Life lesson #2 - The Kiss

Jay and I met at church. On the day he reported his mission my family was sitting far in the back and my mother leaned over and said to my dad, “Now that is a boy I could let my daughter marry.” He was very impressive. But I was almost to go on my mission and felt very focused on that goal at the time. I heard him speak at Stake Conference and thought he was just so darn likeable. I spoke to him after church shortly thereafter congratulating him on a successful mission. He said, “Hey, we should get together sometime,” and I agreed. We got together that very night and had a great time talking. We seemed to become instant best friends. On the day of our first official date my mission papers were sent to Salt Lake. There was never any doubt as our relationship progressed that I would go, in his mind or mine. The Lord had made it very clear the previous year that I was to go and I wanted to. Jay wanted to have a little time for college and fun and didn’t feel the time was right for him either so he didn’t try to persuade me to stay.

I went and had a life changing 20 months that I am so grateful for as it shaped the rest of my life. Thank you, Jay for supporting and encouraging me during this time of great growth. More about that another time.

On my flight returning from the Dominican Republic I was almost as eager to see Jay as I was my own family. There had been a change in my itinerary that very day and Jay did not get the message that I would be coming in an hour earlier . As a result when I stepped off the plane he was not among the family and friends who were there to greet me. I cast my eyes about furtively hoping he would suddenly appear but he didn’t and I didn’t ask. But he called from the airport about an hour after we arrived home and came over. It was winter and I had just spent a year in the tropical sun and I remember thinking he was the whitest guy I had seen in a long time. But he looked great white!

I hate to confess this, but the thing I was most excited and terrified about was kissing him. I was pretty positive that he’d had a little practice while I was gone and I most certainly hadn’t and…well, it was a predicament. So when we came into the driveway of my parent’s home after our first post mission date and while the car was still rolling to a stop, I leaped out, ran into the house and shut the door. Leaning against it I suddenly thought, “What have I done????” I quickly opened the door. Jay was sitting in his car looking a bit bewildered and I called out, “Will I see you tomorrow?” “Your call,” he said. Thank goodness! “Then, yes. Yes! I will see you tomorrow. Goodnight!” I closed the door.

It went on like this for about 2 months as I recall. Mind you, Jay was living 5 hours away in Rexburg and we didn’t get to see each other all that often but I was thoroughly smitten and completely terrified that I might ruin everything with a less than perfect kiss. Each time we were together and he tried to kiss me I would suddenly jump up or turn my head and change the subject and it was all very miserable. I tried kissing a guy I knew who had just returned from his mission just to get the tiniest bit of practice. Bad, bad idea. Not even the tiniest bit of chemistry. A total waste of a good kiss – for him as well as me, I’m sure. So I was back to square one. What to do?

I planned a visit to Jay in Rexburg. I would stay with his FHE sisters and we would hang out (he and I, not the sisters) and I would let him kiss me. We would just get it over with and hopefully he would still like me as much as I knew I would still like him. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to kiss him. My heart started racing any time I even thought about it – I was just afraid I would ruin everything. For one week we spent every waking minute together but something was terribly wrong. Jay didn’t try to kiss me. Not once. One day went by, then two, then three, then a week had gone by and no attempt. Had he given up? It seemed he had. That left the responsibility squarely on my shoulders. I would have to be the initiator. I would have to be the kisser and not the kissee. And there was not a moment to spare because I was going home the next day.

That night when he dropped me off at his sister’s apartment we stood outside the door. He turned to go and I knew that it was now or never. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back to me. His face came right to mine. We were eye to eye, nose to nose, almost mouth to mouth and then… And then he turned on his heel and started to laugh. He walked and laughed and I stood and watched him go. And then I started to laugh. I went home from Rexburg unkissed but wiser and much less tense. It’s a story we still laugh about today.

I learned that you shouldn’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

I learned that laughing is the very best way to ease a tense situation.

I learned that the man I was destined to marry had serious will power and was capable of doing whatever he set his mind to. It remains one of his best qualities.

Life Lesson #1 - Bullies

When I was in elementary school there was a bully on our bus. Carlos Aroyllo. He was several years older and several heads taller and several degrees meaner than anyone I knew. He specifically picked my younger brother, Paul, to bully and positioned himself in the seat behind Paul on the bus each morning. Paul was very short, very scrawny and had front teeth two different sizes because he'd been hit in the teeth with a baseball bat at a young age by my aunt who was clearly going for a homerun. Oh, and his ears stuck out. So, you see, he obviously deserved to be thumped by Carlos's hand all the way to school. "Thump! Thump! Thump!" went the bully's hand against Paul's head morning after morning.

I'm a non-violent person. I don't like to see anyone hurt. When I have to remove even a small sliver from the foot of a child I do it at night so the child isn't concious of pain. Immunizations? My worst nightmare. I could never be a nurse or a doctor or anyone remotely involved in the necessary pain that accompanies health and healing. I walked out of the new Joseph Smith movie because the thought of seeing the young Joseph enduring that bone surgery was more than I could bear. To a certain extent, it's debilitating to have such a tender heart and I wish I were a stronger and could be more useful when people, especially children, are hurt.

