Mr. Nice Guy

I never saw the appeal of bad boys.

We've all heard that nice guys finish last. And the idea has appeared in books and plays and movies all over the place. But I have always liked the good boys. The boys who go to church every Sunday, treat everybody kindly, and respect authority figures. The guys who, if you imagine them drinking, smoking, or doing drugs, the image in your mind would be so incongruous you just have to laugh.

I think most girls realize that they don't want a really bad boy. They don't particularly want to be abused. And for the long-term, at least, they realize that the ability to hold a steady job is good and criminal tendencies are not. But there is still apparently something appealing about the image of a bad boy. In the first book of Dean Hughes' Hearts of the Children series, three cousins have the following conversation:

     Diane smiled. "The only thing I ever think about is finding some guy who looks like James Dean... really handsome but--"
     "You mean, dead?"
     "No. Like he looked when he was alive. He was really cute but a little bit bad. You know what I mean? I want him to be good, and in the Church and everything, but sort of dangerous at the same time."
     Kathy had begun to laugh.
     "See, I told you--"
     "No, no. I'm sorry," Kathy said. "I'm not laughing at you. It's every girl's dream. Anne - in Anne of Green Gables - says she wants a boy who's good but one who's capable of being bad and chooses not to be. Something like that."
     "Yeah. That's it. That's exactly right."
     "So who isn't capable of being bad?" Gene asked.
     "You!" both girls said at the same time.

 But I don't want that. Of course, anybody really can be bad. But I would like a guy like Gene - someone who the girls would say can't.

Except I seem to recall Gene as being pretty popular with the ladies, and I've typically not liked the same guys all the other girls were into. Even when they were nice.

My Choice

A couple posts ago, I said I was going to look up some terminology, then explain why the "Why are you Mormon?" question is so hard for me. Well, I looked and could not find the terminology - if I still have the notes from that class, I'm not sure where they are. If it was in a textbook, I didn't save that one. I looked for online syllabuses and class notes from the classes I thought might be applicable, but couldn't find anything helpful. And I tried searches on a couple general search engines and on Google Scholar, but didn't find anything.

I bet I could have found something with Google if I had remembered the terms I was looking for.

So I'm going to forget the terminology and just try to explain the idea myself.

In one of my college psych classes,we talked about how people make decisions about their lives. You can organize the decision-making process with a sort of rubrik with four possible outcomes. So across the top, there are two options - if you have chosen or not. Down the side are two different options - if you have explored your options or not. So the four possible outcomes are having decided without exploring options, undecided without exploring options, decided having explored the options, and undecided having explored the options. The most optimal outcome is having made a decision after exploring your options.

When we were discussing this in class, I felt a little uncomfortable. Because I thought that in my life, I really hadn't explored all the different religions out there - I settled into the first religion I was exposed to. And according to the theory, just settling into a decision without first exploring is pretty bad. I eventually came to the conclusion that I was alright - that I had made a conscious decision, not just going along with what my parents chose for me. I prayed about it, and I got my answer. So it really wasn't -fill in word for that outcome-.

But when thinking about what to put for why I'm a Mormon, I am a little concerned that when I say I've been Mormon all my life, I will give the impression that is the reason I am. I want to get across that I made an active choice. But I'm not sure if I can.

On an unrelated note, Santa brought me my tiger this Christmas.

Developing

A while ago I read an article in Scientific American talking about rates of cancer in developed countries (I believe they were referring to Europe and North America) versus developing countries (specifically mentioned were Egypt, Brazil, and Nigeria).

As I understand it, when people talk about developed countries, they mean countries that have achieved, or developed to, a certain point. Developing countries are progressing to that point. I'm not sure exactly what that cut-off is, and am not even sure that there is a real fixed marker. If anyone knows for sure where the cutoff is, feel free to enlighten me.

But when I read the article, the terms seemed, briefly, to be saying that the developing countries are still climbing and growing and achieving new things. Developed countries, however, are done and are just stagnating. I know that isn't what was meant. And that isn't actually the case. But the thought did grab hold of me for about one second.

Mormon.org

For the past couple of  weeks I've been working on setting up a profile on Mormon.org. It took me a while to decide to do it, and even after deciding I've been taking my time about it, because I don't really like being so public. I don't really want to throw my name and face out there for anybody and everybody to see worldwide. It actually bothers me a little knowing that people can click through to here from other people's blogs. And I know they do because I look at my blog stats. And if I have friends in Hong Kong and Argentina, two of the countries where somebody has looked at this site from, then a couple somebodies haven't been keeping me very updated about their lives.

But the Mormon.org feels even more exposed than that somehow. Probably because there's that lack of a friend-to-friend link.

Anyway, there are certain sections in the profile that you have to fill out before making it public. Some of them were pretty easy - name (they don't allow you to use your full name, which I like), ethnicity, and previous religious background required no real thought. About Me and How I Live My Faith required some thought, but not too bad. I hesitated about uploading my picture, but I found one I liked okay and made myself go ahead with it.

But I'm still having trouble figuring out exactly what to say for Why I am Mormon. I'll probably write a bit more about this later, because to really describe my thought process will require me to look up a little terminology that I have forgotten and because this post is long enough already.

Bread and Water

When I was very young, I looked forward to taking the sacrament. Not because I was particularly holy, but because I saw it as a mid-meeting snack, and I liked snacks. I don't think I'm particularly unusual in this.

During sacrament meeting today, I realized that I feel a bit more of a focus on the sacrament on fast Sundays. And I started to wonder if this was a good thing or a bad thing. As a general rule, does my extra attention to the sacrament on fast Sundays help me get more out of sacrament meeting, or am I busy thinking about the food as an opportunity to eat that I focus less on the atonement than usual?

Jolly Old St. Nicholas

Last night was our ward Christmas party. We were told over the pulpit to come in our pajamas, but most of the adults didn't. Sinners.

Anyway, we had the usual dinner, then the Taylorsville Madrigals came and did their program. I mouthed the words to a lot of the songs, but there were a couple new ones I didn't know, too. And then Santa came.

After the party was over, I felt a twinge of wrongness about the Santa thing. Every so often the idea of having such big institutionalized lies bothers me a little. Especially when it's supported at church. But at the same time, I think that Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy bring a lot of fun to childhood, and will probably do them for my own children.

And then I remembered something else that has bothered me about Santa. The gift requests. No, not the making of the requests. But that you write a big letter to Santa telling him everything you want for Christmas, but then when you sit on his knee at the mall or at the ward Christmas party, he asks you what you want. Shouldn't he know from the letter? I'm not sure when I first thought of this, but I'm pretty sure at least once I purposefully told him something I left off of my letter to keep from being redundant.

More recently, though, I've felt like the child in the song Jolly Old St. Nicholas, who says in the last line, "Choose for me, dear Santa Claus, what you think is best." I don't really have a lot of real material desires. Sure, I enjoy new books and movies, but I have a library card that serves me very well. And I can listen to music online. And a lot of the time, I don't even remember what it was that looked good by the time my birthday or Christmas comes around. So I eventually created a file on my computer to list things I liked, so I could later pull from that list to make my gift request lists and give my family something to work with.

There are a couple things that have been in my letters for Santa for a very long time out of tradition. I've been asking for a Gameboy since I was about six, and don't intend to stop. And I've been requesting a tiger for a few years now. This year, I'm adding a sonic screwdriver. And it just may become one of those traditional items. But maybe not.