Christmas Memories

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. It helps that gifts are given, school is temporarily suspended and the holiday basically lasts an entire month. The lights, hot chocolate, caroling and family dinners are enjoyable, too. For me, Christmas has everything you could ever want in a holiday -- IF you don't let the "Christmas crazies" get to you. When I was a kid Christmas was absolute pure joy. There was nothing negative about the holiday (except that it never came fast enough), but as an adult I began to feel a little differently about it. I would often find myself searching for that impossible-to-find toy for one of my kids at every store this side of the Mississippi. Sometimes on December 23rd I would be at Wal-mart at 2 in the morning wandering aimlessly and zombie-like through the almost empty aisles, searching for that perfect gift. It was, in a word, stressful. And I didn't like it. I needed a way to make the holiday magical again, and I found it by participating in the Sub-for-Santa program at my workplace. Now I was buying gifts for disadvantaged children, and suddenly Christmas took on a whole new meaning -- one that it didn't even have when I was a kid. I love seeing the joy of Christmas through a child's eyes. I love being a part of that joy, and those moments when they receive a gift that they fall instantly in love with are priceless. One of my most memorable Christmas holidays growing up was the year I turned 13. It was, as anyone who knew me back then will tell you, a difficult time for me. I was trying to figure out who I was, and instead I figured out who I wasn't -- which was at least a beginning. Eliminate the things you don't want in life and eventually you'll be left with the things you do want. At least, that's the theory. I was angry at the world and there was absolutely no reason for it, other than perhaps puberty. I got in fights at school, I skipped class, and dressed in black the entire year. I was disrespectful to authority and got caught up in an "eye for an eye" mentality. It led me to do things I deeply regret. The greatest gift I have ever received was the gift of being caught while doing one of those things, and it was the beginning of a reformation in my life. I had a wood shop class in school that I loved, and my parents were planning to give me a band saw for Christmas that year. When they learned of my bad behavior, they took it back. I knew that on Christmas morning there would only be a few gifts for me under the tree, and I completely agreed with the decision my parents had made. But I enjoyed Christmas anyway, just as much as I always did. I enjoyed seeing my family members open their gifts. I enjoyed being with them. I enjoyed the Christmas lights and music and caroling like I did ever year. It was still the holiday I loved, even without the band saw that I had previously thought I couldn't live without. My sister and I shared a room until I was 12, when we moved to a larger house. We were grateful to have our own rooms after that, but on Christmas Eve we slept in the same room by choice. "Slept" might not be the right word, as Christmas joy filled us with excitement and anticipation--two emotions that aren't very conducive to sleep. My parents had a rule that we couldn't wake them up before 6am on Christmas morning, and it was quite possibly the most difficult to keep rule they ever made. Most of the time we had Christmas at home, but I remember going to Virginia one year, where my mom's parents lived, at Christmastime. I was fairly young--somewhere between 9 and 11. I got a chemistry set and an electronics kit that year. I remember sitting in the living room in the dark listening to Mannheim Steamroller and watching the snow come down outside, highlighted by the streetlight near our home. I remember feeling so at peace in those moments. I remember Christmas lights and Christmas caroling. Someone always had the bright idea to sing "O Holy Night," and it always fell apart at the climax, with those pesky high notes that are just out of reach. I remember going caroling with my French class one year in sub-zero temperatures. I loved the French Christmas carols such as "Noel Nouvelet" (Sing We Now of Christmas) and "Il Est Ne" (He Is Born). We always went to my grandpa's house on Christmas Day for dinner (he lived about an hour away from us). It's a tradition that has continued into adulthood. I learned to play piano primarily so I could play hymns, but with a secondary goal of being able to play Christmas songs. It's no coincidence that when I wanted to release an album of new age piano music, I decided to make it a Christmas album. Christmas is rich with meaning and tradition and joy, and it will always be close to my heart. The first Christmas I remember was when I was 3. I got a pair of toy pistols, a cowboy hat and a spring horse for Christmas that year. When we moved a few months later, I stood guard over my spring horse to make sure it wasn't left behind. It was the last thing loaded on the truck. Most years we would go to Park City the week after Christmas and spend a week in a condo, skiing and playing board and card games. I loved sitting in the hot tub until I was about to pass out from the heat, then diving into the snow to cool off and getting back in the hot tub again to warm up. I loved spending time with family, and my Christmas memories are truly some of my most treasured experiences. Every year, Christmas comes a little bit faster and goes a little quicker. Every year it's a struggle to find real meaning in the season without getting caught up in the stress and commercialism. But it remains, and will always remain, my favorite holiday and my favorite time of year. As I'm writing this, Christmas Eve is upon us. Tomorrow the holiday will come and soon another Christmas will have passed. I look forward to the many wonderful Christmases ahead.

Thoughts on Happiness

I have been chasing happiness my whole life, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. There are occasions when it's seemed like I should be happy and can't figure out why I'm sad. Externally everything may be lining up just the way I want: decent job, good friends and family life. But happiness, while affected by external forces, is something that only occurs on the inside. Outward accomplishments and possessions do not guarantee it. Some of the happiest people I know have very little in terms of wealth. But happiness is its own kind of currency, and arguably worth far more than gold or precious gems.

Here are a few things I've found that positively contribute to the kind of wholesome, lasting happiness I always want to feel:

1. Faith. No matter how much wisdom and wealth I gain, there are certain things I simply can't control. Any one of the people I love could be called home at any time, and so could I. Faith is the only force in my life that I can turn to when these worst case scenarios occur, or when I find myself becoming anxious and fearful about the future. My faith assures me that God is in charge, that He knows what He is doing and that He is a kind and benevolent being who wants everyone who has ever walked the earth to be truly and everlastingly joyful.
2. Love. I once went through a difficult period of time when I felt very alone and depressed. Even though I wasn't alone and was very loved, I couldn't see it and didn't allow myself to feel it. The truth is that I didn't think I was worth loving, and anyone who did profess to love me obviously didn't know the real me. I looked inward for answers and found nothing, but when I looked outward and started serving and loving others--thinking more of their needs than of my own--I began to heal. Love rescued me from my self-created prison.
3. Truth. There are times when I've made mistakes and haven't wanted to admit them. But sin and sadness fester in darkness, and the light of truth is the only cure. When I am faced with a choice between truth and lies, the path of lies often looks easier, but it actually just goes in circles. By stepping through the pain of truth and confessing my weaknesses and failings I release the burden of guilt and allow myself to be made whole again.
4. Beauty. I love to watch the paintings of light that God makes for us every single day in the sky. I love to get outside into the mountains or the desert and be one with nature. I love beautiful music, beautiful acts of service, beautiful people (we are ALL beautiful) and beautiful words. I love to lift those around me and I love to be lifted by them. I love to feel the wide range of positive and negative emotions we all experience, because it means I'm alive. I love being human: growing and hurting, falling and getting back up, always learning and moving forward even if my progress is almost imperceptible. Every day is a gift, every soul is precious in the eyes of God, and every new experience helps me understand who I am and why I'm here.

