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.