Going Squish! like a Lemon

A shameless plug goes out today for a new program, called "Lemons for Literacy," that is being offered by my workplace, HEC Reading Horizons. Below, I present part of the press release that (ahem) yours truly helped write about it:

As the old saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”
Over 40 million Americans struggle with literacy problems. People who struggle with reading can be seen as having been given lemons in life. With the support of effective reading instruction, these people can turn their lemons into lemonade.

We want to celebrate and support the resiliency of people who overcome their struggles with reading. Thousands of inspiring people have turned their struggles with reading into strengths.

Lemons for Literacy has two goals:
1. To help cure illiteracy by providing free literacy materials to people in need.
2. To provide free education for everyone.

Lemons for Literacy is a vocabulary-building game that visitors to the Reading Horizons Web site will be able to play. Players must identify a series of vocabulary words. The words begin at a low-grade level and get progressively more difficult as the game is played. For each correct answer, a hand will squeeze lemon juice into a glass. Five lemons squeezed make one glass of lemonade, and five glasses amount to a pitcher full of lemonade. For every pitcher of lemonade that is filled, Reading Horizons will donate money to purchase literacy materials for a needy site.

Visit: http://www.ReadingHorizonsAtHome.com/LemonsForLiteracy
to help individuals
http://www.ReadingHorizons.com/LemonsForLiteracy
to help institutions

Play and promote literacy!

A Whole Lot of Nothing Goin' On

This post is kind of like the TV show "Seinfeld," for those who are familiar with it. It's about nothing.

Do you ever feel like, in spite of your best efforts, you're not getting anywhere or doing anything that ends up being important? Does it feel like you're going through your own personal Groundhog Day experience?

I feel like that a lot lately. I do a lot of writing for my job, and quite often I hit the brick wall that people like to call "writer's block" and just can't write the things that are in my head, jumbled as they may be. It's like my brain puts up the "Be Back Whenever" sign and goes off for an extended lunch break.

Outside of work, when people ask me "What's new?" in my life, the answer I least like to give them is "nothing." Yet it is exactly what I end up doing.

On a daily basis, I converse online with friends from all over the world (okay, well in the United States and Peru, mostly), on MSN Messenger or Facebook chat or what-have-you. We talk about all kinds of things. Once in a while, though, there is someone who initiates a conversation with me just for the sake of having a conversation - out of habit, out of compulsion . . . who knows?

Such was the case the other day when a friend began to chat with me and told me that "absolutely nothing" was going on in his life. Well, I'm glad you interrupted the work project I was in the middle of to tell me that you're doing nothing! I remember thinking. Of course, I questioned him further and found out that that there really were a lot of things going on in his life. I guess it's a force of habit for a lot of us.

Maybe these are the times and the moments that President Hinckley was referring to when he said:

"Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey . . . delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride."

You are probably already familiar with the quote. I think it's a good one to remind ourselves of every now and then.

A Day of Rest at the Rest Home

Yesterday morning, I was invited to speak in the sacrament meeting of one of the two care center branches our ward supports. I've been periodically visiting these two branches ever since I was a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood. My mom spent a week at the South Davis Community Hospital last year while recupertaing and rehabbing from her car accident. And my brother Steve, on numerous occasions, also used to gather groups of people to visit the residents and sing hymns of their choosing on Sunday afternoons. I got to tag along on more than one of these occasions, and I always enjoyed the opportunity to take part.

It is always a no-brainer to accept the invitation to go to the care center branches. Whenever I visit one or both, I always come away with a renewed sense of humility at the challenges one can face in life. The people who live there are not necessarily older people who can no longer care for themselves at home; some of them are young adults or children who have been through life-altering injuries or sicknesses and, likewise, need constant care. They have suffered and are suffering through things that I can only imagine.

Perhaps that is why the Spirit is always so strong whenever I get the chance to go to one of these meetings. Where there is great suffering, and also great loneliness, there is also a great need for lifting the hands that hang low; and I guess that's where those who serve at the branches (and where we who visit) come in.

In spite of their challenges, the residents are always glad to see me and always have smiles on their faces. True, there are always a few who remain asleep for the bulk of the meeting, but it's usually those who are getting some badly needed rest. Most people tend to pay better attention to me, as a speaker, than most anywhere else I've stood at a pulpit and given a talk.

At yesterday's South Davis Community Hospital Branch meeting (the Rocky Mountain Care Center is the other one), I was erroneously introduced to the congregation as Don Plowman, which made me wonder for a moment if they confused me with the head of a mafia family or a Latin American landlord. I got to share the stand with a recently returned missionary from Indonesia, who delivered an inspring talk about some of his experiences in that faraway land. One of my former Institute instructors is now in the branch presidency, and I got to speak with him for a few minutes, too.