Best Friends

I have been fortunate throughout my life to always have a best friend with whom I shared everything and spent most of my time. My first best friend was named Sun, although most others called him Hung. He was from Vietnam and we met when we were in first grade. I remember playing Atari games at his house and playing with paper airplanes. Whenever I got a chance I tried to eat lunch or dinner or a snack while I was there, because Vietnamese food is amazing. His parents never liked it when I ate their food, though. Sun had an older sister named Gna (pronounced like the word "gnaw") who was always way too serious and used to watch these hilarious Vietnamese soap operas featuring men with long hair and robes and swords shouting at each other constantly (at least, that's how it seemed to me). Sun wasn't LDS and his uncle who lived with them smoked. One day I found his pack of cigarettes and when no one was looking I threw them in the garbage. When he went to look for them and they weren't there he was furious. I don't think my attempt to make him quit smoking worked :) That same uncle was always washing and waxing his car, a yellow Pontiac Firebird that he was obviously the pride of his life. The first time I walked into a Thai restaurant it smelled exactly the way Sun's house had when I was younger, and it felt like I'd stepped back in time. In general I don't remember the end of a friendship, probably because there's rarely any kind of final decision or discussion involved but rather a gradual drifting away. Around 4th grade that happened with me and Sun, so I started spending time with Marc, a Hopi Indian with a hilarious sense of humor. Marc loved sports and although his family owned a Nintendo I could rarely convince him to play it because he always wanted to be outside playing soccer or football or basketball or baseball. We went through one phase together where we said "mooooooo cow" really loudly to everyone we met. Later we worked the word "wonton" into every sentence. Marc also introduced me to combing my hair, which I had never done until I met him (my mom just cut it so short that I didn't need to comb it). He also introduced me to the wonders of hair gel. When I was 13 I went with Marc's family to a ranch near Snowflake Arizona for their family reunion. At one point the two of us went "hunting" in the woods, which is something neither of us had ever really done before. Marc had a 12-gauge shotgun and when we spotted a bird he took aim and fired. I don't think he actually hit he bird, but he hit the branch it was perched on and the bird fell to the ground and then the branch landed on it, killing it. We walked over and looked at it lying on the ground and both felt so sad that our careers as hunters began and ended that same day. After the family reunion we went to Winslow, Arizona to visit Marc's grandma. While we were there we went to swimming hole near Camel Rock and jumped off a high cliff (probably 20 or 30 feet) into the water. It was really fun. I moved across town and didn't see Marc much after that, but he worked at the same company as me for a little while and came to my oldest daughter's first birthday party. After living in Arizona for many years he moved back to Utah recently and my wife and I joined him and his wife for dinner. After spending only a few minutes with him I could totally understand why the two of us had been such good friends. When I was 13 a boy named Seth moved in two houses down from me. I was riding my bike back from the church after a scout meeting and saw him in the front yard mowing his lawn. Here is the content of our very first conversation, word for word: Me - "Mow the lawn, man." Him - "Go to scouts, man." (Both statements were said with a lot of attitude.) From those humble beginnings began one of my most memorable friendships. Seth was the least judgmental person I have ever known, a quality I have worked hard to emulate in later life. We skipped a lot of school together and got into trouble sometimes, but by high school we were headed in a better direction and he joined the swim team with me. I was with him when I met Brenda at an outdoor ice skating rink. Brenda was with a friend named Angie and Seth and I decided to skate circles around them because we thought they were cute. I was wearing a Timpview shirt and Angie said to me, "so you guys are from Timpview?" From there we began a conversation that lasted until well after closing time and resulted in me getting Brenda's phone number. When Seth died in a gun accident two years later Brenda was the one who got me through that difficult time. She and I were like family, and I practically lived at her house. Her brother and I both had an interest in computers and her sister was a deep thinker who used to ask me questions I still can't answer. Her mom cooked amazing meals and I developed a taste for skim milk, which is what they drank at their house. I also remember visiting Brenda's grandma several times, once even going there by myself because I was passing through Heber after a day of skiing in Park City. She was one of the kindest people I have ever met.

Being Prepared

Several years ago I decided to do something I hadn't done in a long time -- and actually haven't done since: go mountain biking. I used to do it all the time when I was younger, but life got busy and I stopped going at some point. I had wanted to get back into exercising and thought mountain biking would be a good option, so I made plans one evening to drive to Hobble Creek Canyon where I knew there was a mountain biking trail. The sun had already set when I started and at one point in the trail there was a very large tree root. I carefully went around it and made a note of it so I wouldn't get into an accident on the way back down as the daylight continued to phase. I didn't see anyone else on the trail while I was going up, but on the way back down I saw a man walking with two bikes while his wife walked in front of him. She was holding her arm, and I stopped to talk to them. Apparently she had hit that tree root that I narrowly avoided and landed on her collar bone, breaking it. There was more than a mile yet to walk and she was in pretty severe pain. I had brought a first aid kit with me and was able to give her some painkillers and a sling. I walked the rest of the way back with them and when we got to the car her husband and I gave her a blessing (I had also brought consecrated oil with me). Afterward she looked me in the eyes and said, "Thank you for being prepared." I have absolutely no doubt that I was sent to that particular place in time specifically so I could help her.

The Duplex

From about ages 7 to 12 my family lived in a small duplex at the foot of Grandview Hill in Provo. There were only 2 bedrooms so my sister and I had to share one of the rooms, which prompted a lot of arguments about nightlights (I preferred to sleep without a nightlight but my sister insisted on it). The carpet was green shag and the appliances were avocado and mustard-colored. The cupboards were very dark and it was a 70's house through and through.

