half-baked alaska

A lot of times I feel like whatever I say has to be funny. You know, like in Pride and Prejudice (1995) when Colin Firth says to Jennifer Ehle--or maybe it was the other way around?--something cynical about how neither one of them will say anything unless it's extremely clever.

I just did two things I never thought I'd do. One, confess to feeling the need to be funny because funny is subjective ergo failure is rampant and also, well, often, "the funny guy" is annoying. It's OK, though, because I'm not a guy. And two, I just tried to paraphrase something from Pride and Prejudice and on top of that I had to try to paraphrase a specific movie version because I'm not going to go back to the book to figure out if it was a screenplay thing or an Austin original. Here's a third truth: I don't like reading Austin.

Although, to be completely clear, I am highly aware that most of the time I'm only being funny to myself/I'm the only one aware I'm joking. Like the time I was on a group date and my date was trying to make rice pudding but it wasn't thickening and so I said, "Oh, put potato flakes in it," because obviously you wouldn't do that with the special rice pudding he was making and so I thought it was funny? But I've inherited my dad's tendency to say facetious and even fallacious things with deadpan face. So everyone else thought I was serious, I think. Or maybe it was a mean thing to say? I don't know. And it wasn't even a funny joke.

This is embarrassing to me. Talking about this is embarrassing.

I keep being called up as a substitute Sunday School teacher which makes me a bit anxious. I started adding in strange antics to get other people to loosen up and do more of the work so I don't just sit in the front and babble and want to cry because I'm nervous and also because I'm nervous and babbling I end up sharing personal stories I never mean to. Blah. So, these strange antics are things everyone's really enjoyed. A couple of weeks ago I made a girl stand up on a chair to pretend to be Samuel the Lamanite and I had someone being the narrator and another guy as Kenneth Branagh White (instead of Vana White). They all did a really good job--if you need a narrator I can hook you up, he did the perfect voice--and people shared wonderful thoughts and seemed to come away with the important things of the lesson and I would even hazard to say the Holy Ghost was there. And that's the real point, isn't it? To have a lesson where the Holy Ghost can testify to people? So this should be me feeling like I'm doing the right thing.

Remember how in elementary school it was cool to wear wind suits? I never had one but I really wanted one. That's just something I was thinking about today.

Anyway, I don't like teaching because half of what I do during the lesson are silly things like tell everyone bald jokes or shuffle from the piano to the front of the class because Lisa asked me to or recommend that if you're going bowling you should wear really thick socks and I'm doing it because I can't stop myself. Partly because I want people to feel relaxed and comfortable so we can have good discussions (good) and partly because I have some incessant need to say clever things (annoying).

I say annoying because sometimes I catch myself trying to think of a witty response and then I wonder why it has to be funny, why don't I just say something sincere?

Today I had to teach again and I let the lesson go in the direction people wanted to take it. Sunday school isn't always the place for the kind of discussions I really want to have. 

That would be something a little more like this: we were studying the section of the Book of Mormon, Third Nephi chapters 1-7, that takes place five years after a prophet has told the people that Jesus Christ the Son of God would be born and they would know he'd been born because on that night there would be no darkness. And he told them other signs to look for because these people, the Nephites, lived somewhere on the North or South American continent. They wouldn't see Christ during his mortal life.

The catch is that Prophet Samuel told them these signs would happen in five years and it's been five years and there had been no signs yet. And there's lots leading up to this but somehow the society of the Nephites had reached a point where they've set a day for the execution of all the people who believed that there would be signs and there would be a Son of God born on earth.

We're supposed to apply all scriptures to our own life and so often the discussion at this point is about how it's hard to have faith but you need to be strong against the trials and opposition you find in a worldly world. And that's not a bad discussion, and at the moment we're not exactly facing public execution for believing in Christ.

I imagine not every one of those nonbelievers was anxious to kill the believers, I don't know, it doesn't say. Clay Jenkinson, a humanities scholar and maybe most known for his work portraying Thomas Jefferson, suggests that in any revolution a large percentage of the population just wants to continue their daily life, trying to feed their families and take care of their own business. I imagine it's the same here. There are the vocal and persuasive who gain power and work to have their way and there are some who go for their ideas and there are some who don't want to stick their necks out and oppose and there are some who just don't want to be bothered either way.

My fingers are very long-winded. If you've stopped reading by this point I understand, so have I, even though more thoughts are striking me right now. Perhaps, part of what we need to learn here is to be more aware that we're not shutting our eyes while other groups are being thrown under the bus.

Aaaaaaaaaand maybe I'll write more later. See, I told you I'm going to give you half baked ideas.