it, anyway) until it reaches some point of critical mass and suddenly life is a huge melodramatic mess. Melodrama, of course, being defined by my standards, meaning I'm allowing myself to feel anything.

InfoMan's presentation earlier today, as it turns out, had to do with interactions at the reference desk in the context of our 21st-century culture of isolation. Ultimately, InfoMan argues, any human interaction, whether it be in the library or at the grocery store, is more about connecting with people than it is about getting information or groceries or whatever. People need people, plain and simple. The primary job of anyone working in a public service position, then, is to first ensure that the customer/client/patron feels a satisfying human connection, then to do what we can about meeting their other needs.

InfoMan is good at practicting what he preaches, not only with library patrons, but with the student employees he supervises. This afternoon while we worked together for an hour at the information desk, we didn't talk about the details of what's causing me stress of late, mostly because to do so would have required me getting into a whole lot of backstory that I didn't want to in the two-minute breaks between patrons, but we did talk about how each of us deals with stress, how we do or don't build the human connections he'd been talking about, and other random things like cultural differences and overpopulation. It was no orgy of emotional bonding, but it was a nice moment in the midst of an otherwise long and difficult day.

Who knows? If not for my poker face, I might experience such nice moments more often.

ALA Midwinter in Seattle

I went to the American Library Association's Midwinter Conference in Seattle this morning. Some highlights:

• The Washington State Convention Center is built on top of the freeway. And I was there. How cool is that?
• The reason I paid to go: I got to be there at the Youth Awards press conference where they announce the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz winners. Most significantly, American Born Chinese, a graphic novel, won the Printz. Very cool.
• I was happy to learn that Allison Bechdel's Fun Home won the nonfiction Stonewall award.
• Lots and lots of vendors in the massive exhibition hall. They all wanted to sell me stuff. "Yes, ma'am, I'm quite impressed by your automated checkout system, but I'm afraid I don't need it for my home library."
• Free books. Nothing great, but they were free--today's the last day of exhibitions and nobody wants to haul them home, so they were giving them away for free or selling them at half-price. I picked up a couple free books, plus a free Transformers comic.
• There were cinnamon rolls, but, as per Foxy J's and my New Years goals making today a No Treat Day, I abstained.
• I finally got myself a Nancy Pearl Librarian action figure, and it only cost me six dollars. They were selling it for fifteen in the ALA store, but the Library of Congress booth had it cheaper in the first place, then half off.
• I got to observe the Best Books for Young Adults committee debating about which nominees to include on this year's list, then did obseved the Great Graphic Novels for Teens committee do the same.
• I spent the morning in downtown Seattle, which is just a cool place. I haven't spent a lot of time there since moving here, and whenever I have been downtown I've had little people in tow, which meant I couldn't spend a lot of time wandering around and enjoying the sights.

To All the Girls I've Loved Before Part VII

My freshman year of college, I made a new best friend. Fabio was a returned missionary, one of the few in our freshman ward, so therefore cool enough to hang out with the marriage-minded sophomore girls in the ward. I tagged along. We started hanging out with an apartment of six girls (the girls in the ward lived in apartment-style on-campus housing, while the boys were in true dorms) because Fabio was pursuing one of them. For some reason, though, things didn't work out with her, and as per the apartment rules one of her roommates was assigned her leftovers. So Fabio started dating Lois, which meant that I was often paired up with Lois's room-roommate and best friend, the Spastic Wet Noodle.

Noodle and I quickly became good friends. She was witty and wacky and she liked giving and receiving back scratches. All six of the girls in the apartment were very physically affectionate with me in a joking sort of way--me being a pre-missionary and therefore not serious dating material--but I particularly enjoyed the attention from Noodle. I began to wonder if she liked me as much as I liked her, but the problem was that she was already waiting for a missionary, a guy she'd dated her freshman year. It would be silly to ask her to date me, knowing she'd then have to wait another two years while I served my mission. So I didn't. And I still don't know if she was really interested in me or if I was just a convenient placeholder while she waited for her missionary. Either way, it was fun while it lasted.

The funny thing--funny now, but tragic at the time--is that she didn't marry her missionary when he came home. About halfway through my mission, after not hearing from her in quite a while, I got a tape from the girls, in which Noodle mentioned that she was engaged to some guy she'd met at church. I was devastated. I didn't get over it until I came home, had a bit of a reunion with the girls from the apartment, and met Noodle's husband. He's a nice guy. Now they have four kids.

Fabio and Lois also have four kids now. They live not too far from Noodle & Co. This is interesting because when I imagined myself married to Noodle, it was always in conjunction with Fabio and Lois, who we'd live close to and all be jolly good neighbors. This is not to say that I didn't like Noodle for herself, but my interest in marrying her had a lot to do with preserving the group dynamic we had that year. It seems my life is a series of efforts to fiercely cling onto the status quo, only to find eventually that it's okay for things to change.

Three Good Things About Yesterday

1. We both like our counselor.

2. Little Dude survived two and a half hours of being babysat by a relative stranger.

3. S-Boogie has finally caught on to the threat of having her toys taken away if she doesn't clean up (as suggested by Mandi). Last night I got out the basket to start taking her things, and she quickly put them away herself.