I have a lot of memories of living in that house, but a few in particular stand out such as the time my dad broke his thumb. He was exercising with weights (dumbbells) and somehow slammed his thumb in between two of them at high velocity. He immediately said to me, "get a bowl of water!" I thought it was strange at the time and I still think is strange. I really should ask him about that sometime :) I remember him putting his broken thumb in the water, and it turned red from his blood.

One time we built a snow cave in the back yard. It's hard to imagine Provo even getting enough snow to build a snow cave now, but I guess it happened back then. We also had a raft and would occasionally go boating on Utah Lake, which was much deeper and maybe a little cleaner than it is now. I used to love getting sick, which sounds a little weird but it was kind of fun to stay home and watch game shows on TV instead of going to school.

We had some outdoor cats that we occasionally fed while we lived there. We named one of them Calico and the other one Suzy Q. Suzy Q had babies and I remember playing with the kittens, but one day we found one dead and soon afterwards the rest of them died. I was told they had contracted distemper.

One time we were driving in our neighborhood and my dad pointed out a barley plant. I got the idea from what he said that barley could be eaten, just like walnuts or fruit from a tree. So I went back later by myself and tried to munch on it. Needless to say, it didn't go very well. I think something got a little bit stuck in my esophagus and I had a hard time swallowing for like a year, but I was too embarrassed to say anything to anyone. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way :)

There was another time when I went to a cub scout meeting and one of the boys had worked with his dad to disassemble a battery and make a little display of how they worked. I wanted to do the same thing, so I went outside with a hammer and some batteries and started whacking them. I ended up getting battery acid in my eye, but fortunately my mom was home and immediately put me under the sink for like 15 minutes to flush it out.

When I was 12 years old (specifically on October 28th) we moved across town to a new house where my sister and I could have our own rooms AND since we owned a house for the first time my parents bought me a dog (a terrier I named Sammy). The day we moved I was standing on the tailgate of our banana yellow pickup truck and slipped. My elbow landed between the tailgate and the truck and it hurt so badly I thought I might have broken it, so my mom took me to the emergency room. It turned out it wasn't broken, but I did need three stitches. The doctor told me I might feel some pushing and pulling, but it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Either "pushing and pulling" was code for "pain that would make a grown main faint" or the local anesthetic wasn't working at all, because I swear I felt everything. The elbow may not seem like a very sensitive part of the body, but when someone starts pushing a needle and thread through it without anesthesia it definitely gets noticed.

I learned to cross-country ski while I was living in that duplex, went through about 12 skateboards (I kept leaving them in places where they got run over by cars), made new friends, graduated from primary, got hit by a car while riding my bike, caught snakes, built clubhouses, played at the GRA park, went sledding and explored and played and went on the rope swing on Grandview hill, and did a million other things while living in that house that I look back on with fondness. Mine was truly a blessed childhood, and I can honestly say that the Grandview area is still one of my favorite places in the world.

Early Childhood Memories

I once read a quote that said something like, "Childhood is a lot like being drunk: everyone remembers what you did except you." I've never been drunk, but I have been a child and remember very, very little about the experience. Much of what I do know has probably been pieced together from stories my parents and others have told me throughout my life, but here a few ACTUAL memories from my childhood that have stood the test of time.

My earliest memory is of living in some red brick apartments in Orem, Utah just west of University Mall. I think I loved there from about ages 2 through 3. We lived in a basement apartment, and one of our neighbors was a little girl who, according to my mom, was one of the most hyper kids who ever walked the face of the earth. My first memory is of her stomping on my toy organ and breaking it. I also remember being kicked in the eye while walking past her in the swingset (probably my fault for getting too close), and one time she and I were picked up by the police while walking down an island in the middle of a busy street (State Street). I still remember thinking it was pretty cool that I got to ride in a police car :) I also fell off the bed while we were living in those apartments and cracked my head open, and I still remember screaming while the doctor shoved me under the sink in his office to clean the blood off my head before giving me stitches. My last memory of those apartments is of the day we moved to Provo. I was worried that my favorite Christmas present, a spring horse that I could ride, would be forgotten. So I sat by it as I watched everything get loaded into the truck, and my spring horse was the very last item that was loaded before the door was closed.

Our new house was an actual house. It was located in East Provo and had white wood siding. There was a basement apartment with a young married couple and on Halloween just after my 4th birthday I decided to go trick-or-treating to their house ... at 10am. They were more than a little surprised to see me there so early in the day, and they hadn't bought candy yet so they gave me a banana :) A few months later I decided to try my hand at shoplifting. Allen's Drug Store was about a block away and my friend and I went there with a friend. It was Easter time and we decided the Cadbury eggs looked good, so we took a few and put them in our pockets, walked outside and around the corner and ate them. Then (and this will betray my abundant lack of criminal experience), we walked back INTO the store -- probably with chocolate all over our hands and faces -- to get more. Someone must have recognized us because our moms both arrived a few minutes later. To this day I have never forgotten the spanking my mom gave me.

We had a garden while living in that white house. I didn't mind the green and yellow beans they grew, and I think I even liked the peas. But I drew the line at zucchini. One night at dinner my mom was trying to get me to eat some, and it tasted so bad I was gagging. The main dish was stroganoff, which I liked, so my mom said to me, "Maybe if you eat the zucchini with the stroganoff it won't be so bad." So I tried it, and threw up all over the kitchen floor (which, unfortunately, was carpeted). Now that I am an adult, zucchini tastes completely different. Maybe my parents just had a bad variety or something, but if I ever again taste anything that reminds me even remotely of the way that zucchini tasted when I was a kid I'll spit it out of my mouth so fast even Spiderman wouldn't be able to move quickly enough to avoid getting hit by it.

There was an apartment complex across the street from where we lived that had a brick planter box, and one day I was climbing onto the planter box and jumping off when another little boy decided to join me. His name was Clayton, and he was my first real friend. I liked playing outside so much that I didn't want to come in for any reason. Being a boy, it was easy to find a way to use the bathroom without actually having to go indoors. And when I got thirsty, well, there was a convenient gutter filled with water that I could drink out of. One day when I wasn't feeling well my mom said to me, "Were you drinking from the gutter? Our neighbor said she saw you." I vehemently denied it, but that was the last time I drank from the gutter. Having to go inside for water was a small price to pay to avoid having to lie in bed for an entire day.