The thing that stuck with me the most, however, occurred as the sacrament was being passed. An elderly sister, who was obviously suffering with dementia or some other kind of memory-related issue, began to speak very loudly to the deacon who brought her the bread and the water. This would be a problem or a distraction in most any ward or branch of the Church, except she wasn't obnoxious or irreverent about it, even though she may not have been holding all 52 cards in her deck. She simply repeated the words I love you again and again.

Right back at you, sister.

Phoning It In, Again

Earlier this week, a new regulation went into effect locally. Anytime you dial a local number here in Utah, you now have to first include the area code, too. So, pretty much every phone call is now an 11-digit number (counting the "1" before the area code).

Thank goodness for cell phones, so you don't have to dial those 11 digits each time you make a call. The only time-consuming part of the switchover, for me, was having to edit all of my contacts by adding an "801" to the first part of all applicable numbers.

In a recent post, I was a little hard on cell phones. Actually, I was hard on people who do stupid things with cell phones, particularly while they're trying (and I emphasize the word trying) to drive a car at the same time.

I recently upgraded my cell phone to a newer model (see the adjoining picture). It's so much nicer than the old phone, which was kind of like a brick with numbers on the side. True, the new phone is much-more likely to be stolen than the old one, but it also doesn't look like something that was unearthed along with the Dead Sea Scrolls.

One of the best features may be the fact that it is a phone with a flip-top, and that means no more accidentally calling my friend Adam three or four times per week as the phone rests in my pocket. Adam did nothing to deserve this other than the fact that his name was first alphabetically in my old contact list, and the phone went directly to him when it needed to make a phantom call.

Adam was a very good sport about these phone calls. He told me recently that, when they came, he would often overhear me singing along to the radio in my car or other embarrassing things like that.

Jury Duty!

I received quite the surprise, to say the least, when I returned home following Saturday's Improv rehearsal: I had received a summons for jury duty in the mail.

I have no idea, at the moment, what kind of trial I might be needed for. To be honest, I'm not sure how to react or what to do about it. After all, these things usually happen to other people. But, of course, I want to do my civic duty.

One of the first thoughts that occurred to me was to rent the Pauly Shore movie Jury Duty and perhaps learn something from that. Then again, it was just a thought. A stupid thought, really.

Another thought that has occurred to me is to show up at the jury selection prepared with absurd statements such as "I favor the death penalty for everything, including littering and jaywalking" and "Meesa no speaka da English" (pretending to not be able to speak Spanish got me out of more than one embarrassing situation in Peru - and that's a true story).

Whatever might happen, strange things are definitely afoot at the Circle K. Stay tuned.

And the Hits Just Keep On Coming

Do you ever have one of those butter-side-down days when it feels like very little at all can go your way? Today was one of those days for me. It would have to happen on a Monday.

My day began as I accomplished the bone-headed move of catching my own foot in a door as I was closing it. There is now a big bruise on the side of my foot to mark the spot.

Work was not all that enjoyable for me, either, as I am now in the middle of the tedious process of revisiting and rewriting, and it is quite often a frustrating thing to have to do.

In the evening, I headed over to FHE at the ward house to join in on a few games of dodgeball. My team got creamed in every match I played in. As I was attempting to move out of the way of a ball that was thrown in my direction, I lost my balance and fell backward, landing awkwardly on my right wrist. I'm no doctor, but it feels like it might be sprained. I'm going to have it X-rayed to be sure.

With my mounting list of injuries - I am still doing the physical therapy thing, too, by the way - "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" doesn't feel like a song but, instead, a list of all of the places that are sore.

Not long after I walked off of the court, my friend Gary became light headed and passed out. It seems that I was not the only one to feel the effects of dodgeball. Fortunately, the Bishop, who is a doctor by profession, was there to help Gary back onto his feet.

After my last game, I went over to the kitchen to grab a piece of pizza. Surely nothing bad could happen to me here! But, as it turns out, I was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time. The girl I dated not all that long ago - the one who is now getting married to another guy - walked in with some urgent wedding planning business and chose to speak about it to the member of the bishopric I happened to be standing right next to.

If I ever wished to be have the ability to disappear on the spot, this was surely the time for it.

After the interesting events at FHE, I came home to put some ice on my wrist. At the moment, half of my family has caught whatever bug it is that's going around. I started to feel light headed myself and am now wondering if I'm coming down with the same thing.

Sigh. These are the days you wish your bed was already made.

Love Poetry for Dummies: "On Second Thought . . ."

