Too Hot! Too Hot! (Part 1)

I'm getting better at this, with the most loving of persistent nudges from a friend of mine. This is within a month of my last post, but two weeks later after my initial promised date. Ah well. It's been an interesting time of life for me. I have been working nights, and just had my shift change. I am going to school full time (and doing pretty well if I do say so myself) which includes learning Chinese. Cool stuff.

But we all know that's not why you're here. Today you get a feast.

I have a deep love for a man that I never met in mortality, because he was stone cold six feet under (or, rather, in the wall of a church) hundreds of years before I was born. We call him William Shakespeare. I've been able to be exposed to and perform a lot of his work. Most recently (hard to believe, but it was really just 4 or five months ago) I was able to put serious work into directing a play with an absolutely phenomenal woman. We'll get to her a little bit later. Together we (and I say we very loosely, I was not involved in every aspect) produced The Winter's Tale. It's kind of an obscure Shakespeare play about a jealous King who imagines that his wife is having an affair with his best friend, and starts tragically with several deaths, but ends merrily with many reunions. I got to see first hand just what has to go into a play to make it really good. Our production was top notch, if I do say so myself. Which, of course, you know, I do.

Today, I want to write a little thank you and personal, "Go you!" to each of the kids I got to work with. I totally loved them. Sometimes they drove me crazy, but they're in High School, and they kind of just do that. There were rough parts, and I wasn't always the best at managing egos, or helping them see what I saw, but I found wonderful things in every single one of them.

I'm going to do this Bill Simmons style. Bill Simmons is my favorite sports columnist, and he occasionally makes up obscure awards for sports seasons. So! Let's not make Much Ado About Nothing (ba-dum-ch!), and get rolling.

The "She Just Happened" award for most surprising performance.

One of the coolest parts of this process was getting to sit on the other side for auditions this year. I got to sit in a chair with my lap top and type away furiously as I watched kids act out their brief readings from the play. I didn't know any of them, or at least not well, so I was going into this cold. I got a lot of first impressions. Rachel came into the room and I almost instantly started to get uncomfortable. She just gushed nervous tension. She was really stiff, and was super slender and kind of awkward as a person. I couldn't get past what I saw at first when she walked in. I wholly anticipated that she would miss a word and be very flustered and not be able to go on.

I was wrong. Dead Wrong.

Rachel came in and delivered a beautiful monologue that was clear, and crisp. She had good feeling, and wasn't fidgety. She was poised. She slammed it down. Then she finished, broke character and was instantly the girl I thought I was going to see on stage again. Just a shy blonde girl whipping right out. I was struck. Over the course of the year, she continued to blow me away every time she stepped on stage, and she felt more natural off stage. She absolutely proved to me that you don't have to be a certain type of person OFF stage to be fantastic ON stage.

The Robert Horry Dagger award for most clutch performance by a role player at a crucial moment.

Robert Horry is a retired NBA player who was never the superstar on his team. He does, however, have more NBA Championship rings than Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. He was on 7 championship teams. He earned the nickname "Big Shot Rob" for having the uncanny ability to ALWAYS hit the big shot. In fact, his Game 6 WCF winning shot was one of the reasons my favorite basketball team never reached the 2002 NBA Finals. Was he an all-star? No. But he came through when it mattered most. Seriously, you should check it out here. (Unless you're a Sacramento Kings fan like me, and then it just hurts.)

At a time when there was a pretty unhealthy amount of discord amongst our occasionally emotional and angst-ridden young cast, there was several malcontents who we usually had trouble with. One of these (who will remain nameless until I get consent from him to use his name in this space) finally stepped up at the end of Rehearsal and gave an inspired speech about unity. He identified the problem, took responsibility like a man and vowed to change. And change he did.  He absolutely swung the mood of the next rehearsal, and the next, and really the whole mood of the show. He challenged the cast to follow his lead, and they responded well. At a time when my voice, and all others were exhausted, he stepped up.

The Cindy Lou Who award for finding a small voice that was just enough.

We had another Rachel in the cast. She too was a somewhat shy, slender blonde. Both of these girls, were just darling by the way. Let no one dare mistake them for not being cute. So this younger Rachel was given a lot of the important messenger lines. Every time she walked on stage there was something super critical to the plot coming from her mouth. "Sir your son is dead!" or "You've killed a man of 4 score and 3 years! Undone! Undone!"  However, she just would NOT belt these lines out. There was feeling, there was clarity of words there was understanding, and strong character. However constantly the note of "Rachel, speak up!" was given. However, just like everyone else she came through at the right time. When I finally got to sit back an just enjoy the show, she delivered those lines loud and clear. No, that's not because she had a microphone. It's because she rose to the occasion. She is a success story.