I remember the day my sister was born. My parents had been talking about how exciting it would be for me to have a sister and I was really on board with the whole idea. When it was time for my mom to go to the hospital I was shocked and more than a little displeased to discover that my uncle had been assigned to take care of me. I had thought my parents and I were a team! A couple years later that same uncle let me watch "Raider's of the Lost Ark" and I had nightmares for weeks. My parents never asked him to babysit again. (Maybe that was his plan all along :) )

My great-grandmother (my dad's dad's mom) lived about a mile away from us and we visited her often. She always wore sneakers, often complained about her ingrown toenail, worked harder than anyone I have ever met before or since (and she was in her eighties by the time I knew her), and made the world's best peanut brittle. To this day I have still never tasted anything that compared to hers. She worried about tripping over the vacuum chord and falling, so when I did chores at her house I always kept the vacuum chord coiled around my arm, letting out just enough to do the job but keep it off the floor. When my parents bought an upright vacuum I was vacuuming at home one day and did that exact same thing. My mom kindly informed me that it wasn't necessary to do that when I vacuumed at our house, and it made the job of vacuuming much easier for me. My great-grandmother loved getting Christmas cards and saved every single one she received. I remember seeing them strung up all over her house. She also adored her iris garden, and would invite my family over every spring to see them in bloom. She had two big walnut trees in her back yard and I enjoyed climbing on them. We occasionally visited my other great-grandmother who lived in Layton (my dad's mom's mom). She always gave me a snicker's bar and her husband always gave me a crisp dollar bill.

I lost my first tooth when I was about four or five years old. I was walking down the sidewalk chewing purple bubblegum and suddenly there was something crunchy in it :) I got a blue bike with red tires for Christmas a few months after I turned five. I still remember walking into the living room and seeing it sitting next to the tree in all its glory. I could hardly contain my excitement. My parents used to take walks on Sundays, window shopping in downtown Provo. I started bringing my bike with me and learned how to ride on those walks. I had training wheels for a while, but one day I was riding around the neighborhood and an across-the-street neighbor noticed that I wasn't really using the training wheels and offered to take them off for me. Soon after that I was riding my bike in bare feet and parked it on the lawn, only to step on a bee. I had an allergic reaction to that sting and had to be rushed to the hospital, but I've been stung since without a similar effect. I also had a piece of ply wood fall on me one time and got a splinter so deep we had to go to the doctor to get it removed.

All things considered, I had a pretty fantastic childhood. There are good and bad memories, of course, but I knew I was loved and my parents took good care of me and tried to start me off heading in the right direction. When I tried to wander off in a different direction, they did their best to get me back in line. Now that I am a father I hope I am trying to pass their legacy of love on to my own children.

Family Vacations

When I was growing up my parents took my sister and me on some pretty memorable family vacations. They weren't always memorable in a GOOD way, like the time we hit a deer in Spanish Fork canyon while traveling home from a vacation at night, but I am grateful my parents took the time to help us explore the world.

When I was quite young my parents bought a timeshare condominium in Park City, and I have so many great memories there. The first time we went they had a microwave, and we were pretty excited because we didn't have one at home. So we bought a bag of large colored marshmallows and microwaved them. One year when we went there was so much snow that we opened our back door and there was snow piled almost to the very top of it.

We had two weeks in Park City, one was in August and the other was the last week of the year (between Christmas and New Year's). So a lot of my childhood New Year's celebrations were spent in Park City. I liked it there for a lot of reasons, but in particular I think I liked the fact that we weren't always rushing about trying to get as many things done as possible while we were traveling. Park City was relaxing (they even had a hot tub and sauna) and we spent a lot of our time just playing card games or monopoly or shopping on main street or skiing or wandering around the miniature mall they had there or going on the alpine slide.

By contrast, our traveling family vacations could sometimes be pretty frenzied. My mom was from Virginia, and we went there several times for Thanksgiving and at least once for Christmas. I remember staying up late one night while in Virginia to finish the 6th "Work and the Glory" book, which ended with the martyrdom of Joseph Smith. When I was 18 I went to Virginia and we visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house. It was being remodeled at the time and all of the furniture was covered in sheets. There was also no heat in the building, and I wasn't prepared for such cold weather. There is something about East Coast cold that makes Utah winters seem like spring by comparison, even when there is snow on the ground in Utah and no snow in Virginia. I think it's the humidity. I had a similar experience while trying to visit the Smithsonian one time. We took the Subway into Washington D.C. only to discover that the museums were all closed. I still remember huddling on one of the porches trying to get warm while we figured out what to do.

One time while visiting Virginia we decided to take a trip to Williamsburg. My dad wrecked our rental car, so we decided to save a little money and rented a used car from a place called "Fancy Flivvers." It was a really old Plymouth and we all wondered if it would be reliable, but we wanted to see Williamsburg so we took the risk. Unfortunately the engine caught on fire while we were driving back. We pulled over to the side of the road and some friendly people were kind enough to offer us a ride to the Richmond airport so we could rent another car. As we were driving my parents saw a hitchhiker and decided to give him a ride. They were feeling generous because of the help they had received, but picking up a random hitchhiker outside Richmond Virginia at 2 in the morning is a little different than helping a family whose car is broken down on the side of the freeway. My sister immediately crawled into the front seat, and I stayed in the back with our new "friend" while he went on and on about how his boss howled at the moon and other completely nonsensical things. Looking back, I suspect he was high. Or crazy. Or both. But fortunately not homicidal :)

One time we took a trip to New York, and I remember the sky in New York city being red and it really scared me. I liked upstate New York, though. We visited Palmyra and the sacred grove and stayed at my aunt and uncle's house. In the middle of the night I wet the bed, and was so embarrassed about it (I was like 8 years old) that I didn't tell anyone. I just wadded up my underwear and threw it under the bathroom sink, hoping no one would ever find it. About a month later, at Christmas time, we received a package from my aunt and uncle that included several wrapped gifts and my underwear that I had hoped to never see again. My aunt had even washed it for me :) I still haven't recovered from that embarrassment.