The point is that this bullying of my brother made me sick. I dreaded getting on the bus and seeing him abused. My parents tried speaking to the bus driver and then to the parents of Carlos but apparently, bullying is genetic. Finally my mother said, "Lauralee, it's up to you. You'll have to thwart the bully." She packed my metal lunchbox and filled my thermos (which was also placed inside my lunchbox) and told me the plan. When Carlos sat down behind Paul, I was to sit across from him and when he began to thump I would hit him in the head with my lunch box as hard as I could. I, the girl who had one day run frantically down the lane toward the departing bus with a white flag in my hand (a cloth diaper, clean thank heaven, that I'd been in the process of delivering to my mother when I'd heard the honking of the bus) was to declare war on Carlos the Bully. Terror is not a strong enough word for what I felt as I boarded the bus that morning and took my seat across from and one seat back from Paul. Carlos was at least predictable and moved immediately to sit behind my brother. Thump! Thump! Thump! Carlos's hand and my heart were thudding together. I wound up, which isn't easy when you're shorter than the seat and I swung. You will all be very sorry to hear that Carlos The Bully had eyes in the back of his head. He saw his life flash before those eyes as he was ducking. At that very moment Paul turned around to see why the thumping had stopped. Grand Slam! Into the wrong face! As I write this it occurs to me that maybe the reason Paul's other baby tooth never fell out to make way for his adult tooth had nothing to do with my aunt and the baseball bat. Oh well, water under the bridge and thank goodness for good dentists.

I cried. And cried. And cried. The rest of the bus laughed and laughed and laughed. Paul just sat there looking dazed and confused. When I got off the bus I still hadn't run out of tears. Halfway through the school morning they were still flowing freely. Teacher called me out to the hall and we had a talk. Then we took a walk down to Mr. Taylor's classroom. Mr. Taylor was infamous for two reasons. He was The Bully's teacher and he was the owner and wielder of the fearsome "JAWS."
I don't mean he had scary teeth, I mean he owned a paddle that occasionally took a bite out of the behinds of Paul Elementary School miscreants. That day Carlos got a taste of Thump! Thump! Thump! As I walked back to my classroom with
Teacher I heard those three thumps, covered my ears with my hands, and felt like I might be sick.

The moral of this story is: Things don't always turn out the way you planned. But that's O.K. because even though things sometimes go terribly haywire they usually work out. After that day Carlos never again even glanced at my brother or at me.

Moral #2: Families stand together. When someone picks on one member, they pick on the whole lot of us. Loyalty! Loyalty! Loyalty! Hurrah!

Moral #3: Sometimes moms do counter-intuitive things. For many years I thought my mother had a lapse of judgement. You know, fighting never solves anything and all those sayings. One day much later I asked my mom about it. She said that she and dad had tried everything they could think of and that her "plan" came about as an answer to prayer. While I was riding the bus that fateful morning she was on the phone with the school telling them what she had instructed me to do and why and then on her knees praying for my success.

Every so often I intend to do a life lesson post about a lesson I learned from my own experiences. I'd love to read about a life lesson from your childhood as well. So, tag - you're it all of y'all. I can't wait!

Remember the Pinewood Derby post?

The following day Lacey Grace was playing at a friend's house and Lincoln took a long nap and I wrote about that experience in the form of a story and submitted it to The Friend magazine. Immediately I got an e-mail back asking if the story was true and I responded that very day. A month passed and I heard nothing. I hate checking my E-Mail but I checked it so often that Jay asked me if I was addicted to the computer. I know that none of you think it would be exciting to have something published in The Friend but to me it represents so much more. I want to write and don't have any idea how to do it or where to start and so this tiny effort represents the courage I have been trying to build for so long to try and keep trying in the face of lots of rejection.

I have submitted two articles in the past to other magazines. One to Family Fun Magazine and one to the Ensign. The Ensign wrote back to say that it would be about eight weeks before they made a decision. That was two years ago; haven't heard a word. Family Fun magazine was mute. Each time this happens it takes about a year for me to have the guts to try again. I have heard that most writers get about one hundred rejections before they ever get anything published and those are the lucky ones. Well, in three years I've only submitted three articles and I'm 39. At this rate things aren't looking very promising. And I don't know if I can even count those first two as rejections because I didn't receive even so much as an "Um, thanks anyway," or "You must be insane!" It's all very disheartening.

To make matters worse I recently sent JeNeale my favorite book and I inscribed it in pen. Reading back over it I noted that I had not only mispunctuated but had also used poor grammar which wouldn't be so mortifying except that JeNeale is an editor and the book was about puntuation. I had a brief flash of insight into the feelings of Mormon who, as he abridged the Book of Mormon made his mistakes on golden plates. At least only JeNeale, who loves me anyway, sees my mistakes as opposed to people by the billion all over the world throughout many generations of time. (Feeling a little better now - Phew!)

By now all ten of you who read this are probably on pins and needles wondering, "What did The Friend say?" Well, 69 days after I submitted the article (in other words, today) I got a response to my recent inquiry in which I succintly stated, "The suspense is killing me!" The response? "Did you submit an article? We have no record of any article submitted by a Lauralee Hill." And so I ask you, "Is that a rejection? Does that count? Are they trying to let me down nicely? easily?" I honestly think I would have preferred the reference to insanity.

I'm not looking for a show of support. What I'd really love to see are your ideas of a great rejection. What should the Ensign, the Friend, and Family Fun have said had they been more responsibly brutal? Maybe if they're really good I can count them toward my one hundred.