The Dynamite  award for making something bigger than you are.

Who else could it be? There was only one 8th grade student for most of the show. That was tiny Rhys. Through the whole show he was energetic, excited to be there, and he didn't let his youth, or the fact that he probably isn't big enough to ride some of the Big Kid roller coasters make him small on the stage. He ran around, and was a vital part of the cast. 

The Brett Favre award for bringing it all, and leaving it all "on the field".

I thought about using Cal Ripkin Jr. for this one, because nothing rivals the longevity of his 2,632 career games played, and that's part of what I wanted to illustrate. However, I chose Favre because he is a more explosive personality, and that certainly applies to this friend of mine, too. This is a girl who faithfully attended every practice, and was memorized. She did her part on everything I saw. This is a girl who absolutely stands her ground, right or wrong. She fit her character to a T on this one. Emily's part required her to withstand court Lords and Guards trying to oust her from declaring bold statements to a hard-headed King, and even  go toe-to-toe with the King. She absolutely had the pipes and the heart to pull down what this role required of her. 

She was also like that off stage sometimes. Emily absolutely was fiery towards me and her fellow cast members when she felt justified in doing so. Her passion for expressing her views occasionally stirred up a fuss, but there was no doubting that she cared about what happened with the show. Without her heart in it, I'm not totally convinced that others could have been moved to rise to what they became. There's lots more good I could say about her, but for the sake of this post, I'll simply say she reminds me as a little version of me in some ways; and I like me.

The Death Crawl award for being taxed to the soul, and rising to the top.

In order to understand this next friend of mine, and how our relationship worked this year, you have to watch the clip above. If not you will not really get the magnitude of what I exacted of him. More than anyone else in this cast, and there were many that I worked hard on, I rode Cody to the limits of what he could do. I worked one on one with him from October to March continually riding him and pushing him and telling him that he had more to give. It was the truth. He always did. 

Cody and I worked on his monologue scores of times. Over and over I'd stop him and ask why he did things. I would pick at nits, I would tell him one thing, and then another, and then another, all variations on the same part of his piece. The fruit was taking 2nd place in the Shakespeare competition. He worked and worked and worked and worked. Cody was a leader among the cast, and an absolute workhorse. He certainly has some natural gifts. However, if everyone worked as hard as Cody, everyone would have a much more honed skill set. He was kind of my masterpiece that year.

The Bee Movie award for someone who made everyone laugh, but particularly me.

The honest truth of this is that my sister watches a couple movies with me simply to hear me laugh at them. She insists that it's funny, but MORE funny when watching it with me. Megan was that person in the case for me. Every stinking time she was on stage she cracked me up. There was just something about the way she delivered herself, and it always made me smile -- big time. I think she made everyone laugh, but she busted my gut every time. 

I have a handful more kids to write about, but I decided for your sake (and mine) to make this a two part thing. :) Stay tuned for Part 2.

An Unquenchable Spirit

I want you to take a moment and think to yourself what you want your children to be like. If you don't have them, all the better. If you do, try not to be harsh on them as I lay out the picture of this one. Because of the nature of my relationship to this friend, I view him almost as a son, and that's how I'm going to describe him today.

I think we all marry people we're attracted to, and part of that is the innate desire to have attractive offspring. It's no wonder that one of the best compliments people pay to newly weds is "You're going to have such cute kids!" This is of course true for me. It's also descriptive of my friend. He's tall. He is kind of wiry, but he's only 19, so he'll grow into himself, I think. He's got thick dark hair. Not like suave hair, but not busy either. He doesn't have a Kendall Barrows Orthodontic smile, but his is captivating. He's got bright eyes and a pretty smooth complexion.

So he's cute.

This amigo is also talented. Of his own accord, he plays a few different instruments. He ranges in ability from proficient to dabbling, but he plays and gets the concepts. He's artistic. He draws. The pictures on this blog are of his own original work. The good looking man in the hat (pictured below) is his drawing of me. I smile more than that, and am not known to wear such berets, but I like it nonetheless.

The picture at the top of the page represents God's plan for us. From our spiritual creation and life with him before birth, to the final judgement and our resting place with him. All of it is in his hands. I have to tell you, that he would have to be my pseudo son, because I have negative artistic ability. The kid is good.

My friend is super passionate about his faith. I'm a devoted and faithful believer. Few things rival the joy I feel from sharing my faith with those around me, and being strengthened by the faith of others. My psuedo-son is flat out nuts though. It's like all he talks about it seems. Some of his closest friends are Mormon missionaries who have passed through the town where he lives for a few months to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He spends most of his days with them, and shares it with his friends.