One time we visited New England. I remember going to the world's oldest candy store in Salem, Massachusetts and visiting Bunker Hill and Paul Revere's house. We also went to Boston and my one goal was to try a bowl of New England clam chowder in the place that made it famous. On another trip we stayed with my uncle in Connecticut over Thanksgiving. It was on that trip that I discovered the artist Enya, and also got in a huge fight with my mom's overly competitive family while playing the game "Encore." The same thing happened when I tried to play that game 20 years later, and I have avoided it ever since. Some games just aren't worth the contention :)

When I was in 4th grade we drove to Denver and caught a train to Burlington, Iowa for a family reunion in Nauvoo. I loved being on the train, watching the sunrise over the corn field of Nebraska and stealing half and half from the dining car :) It was really fun to be able to move around a bit instead of just sitting in a seat in a car or airplane. We also went to St. Louis on the trip, where I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to go to an art museum. But I did enjoying seeing the gateway arch and taking a 3 hour ride on a Mississippi riverboat called "The Presidential."

Another time we went to Maine for Thanksgiving and I got into a fight with my cousin, a seventh day adventist, about which day the Sabbath should be observed on. We also took shorter trips, such as to Mesa Verde in Colorado or Moab, Utah, or Blanding to visit my cousins. We went to Bryce National Park several times and Yellowstone once. We went camping at Craters of the Moon in Idaho when I was 18, and I felt pretty cool on that trip because we took my truck and I got to drive.

When I was about 7 I spent 3 weeks in St. George visiting my cousins and had quite an adventure. I got strep, walked across a hot road in bare feet on what was at the time a record-breaking temperature for the state of Utah (117 degrees), took a mud bath, hiked to the top of a hill, got head lice, and was attacked by a cactus. That last one was one of the best lessons in physics I have ever learned. I was in the front yard with my cousins and my oldest cousin Nathan challenged me to a foot race. He said to me, pointing across the yard, "the first one to touch the flower on that cactus wins." Never one to refuse a challenge, I gave it everything I had and was the first one to touch the flower. It would have been a glorious moment if my momentum hadn't then carried me into the cactus itself, resulting in several hours of painful cactus needle extraction from just about every part of my body. But it was, without question, a memorable moment in my life :)

The Flight of the Arrow

An arrow sat in a quiver,
its potential unrealized.
Suddenly it found itself removed
from the only home it had known
and hastily strung on a bow.
After a moment of frantic anticipation
it began to soar through the air at exhilarating speed.
Any excitement was quickly dampened, however,
as the journey seemed to be taking longer than expected,
and the target was unknown.

The arrow flew through the trees,
missing branches by mere inches,
and it began to wonder
and worry
and doubt
and fear.
Perhaps it would be lost,
forgotten, and left alone in the woods
having failed to achieve its purpose.
Just as these thoughts began to rise to a fever pitch
it struck something solid:
a perfect bullseye.

How much wasteful worry could have been avoided
if the arrow had simply trusted the Bowman?

Elementary School

I went to Maeser elementary for kindergarten and part of first grade. I don't have a lot of memories from that period of time, but I do have a few. I remember really liking my kindergarten teacher. I might have had a little crush on her, even. She lived in my ward and sometimes I would just go over to her house and hang out. We used large red pencils for writing and somehow I ended up getting stabbed with one of those pencils and the tip of the lead broke off inside my skin. I can still see it in the palm of my right hand 32 years later, although it has faded a little over the years--probably as more layers of skin have covered it. I remember a day when a girl fell on the playground and hit her head and had to get stitches. But the most traumatic event of my kindergarten year was the day we read the story of the gingerbread man who ran away. My teacher brought a gingerbread man and showed it to us, then read the story and I assumed we would get to eat the gingerbread man after recess. But when we came back she said the gingerbread man had run away. There was another day towards the end of the school year when we were all outside playing with a parachute. When we finished the teacher said we were all done, and I assumed that meant we were done with school - so I walked home. When I got there my mom was surprised to see me (it was much earlier than she expected) and dragged me back to the school :)

When I started first grade I remember my teacher at Maeser having a little clubhouse in the middle of her room. I thought it was really cool, but I was only there for a few weeks before I moved across town and started going to another school, Grandview elementary. My mom took me to the school a few days before I was scheduled to start and showed me where my classroom was, but it was a big building and when I got dropped off I wasn't sure where to go. I was wandering around outside crying when my teacher found me and showed me where to go. That very first day we were playing with blue clay and some of the kids started putting it on their foreheads. I thought it looked fun, so I did the same thing and the teacher noticed me and yelled at me. It was a rough first day. There was an older woman who we called Grandma Payne who lived on Jordan Avenue, which was the road I walked on to get home from school. She volunteered at the school and helped me to get better at reading. I remember being really confused by the word "Saw," and she patiently helped me figure it out. Our principal was Dr. Edenfield, a really nice guy who listened to and respected me. One day I was called to his office because someone had seen a kid wearing green and yellow pull the fire alarm. I was wearing a green and yellow shirt that day, but I told him it wasn't me and he believed me. Eventually they found the kid who did it -- someone wearing a yellow shirt and green pants. In second grade I started in one class but early in the year a new teacher was hired and I ended up in her class. I really liked her and remember her inviting all of the kids in her class to her house for a party on a Saturday. She only taught that year and then moved to Chicago. She wrote me a letter and told me how much she loved living there. That was the first year I participated in the school spelling bee, and I found that I loved and was pretty good at spelling. I won the school spelling bee in 5th grade and went to the district spelling bee, but my nerves conspired against me when I realized I was one of only three students left and there were two huge trophies. At the same time they ran out of the spelling words I had studied and had to start using random words from the dictionary. First I missed the word "seizure," which I had never even heard before, then I missed the word "waffle," spelling in "W-A-F-F-E-L." Stupid nerves :)

I remember watching the movie "Where the Red Fern Grows" in third grade at a read-a-thon. To this day I cannot understand why I had to be subjected to such a sad movie. In 4th grade I had a teacher who acted like she was personally offended every time the class wasn't paying attention to her--as if she expected us to be something other than the kids we were. She would say "excuse me" in this guilt-inducing tone that drove me CRAZY. That was the year I started getting bullied in school. There was a new kid who was really mean -- I remembering him banging my head into the bathroom wall once. I got so frustrated that a friend and I went to his house to see if we could somehow do something mean back to him. When we got there his family were playing kickball in the back yard and they invited us to join them. After that we somehow ended up being friends. That same year I was riding my bike home from school and I was trying to go straight but a truck made a sudden right turn and cut me off. I tried to avoid the truck but couldn't and ended up running into the tire, bouncing off and hitting a nearby address sign pole. The truck just kept driving, but someone else saw me and stopped to help, putting my mangled bike in the trunk and giving me a ride home.