I wrote this piece of poetry for one of my creative writing classes at the University of Utah. I was on the bus to school one day, and the entire text, as it appears here, came to me in about five minutes. But I'll let you be the judge as to how creative it comes across in reality.

On Second Thought . . .

Jack and Jill went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown,
And a half-dozen bloodthirsty lawyers
came tumbling after,
neck braces in hand,
ready to claw out one another’s eyes
for the rights to represent Jack
in his multimillion dollar lawsuit
against the owner of the well
(foolish as he was,
building a well on a hilltop)
and against Jack’s dentist
for his shoddy work on Jack’s teeth.
And, from her vantage point atop the hill,
Jill said to herself,
“If that clumsy twit thinks
that I’m some kind of brainless lemming
and will follow him down yet again,
then he’s got another ‘think’ coming.”
And, with that, she took the pail of water
to make her own glass of Kool-Aid
as the vultures circled
Jack’s bloody carcass.

The Final List of 25 Random Things about Me

Mostly in an effort to put a stop to the flood of fan mail I receive each day, demanding that I bring the list of random things up to 100, as promised, I now present the final list of 25 random things about me.

76. People in ward choir are always surprised when I sing along to the soprano parts, but keep in mind that I sang soprano from birth until about age 14.

77. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I am standing in line at the grocery store, a neighboring register suddenly opens, and people who are behind me in line move over to it and check out ahead of me. It drives me up the wall.

78. I worked my way through college in three departments (Missionary, Finance and Records, and Curriculum) at the Church Office Building (aka "the Great and Spacious Building") in downtown Salt Lake City.

79. In my junior year of high school, some friends and I started an underground newspaper titled The Breakfast Club, which was a response to a male-bashing newspaper called Aunty Em. My friends and I wrote under pseudonyms of breakfast cereal characters; I was Toucan Sam. We actually recruited a couple of girls to write articles for us, one of who went by Eggo Mini-Skirt.

80. People in my family have had bad luck with rides, playgrounds, and toys. At Lagoon, one brother cracked his head open while riding the white rollercoaster, and I split my lip while riding the Wild Mouse. Another brother fell off a slide at a playground and split his head open. Yet another brother, while sledding, fell into a window well and split his head open. One other brother was hit over the head with a croquet mallet by our next-door neighbor. (For those of you who know my four brothers, I'll let you try and guess which incident happened to whom.)

81. Speaking of Lagoon, I worked in the Merchandising Department for a few months during the summer when I was 17, and I hated every moment of it. Also, I often witnessed dizzy kids stumbling off of rides and throwing up.

82. Speaking of throwing up, I have tried sushi a number of times, and I still don't like it. In fact, I dislike seafood in general, even though I practically lived on fish for two years during my mission.

83. One of my secret ambitions is to land a starring role in a production of the unofficial LDS musical My Turn on Earth.

84. On one hand, I can count the number of dates I went on before I left on my mission.

85. I have won more than one game of laser tag. I have also been skeet shooting a few times, but I am not as good of a shot with the real thing.

86. Some of the hikes I have completed include Huayna Picchu (at Machu Picchu), Mount Timpanogos, Ensign Peak, Subway Canyon (Zion National Park), a 50-mile hike over the course of five days through the Uintahs, and walking from Bountiful to Cherry Hill (in Kaysville) and back in the same day.

87. I believe that giving stupid names to children is a form of child abuse.

88. As a child, I ran a temperature of 106 degrees, which sent me into a fibral seizure. I almost died.

89. Members of my family and I have owned and played essentially every video game system released by Nintendo: the original Nintendo, GameBoy, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Game Cube, and the Wii. Our favorite game to play at family parties is, without a doubt, any and all versions of Mario Kart.

90. I have had an allergic reaction to medication, and I looked a lot like Will Smith in that one scene in Hitch.

91. I detest James Bond movies. A man who is that promiscuous is no hero of mine.

92. I have seen '80s teeny bopper Tiffany in concert. I also used to have a crush on Debbie Gibson . . . yes, really.

93. Growing up, one of my favorite hangouts was Classic Skating. I still love to rollerskate, though I'm not as good at it as I once was.

94. A good friend of mine met his wife at a Star Wars party I hosted a few years ago. They are now married and have two kids. The Force really is one of the most powerful things in the universe.

95. Both Coke and Pepsi taste like battery acid to me.

96. I learned to ice skate the same week I came home from my mission. A few years later, however, I was diagnosed with fallen arches on both feet, and I can no longer go ice skating, because it is too painful.

97. When I learned at age 11 that I was nearsighted, I first wore contact lenses. I came down with so many eye infections so frequently that, at 15, I switched to glasses and haven't gone back.