This boy was recently called as a missionary to Mexico, and he leaves next Wednesday. I wish I could upload an audio clip of the voice message he sent me about this. He's a naturally emotional guy. I mean sometimes he's totally overwhelmed by them, and he is still learning to bridle them. His message was tear jerking though. Even my pregnant sister cried when she heard it; though that may just be because pregnant. But in all seriousness, he's really a sweet spirit and has a deeply sensitive soul.

He's also super caring. He is naturally a good friend. He gives you the kind of unconditional love one could only ask of a Golden Retriever puppy. (Now I wish my Amigo had drawn one of those...). He also is a diligent friend. I get a "Good night! I love you!" text from him three times a week that, sorry to say, mostly goes unresponded to.

So he's great. I think after six paragraphs, four swiped drawings, and a "So he's cute" blurb, I've done a fair assessment.

So why write about him? To brag? To steal his art without permission? To show the world what a handsome devil this friend made me out to be?

Kinda. But no.

I'm writing about him for two reasons. The first is totally selfish. As much as I convince myself that I'm going to write him either as often as he'd like (three times a week) or as often as I'd like (every three transfers which equates to 18 weeks, or a total of 5-6 letters his whole mission) I'm pretty sure both guesses are high. I'm about as crappy a letter writer as I am a blogger, only with letters I have to stamp them, too. So, this is kind of my way of saying, Good Luck Elder! Look forward to hearing from you! I think you're great!

The other part of it is to show that, like some of the other heroes of this blog, he has done fantastic things in the face of adversity. Joseph Smith once said that wealth would try the saints far more than poverty. I think that this is a reflection on the corruption of character and lack of development of true talents. This friend does not have much in the way of worldly wealth, so he invests his time into developing himself.

This friend also came from a home without a father. Not the, "my dad didn't come to my softball games because he was at work all the time" dad. But the "My dad up and left our family; left my mom who struggles with health and a handful of kids to be kicked to the curb and doesn't want anything to do with any of us." kind of no-father home.

Statistics show that most kids who grow up like that end up a little messed up. My friend has his demons. My friend has his scars. My friend truly has felt the pain of being that loving golden retriever puppy who gets kicked in the face repeatedly and wonders why, but still goes back to try and lick the hand of the one who kicked him. However he has risen. He didn't turn into a world hating punk rock band member of Good Charlotte or Simple Plan. He didn't turn to a druggie. He's not someone's baby-daddy. He's not a slouch, an internet addict, or jaded. He has refused, perhaps because he's never even opened the door to the possibilities, to be anything other than good and hard working, much of which, I'm sure, can be attributed to his mom.

"Two mice fell into a bucket of cream. One gave up and quickly drowned. The other kept kicking and churning until he churned that cream to butter."

That second mouse? That's my friend. I look up to him, and have great confidence that he'll do great things. Ordinary outside. Extraordinary inside, and, ultimately, he has an unquenchable spirit.

Destined Friends.

I find myself being surprised by few things. This isn't to say that I'm hardcore, or cynical. I think much more it's that I've come to believe that life is good, and good things happen a lot. Additionally, I lead a fairly simple life, and complex things don't happen all that often.

There is, however, something that some one chose to do that came totally out of left field a couple weeks ago.

Let's start with the back story. Every good blog involves flashbacks. The more you read this, the more you'll believe that. Work with me.

When ALA was not yet open, the powers that were in charge of the school decided that the best plan was to have a school wide picnic and play games. A fair few quirky things happened on the day in question that made me reconsider what glorious boones there may be for me at the school, while simultaneously making me more determined that I was sketchy at best with my prospects of attending this new school. It was a strange feeling. This aside, however, I had determined that with my fresh start, I'd definitely try to be more friendly and out going. Contrary to popular belief, I have not always been the stud muffin that I am today. So when I walked up to a certain cute girl and said, "Best Friend!" I got a gift I treasured.

I'll never forget the unmistakable look of "I'm homeschooled!" that flashed across this girl's face when she responded somewhat dazedly "Best friend?"

That statement proved to be truer that I ever could have imagined. Question mark and all.

School began, and as young 15 year olds we became fast friends. We only had seminary together, but we talked all the time, and we had a lot of good talks about things. She had this insane gift where she could read me better than most people. I had kind of a weird adjustment to my my working out of the home for the first time in my life. Of all my friends and teachers, she was the only one to notice that this kind of got to me, and understood why I felt the way I did. She just had a knack for it. It's like we'd always known each other.

