When I was young, the only tolerable part of the once-a-month Sunday Fast and Testimony meeting–which had the tendency to drag on for hours when were were ready to gnaw the arm off anyone sitting nearby, since we’d been given nothing to eat that morning–was the time when the spotlight was on me. My mother still wistfully recounts how I was always the first one up to “bear my testimony,” which of course, was done at a time when I really had no idea what I believed.

Right about the time I DID figure out what I believed was when the testimony-bearing stopped, but up until that time, I had a captive audience. They couldn’t leave! They had to listen to me. There were armed guards at the door. You had to be bleeding from an open wound to be allowed out of the chapel into the foyer. Okay, that’s a lie. There weren’t any armed guards, or tribes of wandering Danites, but it felt like it. I used to pinch my little sister until she’d cry just so I could take her out and walk her up and down the hallways outside the chapel and “calm her down” which made the time pass a tiny bit faster.

She’s still traumatized by that, and all I have to do is put my thumb and forefinger together and she goes into convulsions.

But as I was pondering what my parents would think if they read my blog, since all the damn tattletale Mormons are threatening to tell them, or at the least reminding me how disappointed my parents must be in me, I realized that THEY ARE TO BLAME.

My parents, the LDS Church, Joseph-Smith-is-a-prophet-of-God–all of them. They encouraged me to tell the world what I believed, and to do it on a regular basis. This blog is just a continuation of that. My audience is not quite so captive, but I have one nonetheless.

Note to prospective parents: Considering this a warning. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

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