98. In Puerto Rico, my family actually owned a chihuahua. They are a lot of fun to have around the house.

99. I have set foot in 29 of the 50 United States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming), the District of Columbia, and one territory (Puerto Rico).

100. If you have read all of the 100 items on this list, then you are a better man/woman than I.

Moving Forward in the Face of Fear

I have a good friend who is very shy when it comes to girls. Come to think of it, shy might not be the right way to say it. Immobilized with fear may be the term that applies here.

Recently, I learned that a girl in our ward has developed a crush on this shy friend of mine. Upon learning of this, I was enlisted to try to help steer him in her direction. I told him only that I had heard someone liked him and asked if he would like to know who it was. To my shock, he replied that he didn't even want to know her name and that knowing there was someone interested in him was scary enough.

I guess I was shocked by his answer mostly because this is a guy who was a dating machine in high school. I don't know what happened between high school and now to change things, but it was definitely something. I was also shocked by his answer because he isn't afraid to do a lot of things. He is one of the smartest people I know, excels in his profession and in his hobbies, serves diligently in his Church callings, is loyal and fun loving, and is otherwise a well-rounded individual. He would make an excellent husband for any girl he married. But dating, let alone marriage, appears to be the last thing on his mind.

I want to help my friend. I want him to be happy and not idle with despair, for lack of a better term. As a friend, he has helped me over the years - in more ways than he knows - through thick and thin, in good times and in bad ones. But I don't know where to start, especially when he won't even let me help him.

It is a terrible thing to be a victim of fear. I know it well from personal experience. I think that the fear of two things keeps most people from dating and achieving the kind of happiness that they long for:

(1) People of both genders fear being rejected by the objects of their affection. They are afraid to make a move or to to do anything at all that will put their feelings out in the open and leave them vulnerable. Yes, there is a chance that he/she will return their feelings, but the possibility of it not happening keeps them from trying at all.

(2) On the other hand, people also fear not being rejected. The possibility of entering into a one-on-one relationship means the loss of a certain degree of independence, money, and time once devoted to personal hobbies and pursuits that will, consequently, have to be sacrificed. So many people are unwilling to give up those things.


Not too long ago on this blog, I mentioned Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin's book Press On, which I read about a year ago. One of my favorite messages in this book contains the following counsel:

Fear can make us run away from things — things like setting and achieving goals, developing relationships, or becoming the people we know we should become. Sometimes fear can even paralyze us to the point that we don’t even try.

Fear can be a thick fog that smothers our dreams. It can be a cage that restrains us from reaching our destiny. It can be a weight that restrains our every step. . . .

We may not be immune to being afraid, but we do not have to succumb to it. My friend Harold Brown once said, “It is better to face fear once than to live in its shadow.” I believe he is right.

We are surrounded and uplifted by the faith of our members and by the hand of heaven. If only we could see that, our fears would have far less influence over us. Move forward with faith, believing you will succeed! Don’t let fear of failure stop you from greatness.

There are two kinds of regret: the regret of having tried and failed, and the regret of not having tried at all. The regret of not having tried at all is far worse than the regret of having tried and failed.

To my friend, I say: If you are reading this, please know that I would not be a good friend to you if I didn't care enough to tell you these things. It is because I care about you and want you to achieve your full potential that I do so, just as you wish the same for me.

Borrrrring!

Sometimes, I wonder whether people in general are just too darn polite to tell me that I am boring. Earlier this week, a co-worker of mine certainly was not too shy to let me know that some of my writing was coming across as being the b-word.

Granted, she later explained to me in person that her comment meant only that she wanted to make sure we try our best to keep our readers' attention spans on the topic at hand, which admittedly has been a little harder to do with some of the historical figures topics I have been tackling lately. Helping to make Joan of Arc, Nelson Mandela, and Simón Bolívar come alive for people who are just learning to read has been somewhat of a challenge.

The larger problem, I suppose, is that I tend to be rather hard on myself and don't always deal well with what may be perceived as negative feedback. It's something that I guess we all struggle with to one degree or another.

Most of you know that I belong to and perform with two different Improv groups. Whenver I get done with a show, the first thing I usually end up doing is kicking myself for the things I could have said or done better/differently. I wonder about the things I did right, if any, and the laughs that may have been courtesy laughs.

In the dating arena, I have seriously tinkered with the concept of issuing "Get Out of Jail Free" cards to my dates when I pick them up at the start of the evening. The idea behind this would be that she could hand it back to me if she, at any point, became bored or wished to go home. I would then comply and take her home, with no questions asked.

Again, I have just toyed with this idea in my head and haven't actually tried it - yet.

Then again, maybe this is all in my head, and I'm just making a mountain out of a molehill. So, what do you think? Uhh . . . is anyone still there?