So, because I was so wonderful, and she was so nice (a little weird, but nice), I had a crush on her. I highly doubt the older I get that this was ever particularly subtle, and have learned that subtly is not really my strong suit in anything, much less when I like a girl. My wife reaps the benefit of this. As time drew on, we ended up going on a date, and flirting and holding hands and doing all the wonderful exciting things that 16 year olds do.

And then something happened.

To this day I'm not sure either of us really remembers why or what or how, but we went from best of friends to bitter enemies in a very short amount of time. This was probably the most intense mutual dislike I have with anyone I've ever known. I said a lot of things that I absolutely am ashamed of. I heard slander about me that was terrible to the point that a girl I asked to prom said no to me based on the witness of this girl. In my eyes, this girl was the biggest hypocrite I'd ever met. On the few rare occasions we were civil to one another, the fallout led to even uglier and more intense dislike. It was common knowledge that I handled this mostly with insults, and taking pride in the "fact" that we were never such good friends to begin with, and she probably had mental issues. I'm not sure what she thought about me, but those things were probably similar, except she probably thought I was a huge jerk and that people could get an infectious disease from breathing air in the same space I was in.

This took place over the course of over the course of more than 2,200 days. With time, the sting of losing a friend no longer hurt, and I really didn't remember anything other than the fact that she wouldn't talk to me if I had tried. In my own mind, I'd done my due diligence to repair the friendship a long time before, and I was no longer going to pursue that path ever again.

Now jump to the early part of March. I'm sitting in the Atlanta, GA Airport with my hott wife. We've missed our connecting flight because our airline messed up, so we're both tired after 13 hours in the airport, and a wonderful week long cruise together. I noticed that I had a missed call from my deep voiced best friend, someone I've known and cherished for 10 years. He asked if I'd be willing to give my e-mail address to this living cancer to my life. I laughed and asked why. I mean, it's not like she couldn't send me a facebook message. I knew other people that were her friend thereon, and so I figured she probably just wanted to send me a virus for good measure. That something must have gotten a bee in her bonnet about me again, and she just couldn't stop going for the throat. He asked her for me, and found out she just wanted to send me an apology e-mail.

At this point, I was surprised, amused, and a little humbled. Still skeptical, but if this was going to be genuine, I'd be ok with it. I didn't want some sissy, "I've felt really bad, and just to get this off my chest, I'm sorry for whatever, now don't talk to me again;" apology. If this was going to be worth my time to respond to, I wanted groveling. I wanted admitting full responsibility. I wanted a knowledge that this person was giving me power to hold my grudge and with hold forgiveness as long as I wanted.

Please note, that this is not the way I normally am. I try really hard to forgive quickly, and sometimes I forget before I have to forgive so I don't even feel offended by the time an apology comes. This was different for me.

The response, however, still blew me away. When someone has the personal strength to say something like, "I am sorry that your good opinion of me had to disappear and be replaced by an opinion that was founded in my poor behavior," shows a level of understanding of what it would take to win me over that astounded me. I shouldn't have been, knowing what our friendship was like before. Nonetheless, this girl bowed down at my feet and begged, so to speak. I instantly found myself on the wrong side of the coin. I too felt a need to not only accept this emphatic apology, but to redouble my efforts to her to win her favor.

I am not one to be easily swayed. I have to truly believe someone in order to give them six years of credit in one swoop. She earned it.

She took further steps, too. I pointed out to her that she could have just added me on Facebook. In her response to me, she explained that she'd stopped using it, and then went so far as to restore her Facebook on my account. I threw the bait to see if she was serious about being friends again by suggesting she do dinner with the Mrs. and I. She took me up on it, and did so excitedly. She absolutely put her money where her mouth was.

I think there's one last thing to point out. This was two sided. Firstly, it required a lot for her to go from "I hate even your name" to "I am writing to say sorry." It took courage, and humility, and an understanding that there was a chance, if not probability that I wouldn't respond, or would do so rudely. I however, had to choose to forgive her. Hers required greater courage by far. All mine required was humility.

How lucky, though, am I to have been restored to someone with whom I felt I was destined to be friends with.

That's all for today; but I actually have more to come. :)

P.S. The Savior taught, "My disciples, in days of old, sought occasion against one another and forgave not one another in their hearts; and for this evil they were afflicted and sorely chastened. Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin. I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men. And ye ought to say in your hearts—let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds." A revelation given to the prophet Joseph Smith recorded in the book of Doctrine and Covenants section 64 verses 8-11