In my neck of the woods, there’s a stretch of highway that most folks think isUtah’s Autobahn. There’s a 75 mph speed limit, but anyone doing 75 is being pushed or passed, usually with a free puppet show from the other driver.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised recently when I came around a bendon two wheels, or so it feltand blitzed right past a highway patrol trooper, parked in the median with his radar set to stun.’
He had me dead to rights. On came his lights, and he began that hated U-turn I knew had my name written all over it.I moved to the side of the road and awaited my fate.
But just as he came out of the median, an even more enthusiastic driver hurtled past him, and the trooper was off to catch a bigger fish. With a stern point and scowl’ aimed right at me (You got lucky, sister’) he blasted off after his quarry. I passed them a few minutes later, and the enthusiastic speeder was standing next to his car in handcuffs.
“Gosh,” I thought. “That’s got to be pretty embarrassing, all trussed up that way with everyone rubbernecking past at a respectable 90 mph.”
As I considered how close I came to being pulled over, however, I wondered if I’d have been any less embarrassed explaining why I was speeding. The truth was, I was rocking out to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas CD, and the key change in “I Saw Three Ships” was just so terribly exciting I failed to notice that I was accelerating at a rate of five miles per hour per measure.
“You gotta admit, officerthat Mack Wilberg is an animal.”
I wonder if there’s a box on the trooper’s form for Weird Mormon Lady.’ I would think that around here, that sort of thing would be boilerplate.
I’ve never really thought of myself as the Weird Mormon Lady. By the time I got over calling myself a girl, I had moved away from Utah and become the only Mormon lady on the block. That I was also weird had nothing to do with my religion, at least as far as my neighbors knew.
But in the year since we returned to this orbit around the mother-ship, I’ve had to reconsider my classification.
Last ChristmasI helped promote a book of essays written by a friend. I felt we had a lot in common; we were both moms, both humorists, both writers. I even did a Skype interview for the web-based parenting company she works for. So even though we were from vastly different backgrounds, I figured our similarities more than compensated, and besides, she was someone I knew, someone who I wanted to be successful. Someone I trusted, and who trusted me.
So I blogged about her book. Did a give away on my own blog. Posted on Facebook, Twitter, the works. I even handed out a few copies to friends and family members as gifts.
And then I read her book.
I know, I know. But I figured if doing it in that order was good enough for the New York Times Book Review, it was good enough for me.
Wow.
When I imagine the impression I give others, I’m super savvy and wise to the ways of the secular world. We even spent ten years in Las Vegas, which means I’ve seen more bare bottoms than a proctologist in a nudist colony. What? They’re posted on the backs of taxis, and my insurance company frowns on me driving with my eyes closed. The point is I figured I didn’t have a lot of shocks’ left in me.
Yet here I was, jaw on the floor, stunned by what this cute stay-at-home mom had written about her life, her marriage, her past and present and priorities.
And between my lame excuse for speeding and this eye-opening glimpse into another woman’s world, I’ve had to accept what I spent the last 30 years trying to ignore:
I’m peculiar.
I can’t regale my kids with stories about drunken fraternity and sorority mixers, trying to warn them against underage drinking while failing to hide a those were the days’ smirk from my face. I can’t even fake it. The only experience I have with that sort of thing is what I’ve picked up from television, and my family couldn’t be fooled into thinking I was ever that uninhibited, or attractive for that matter.
I voluntarily go to church every Sunday. For three hours. In a row. I like it there, most weeks. I even spend one of those hours teaching Bible stories to grownups, which means I have to read the scriptures all week long. What kind of kook does that? And occasionally I use my off time to check in on the people who live around here, just to see how they’re doing. It isn’t always convenient, and it isn’t always fun, but go figure the Weird Mormon Lady, I do it anyway.
My husband is even weirder. He hasn’t missed a Home Teaching visit in 20 years. That includes the four years we lived in Puerto Rico, where one’s home teaching families could live two hours away if the iguanas weren’t holding up traffic.
He’s alsoin law enforcement, which in Vegas meant doing surveillance in casinos. The first thing hedid was take a class in gambling; he didn’t know a lick about playing cards. But even with his certificate in Blackjack 101, he still stood out likewell, like a Mormon guy in a casino. Eventually they decided it was easier to have him do his surveillance from the car. At least then no one would question his drink requests. (“I’m sorry, sir. The bar doesn’t carry Shasta.”)
The online interview I did with my writer friend had to do with children and modesty. It seems a national clothing chain had introduced padded bikini tops for 7-year olds, and this gal wanted to know my thoughts on the matter. I told her that there would always be someone’ out there trying to lead her kids down a questionable path, and that the first line of defense would have to be the example set by her, the mother.
Her reply? “Huh. That’s going to be a problem over here.” I laughed, hoping like crazy that she was kidding.
I drink way too much Diet Coke and I swear and I have more opinions than the law should allow. I’m not proud of any of this; it’s a daily battle to overcome the gaps in my own integritythose differences between knowing and doing.
But it only took reading a book by someone I was certain was just like me’ to realize that no matter how hard I try, or how much I think I want it, I’m never going to fit into that world. I just don’t have the backstory, and I’m too old to start manufacturing sins now in order to keep the right friends.
When Peter refers to God’s people as peculiar,’ he’s using a Hebrew word that means a special possession or property.’We’ve been bought with a price, Paul tells us. Set apart. Preserved.
Peculiar’ means purchased.’ Totally makes sense.
It just takes a little longer for some of us to figure out that, more often than not, purchased’will mean peculiar.’
I suppose I can live with that.