I really loved my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Davis. He was pigeon-toed and all the kids made fun of him when he ran, but I thought it was cool that he wasn't afraid to run with us in spite of the fact that he was a little different. He owned a taco shop near my dad's work called Gordo's, and I used to go there and order cheese quesadillas, because that was the cheapest thing on the menu. I later learned how to make them myself. I remember learning to play the ukulele in 5th grade and having a lot of fun with it. I also remember a day when I stood up from my desk for a moment and then when I went to sit back down my chair wasn't there and I ended up falling on the floor. I looked up and saw a kid behind me and accused him of pulling my chair out (although even if he had the fault was at least partly mine for not looking before I sat). I remember my teacher sitting down with both of us to ask what had happened. I shared my perspective and the other kid shared his, then Mr. Davis sided with me, saying that I'd never given him a reason to doubt me. I had never felt so respected.

5th and 6th grades were a little bit hard because that was when it seemed like everyone divided into "cool kids" and "nerds" based on fashion choices and interests (like sports). I didn't care very much about fashion, and I enjoyed playing sports but wasn't as athletic as some of the kids. I liked being the goalie when we played soccer and I could run pretty fast. I also played "coach pitch" baseball for a few seasons. One year I accidentally got signed up for T-ball, which seemed a little bit too easy. But I struck out once, and I've never forgotten how embarrassing it was to strike out at T-ball :) The fashion at the time was to "peg" your jeans. Some of the kids who were trying to help me be less nerdy showed me how to do it, but I didn't really understand. So I told my mom she wasn't allowed to wash my jeans anymore because otherwise the "peg" that the other kids had helped me put in the cuffs would come out. Like the good mother she was, she just ignored me and washed them anyway :) I joined the orchestra and played cello for a while, but I never really got past "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Several years ago I heard that my elementary school was going to mostly be torn down and the remaining part was going to be converted into offices for the school district. I decided to visit the school before that happened, and as I walked through I was surprised how small it seemed. When I was a kid the building had seemed so impossibly large, and the stripes painted on the wall near the ceiling had been SO far away. Now they were almost at eye level. A lot of memories came back to me as I walked through those halls, and most of them were good. It made me grateful for all of the teachers and administrators who saw what I would become long before I could, and who cared enough to dedicate their lives to helping me and other kids like me grow and learn.

The Swim Team

Even though I wasn't a very good swimmer, I decided to join the Timpview High School swim team my freshman year because my mom was on her high school swim team and said it was really fun. I also liked the idea of leaving the school an hour early and taking a bus down to the pool at Provo High School. Any reason to avoid sitting in a classroom seemed pretty good to me :) Fortunately tryouts weren't required -- they simply took anyone who signed up. Otherwise I wouldn't have made it. My friend Seth joined the swim team with me, and right away we had a group to belong to, which was helpful because high school can be a pretty lonely place without that. One morning I woke up to banging on my bedroom door, and a bunch of guys from the swim team poured into my room and kidnapped me for a "come as you are" breakfast. I was just in my bathrobe, and they were kind enough to let me put on some pants before shuffling me into the van and driving me to the coach's house (collecting several other kids on the way). Strangely, it was a pretty enjoyable way to start the day.

I spent the first few months of my freshman year learning how to swim correctly. I was really struggling, but I had a patient coach. My first real breakthrough came when she videotaped me swimming the freestyle stroke and I saw exactly what I was doing wrong. I decided on a whim to learn to swim the butterfly stroke, largely because no one else seemed interested (probably because it was so hard). My first few races were pretty rough. I still remember the first time I got for the 100 yard butterfly (4 laps in a standard pool) -- it took me 1 minute and 21 seconds to finish. I always started out pretty strong, but by the end of the race my oxygen and energy were depleted and I looked like a drowning baboon and felt like a drowning swimmer for the last 15 yards or so. I remember going to Cedar City in October for a swim meet and eating dinner at Shoney's restaurant. At the end of that first year I received an award for being the "most improved" swimmer, which was virtually guaranteed since I was such a poor swimmer when I first started. A guy named Matt who was an assistant coach gave me the nickname "Flex."

My sophomore year was the peak of my swimming success. I remember swimming freestyle one day at practice and realizing that I was hardly using my legs at all -- I was just pulling myself along with my arms. So I started kicking after that and significantly increased my speed -- so much so that I was part of the freestyle relay team at the state meet in February. I had a girlfriend that would come watch me swim sometimes, and the guys on the team nicknamed her "GW" (short for "Gerry's Woman"). I used to watch the balcony constantly during practice, waiting for the moment when she would walk in.

One time at a swim meet I was lying on a bench resting between races and something from the ceiling fell into my eye. I think it was fiberglass or something. It hurt a LOT, and it took me 15 or 20 minutes in the locker room shower to finally wash it out.

I used to alternate between listening to peaceful new age piano music (usually David Lanz) and rock music (usually Foreigner's "Tooth and Nail") to get psyched up for a race. But I still hit "the wall" every time I swam butterfly. My times were now around 1:15, which still wasn't great. So I joined a swimming club that had just been formed call PAC (Provo Aquatics Club) and swam twice as much. The workouts were intense, and I was exhausted at the end of each day. But the training worked, and I was able to get down to 1:05 and was given the "over the wall" award at the end of the year, as well as the "Men's High Point Sophomore" award.

I decided to graduate high school a year early because my girlfriend was a year older than me and I didn't want to be left behind when she graduated, so I packed a lot of classes into my junior/senior year and didn't have time to practice with the team. We also got a new coach that year, and she gave me regular workouts that I was supposed to do on my own. I think I did them maybe twice, but she still let me swim with the team and I was on the state relay team that year.

Joining the swim team was one of the best decision's I've ever made. I actually did better in school during the swim season, because even though I had less time I was more focused and had more purpose. When I look back at the happiest times in my life they are almost always correlated with intense physical exercise.

Look Again

When you look in a mirror,
does it make you feel blue?
Do you like what you see
staring back at you?

A mirror can't show
what's deep inside,
the worth of your soul
or the beauty you hide

If you want to know
who you really are,
truth be told:
you're a rising star

In my eyes you're perfect
outside and in
So go back to that mirror
and look again

Jobs

When I was very young I was always coming up with schemes to make money. Around the age of 6 I collected plain old rocks from outside and went door to door trying to sell them. I think I actually made a little money, too, not because of my amazing product but because people thought it was cute to see a 6 year old doing something like that and wanted to encourage me. Or something :) Soon after that I gathered up all the toys I didn't like and tried to sell those as well. I don't think that was as successful in financial terms as my rocks scheme had been, but I met my across the street neighbor who was a nice grandmotherly woman and we became good friends. I went over their occasionally for cookies and milk after that :) As I got a little older I started mowing lawns with a hand-powered mower, which was a lot of work. I had to get a running start and get as far as I could into the tall grass before I ran out of momentum, then back up and try again. There were a couple of women that lived a few houses away from me and I offered to mow their lawn for 50 cents. They liked my work so much that they offered me a weekly contract at $2 per week. It was one of the best days of my life :) We had a parsley plant growing near our front porch, and I tried selling parsley at one point - but it was a product with surprisingly low demand. One time I had all of the kids in the neighborhood working in my back yard helping me weed the garden (because who wants to work alone?) I had told them I would pay them, but only after the work was done. Then when they asked for money I gave them some snacks instead and told them I was paying them with food. That was the last time they did any work at my house :) I had a lot of ideas that never really got off the ground, like charging people to come watch movies at my house (which my parents informed me was illegal, sigh) and even teaching aerobics. I tried playing poker with some friends for loose change, but I just ended up losing friends so I gave that up pretty quickly.

Around age 12 I started delivering newspapers for the Utah County Journal, a free newspaper. I also started working at my grandparents house doing household chores and yardwork for minimum wage ($3.25 at the time). I would take the bus to Bountiful and stay with them for a few days at a time. It was the most money I had ever earned, and they always had ice cream in their deep freeze. It was a pretty good gig, although to this day I dislike weeding my own garden because I feel like I should be getting paid for it. My parents also assigned me periodic chores like taking out the garbage, cleaning the garage or basement, weeding, mowing the lawn, etc. I didn't have a very good worth ethic, though. For example, when it was time to clean the garage I usually moved everything into the basement, and when I cleaned the basement I moved everything into the garage. One time I was weeding using the techniques my grandparents had taught me (pull the weeds out by their roots, shake off the dirt and then throw them in the garbage). I thought it would be a lot more efficient if I skipped the "shake off the dirt" step and just shoveled weeds & dirt into the garbage together. I didn't have a good understanding about the importance of topsoil at that point in my life, but it didn't matter because I still learned my lesson when I tried to move the garbage can. It was so heavy that it wouldn't move and fell on my leg instead. I managed to crawl out without any injuries, but I never skipped the "shake off the dirt" step again!

Around age 13 or 14 I started delivering newspapers for The Daily Herald. My first paper route was in a trailer park where the Provo Towne Center Mall is now located. Delivering the papers wasn't usually too difficult, except on Sundays or holidays like Thanksgiving when each newspaper weighed like 10 pounds and could barely be folded in half. I usually had my mom drive me on those days, or really cold mornings, but during the week I delivered the papers after school so it was usually warm enough. I had to collect payment from the subscribers and keep track of the money myself, which was good for me except that in the trailer park I had to keep track of when everyone got paid (if I came before or too long after payday I wouldn't get my money). I never understood why the residents couldn't just set aside $8.25 when they got paid and give it to me whenever I happened to show up to collect, but now that I understand a little more about finances and the pressures facing many adults (particularly those living in a trailer park) I can understand why it was hard for them to set the money aside. One time I brought my dog Sara (a german shepherd/doberman mix) with me while delivering papers, and this obnoxious jerk on a bicycle chased my dog away (she wasn't on a leash). I finished delivering my papers and then went looking for her, but had no idea where she was. I went back home and told my parents and we started driving around the trailer park with no luck. As it started to get dark we gave up and drove home, but on the way we spotted Sara about a mile from the trailer park standing in the middle of the railroad tracks. I was so glad I didn't lose her, and I never took her to that trailer park again. A little while later I got a better newspaper route closer to my home. This time it was in a neighborhood with a lot of senior citizens, and it was much easier to collect payments. Although there was one guy who took about 30 minutes to write a check :) But I actually made friends with one older lady. Her husband was in a nursing home and she would visit him every night, which I thought was cool. We discovered that we both liked David Lanz and she even let me borrow the "Nightfall" cassette. On Sunday mornings my mom would help me with my paper route and then we would go to the genealogy center in the back of our church and do data entry of census records on old green screen computers while listening to KSTAR LDS radio. I remember listening to Chris Heimerdinger's "Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites" audiobook (over the radio) while I was there.

My first "real" job was at Sounds Easy Pizza and Video on 900 east near BYU when I was 15 years old. I was a cashier, but there was no cash register so I had to do all of the math myself (and, strangely, they didn't even provide a calculator). The job interview questions consisted entirely of "how much change should I give?" math problems, which were pretty easy. But I rarely had to use those skills on the job, since business was extremely slow. A normal work day consisted of coming in, making myself a pizza and picking a movie to watch. It was rough :) I earned minimum wage and was paid in cash, which made my parents raise their eyebrows but was exactly how I had always been paid so I didn't understand what they were so worried about. I got fired about a month and a half later, probably due to a combination of slow business and maybe because I was eating all the inventory (which was allowed!) I looked for and found a new job as the onion ring maker for a fast food restaurant. Every day for 3 weeks I was shut into a little tiny room with a 100 pound bag of onions and a ceiling vent. I think I have a worse-than-usual response to onions (they make me quite stuffed up and my eyes water constantly). It was a pretty difficult job -- NOTHING like the cushy pizza job I had just left -- and I smelled like onions everywhere I went even though I never even ate any of the onion rings I made. One day I went in for my usual shift and then left for home. They called me a few hours later to say that my onion rings were unusable (I hadn't mixed the batter correctly so it was falling off the onions). They needed me to come back to make a new batch, and after I had finished making the second batch I quit. It was the only job I've ever quit without first giving 2 weeks notice. That job convinced me that I would be better off working as an unpaid intern in the computer industry (my hobby/passion at the time) than working a minimum wage job, so I worked with our intern coordinator at my high school and got a position as a summer intern with Provo School district. I learned a lot about networking, and in the fall I did a brief internship in the writing lab at our high school. One of my jobs was to keep students from accessing the computer systems and running programs on them that they shouldn't (games, etc.) Unfortunately I made the systems a little too secure and no one could use them for anything (oops). I was pulled out of another class to fix the problem, and I think I was kind of fired after that ... but it was disguised as a promotion. The internship coordinator told me there was an opportunity to work as an intern at Novell, which was one of the two best computer companies to work for in Utah Valley at the time (the other one was WordPerfect). One of my scout leaders worked at Novell and took us on a field trip there. I was so impressed with what that I saw that I decided I wanted to work there someday. So of course I jumped at the chance to be an intern there. I learned a LOT and being able to put Novell on my resume gave me a ticket to almost any entry-level computer job I wanted. I took a job with a company called ICS, but I made a mistake while building a computer and they stopped calling me to come in after school (I never even got a paycheck from them).

A few weeks later my girlfriend drove me to several local companies where I dropped off my resume. One of them was called Computershow, and in April I was hired to build computers for them. I was working on a computer one day when one of the employees noticed me about to make the same mistake I had made at ICS -- and showed me how to do it right, which I will be forever grateful for. I was hired mostly to clean up surplus equipment, and my work ethic really hadn't changed much since the days when I did chores for my parents. I'm embarrassed to say that sometimes I even fell asleep on the job. After I hard worked there for a few months, I asked my boss for a raise and he quite literally laughed at me -- in this obnoxious/exaggerated way (to prove a point). I was mortified, and after we discussed some of the problems I rolled up my sleeves and went to work in a way that I had never done before. I quickly worked through the rest of the surplus equipment, built a network and a program for the company to use to create & print service tickets, and honed my computer and printer repair skills. I developed a good relationship with my boss (who never laughed at me again, thankfully) and received a couple of raises. A few months later Novell asked my boss if he had any employees that would be willing to consult there to repair computers. My boss recommended me and I started working at Novell as a contractor. I remember my very first day on the job someone asking for help with Netscape. I had used the Internet before, but only in a University setting (and Mosaic was the only browser I had heard of). It was the early 90's and the Internet was just starting to take off, and my career was taking off along with it. I quickly learned the required skills and was so good at my job that Novell decided to hire me full time even though I was only 17, and they offered me almost double what I had been making as a contractor. Soon after that Computershow fell on financial hard times, and I was grateful that I had left before the company folded.

I worked at Novell for two years and learned a LOT. I had quite a bit of autonomy and loved what I did. Every day when I left the building I knew I had made a difference just by being there. I was a "building technician," which meant I helped people in a particular building with just about any computer problem they had. I fixed printing and networking issues, installed software, setup networks and computers and troubleshooted Internet connectivity issues and made regular trips to the hardware repair department (it was about a quarter mile away, but the buildings were all connected; Novell's Provo campus was VERY large). After I had been a Novell for about a year I applied for a job in the support department. I was offered the position and would have received a $5,000 raise if I had taken it, but when I told my wife about it she had a really horrible feeling. So I told them no against my better judgment, and another guy on my team took the position instead. He was laid off 3 months later (as I would have been if I had taken that job). Instead I studied hard and passed my Novell certification (which required taking 7 different tests). I memorized the OSI layers so thoroughly that I still remember them (even though I didn't and still don't know how this knowledge applies to the real world): physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application. Once I completed that certification I was offered a $10,000 raise. My dream was to be a network administrator, because those guys had all of the network privileges. I informed my boss about this, and he told me he'd try to help me out. But a department reorganization occurred shortly afterwards, and the nature of the network administrator job changed significantly. Instead of sitting quietly in an office and responding to issues via email, network administrators were now required to be on phones and take calls from Novell employees all around the world. My boss offered a "phone operator" network administrator position to a co-worker, and he turned it down. Then he offered it to me, and I told him that since the nature of the job had changed I was no longer interested. He told me I could take it or be fired. A few months before someone I had helped at Novell and who was impressed with my work had moved to another company (Nu Skin) and contacted me to see if I wanted to leave Novell. I was happy at the time so I said no, but when this change occurred I called him back and asked if the position was still open. Fortunately it was, and I gave my 2 weeks notice after only a week of being on phones (for a total of 3 weeks).

Nu Skin was and is an amazing company. Whereas Novell had a very "cutthroat" kind of culture (the CEO had a "fire the worst performing 10% of employees" every year approach to management), Nu Skin was very people-oriented and I fit in right away. They did occasionally do layoffs, which was pretty hard for me (I consider co-workers to be family, and losing them was like disowning them). I recognize that I don't have a very business-oriented attitude in that regard (other people seem to be able to say "that's just business" much more easily than me), but it seems to be the way I am made. I had 5 different jobs during the 9 years I worked for Nu Skin. I started doing work that was similar to what I did at Novell, then moved into software testing, programming, project management and finally people management. During that time I completed my schooling (including an MBA degree) and was offered a position as Director of IT for a local company. I felt good about taking the job and worked there for about 18 months. I had 11 employees and a two million dollar budget and a great boss. The work was intense and time-consuming, and I always took it home with me. When the company was purchased by venture capitalists who didn't seem to appreciate me or my opinions, I applied for a position at another company. It required a pay cut, but it was worth it to feel valued again by my boss and peers. Unfortunately the excitement of my new job was quickly dampened by the discovery that the owner of the company was erratic and regularly fired people when his mood soured (he cleaned out his executive staff about every three to four years). I had the opportunity to spend some time working very closely with him and he seemed to have absolutely no regard for anyone's feelings except his own. After my boss, whom I respected highly, gave his notice I stayed on for a month or two longer and then applied for and received a job at Nu Skin, where I still remain happily employed (the night I interviewed at Nu Skin was the night the Provo Tabernacle next to the Nu Skin building caught fire). I don't know what my future career will look like, but I am grateful to have found a good company that allows me to balance work and family time.

Kindness

Several years ago we had a family home evening lesson about kindness, and I put together an image containing some of my favorite quotes. This has been hanging on my bedroom door for nearly 4 years, and every time I see it I smile. Hopefully you will, too :)