The Art to Breaking Up

Very few first loves are permanent. Such is probably even more the case when it's somewhere between like and love.  The course of true like or love rarely runs smoothly, either, and it certainly didn't in Jared's and my case.  It's not a particularly painful thing to me for it to be officially over, and I'm confident that it's over for good. I'm OK about it. He's even more OK. We need to cease to delay what was inevitable and we are doing so.

Jared is now with my very good friend Meredith. I wouldn't say she's my best friend, or then again, maybe I would say that, because I have about four people I consider my best friends, and Meredith is one of them.  I have no animosity toward either of them. Jared had the decency to ensure with me that it was really over before he pursued his interest in Meredith, and Meredith likewise had the decency to call me and ask if I had a problem with her dating Jared. I'll never know what either would have done had I said that I DID have a problem with their dating, but the truth of the matter is that I really didn't. Our case of true like had run its course.

Jared, of course, has the pesky problem of a tattoo bearing the name "Alexis" on his arm.  My brother suggested he add to the tattoo so that it says "Alexis' friend Meredith" instead. I'm staying out of this debate,  but I think Jared would be wise to hold off on either getting any new tattoos or altering the one he already has.  If his tattoo were to read, "Alexis' friend Meredith," what would he then do if the relationship with Meredith didn't work out and he ended up with someone named Jessica?  Would he tattoo something else up the inside of his arm to further modify the statement, such as "Alexis' best friend Meredith's worst enemy Jessica"?  It could start to get ridiculous really fast. At some point in time he probably should remove my name from his arm or otherwise modify the tattoo, but because what has all the characteristics of  eternal love at the age of twenty may not necessarily be nearly so binding even six months later, it would seem prudent to act slowly and with deliberation in regard to the tattoo.

Before anyone starts to shed a tear on my behalf, I will make a veiled announcement of my own. I have a new man in my life.  My family knows him  and his family knows my family and me, but neither family knows that the two of us are an item. We don't know how they will take to the idea, as he is five years older than I.  My suspicion is that his parents would be highly concerned with the age difference, and that my parents would be skeptical of my ability to look out for myself and to recover with ease from what they would foresee as an inevitable broken heart. When the time comes, if we remain an item, we'll tell them all, and they can like it or not, as we are adults and can do what we want within reason. My new romantic interest is slated to be  completing a residency at the same institution where I will attend medical school. It may be a short-term thing, it may be longer in duration, or it may be the real deal, but we'll have the luxury of having it play out  a couple of hundred miles from where both of our families live.  

In honor of Jared, I'll post (though it won't be seen on my screwed-up computer; I hope you can see it on yours) Jared's and my song. It's a silly song, the content of which doesn't entirely have that much to do with us or our relationship. Still, it was and will always be our song. Meredith and Jared will need to find their own song, as will my new interest and I.

                                    for Jared and for a lot of good times

I Can Say What I Want Again!

             This is the way I like to imagine that my tucks look. Fat chance!

My dad told me to keep a low profile in terms of Jared and the blog, as Kent (Jared's father)
had made an offhand comment that led him to believe Kent might have read my blog. I had little else to talk about other than Jared, his mission or, more correctly, non-mission, and his new tattoo.
I used the time I might have spend blogging to pursue various athletic activities from my past. I hurdled, I went to the gym and did a little of the gymnastics and tumbling stunts (for lack of a better word; I'm not yet good enough to call what I do a routine, but I'm slowly regaining lost skills.)

Incidentally, I've since learned that neither Kent nor Jared has any knowledge of this blog. Kent kent Kent. Jared Jared Jared. Mormon Mormon Mormon. Mission Mission Mission. Tattoo Tattoo Tattoo.So there! I can say anything about them I want, and they'll never klnow the difference as long as Jared's mother doesn't tell.  I'll be cautious even there, though,  as I know that the mother/son umbilical cord is never fully severed.

My gymnastics instructor was watching me a month or so ago when  I was doing what is now for me a particularly difficult vault but something I would have nailed with ease back in the day.   Something in the height and the manner in which i quickly rotated a quarter turn into a flip indicated to him that I had likely been a diver at some point in my athletic career. He asked about it.  I told him I dove for three years in high school. He told me that an adjunct staff member had been the university's dicing coach before the dicing team was a a casualty of  the major budget cuts that hit the UCs. He said the guy would be interested in watching me dive. Why is a mystery to me, as our school has no diving team.

Regardless, when I went to the gym  to workout, the gymnastics instructor or professor (I don't really know which he is) told me the diving instructor was on the premises. I mentioned not having a swimsuit with me. He looked at my leotard somewhat critically. He was always complaining the a gymnast of my skill level should have higher quality leotards than those I wore. He said that my leotard looked more like a swimsuit than a leotard, and that regardless. it obviously wasn't expensive enough for me to be concerned about the chlorine damaging it. I agreed to meet up with the guy. He called the guy on his cell phone.

I asked the former diving coach to give me about three dives before watching me, as I had not been /on a diving board in about eight months. He chatted with the gymnastics instructor/professor as I took my warm-up dives.  Then I took my first real dive, with the instructor watching.  I went with a backward dive with a twist and two-and-on-half somersaults. I wish I could say it was spectacular, which it most definitely was not, but I did complete the required elements and had a relatively clean landing. he told me to do the same dive again.It was about 75% better. i went with a forward dive to a  pike to a somersault. It was better than my first dive, but not as clean as my second.  Without even looking at the former coach, I headed back to the ladder to repeat the dive, which was much more precise than the first. I did a few miscellaneous not overwhelmingly impressive maneuvers with tucks, pikes, somersaults, then decided to be bold.

I went to the platform, climbed the ladder, approached the end of the platform, and did a handstand facing the water. I then did a combination simultaneous half-somersault and twist.  I actually nailed the thing. I'm still not sure what possessed me to even try it.

As I climbed out of the pool, the gymnastics instructor/professor said, "That's probably enough."

I reached for a towel that the former coach had placed on the handle of the pool ladder.  I dried myself and approached them. "I wish you'd been here ten years ago," the former coach commented.

"Ten years ago I was in third grade," I apologized to him.

"Have you thought about transferring to a school with a diving team?" he asked.

"Not really," I answered.  "My plan is to start medical school the year after next, and I'd lose too many units if I transferred."

He looked down at my leg -- at the site of the now-healed but still lightly-scarred fracture. "How'd that happen?" he asked, pointing at my lower leg.

"Freak hurdling accident three years ago," I said. "Another runner tripped over her hurdle, sent it forward into my lane, and then came down on top of the hurdle as it fell on me."

"Compound fracture?" the former coach asked.

"Yup," I nodded. "Both bones. And my right clavicle, too, though at least that one wasn't compound."

He and the gymnastics guy winced in unison.

"looks like it healed pretty well. Kids' bones tend to heal straighter. And  the scarring is pretty faint. I'm guessing it looked like railroad tracks for the first year," the diving coach commented.

I nodded again, thinking silently, "If it's  so damned faint, how did you notice it so easily?" I'm still quite self-conscious about the scarring.

"If you were just a little younger and a little more muscled, I'd say you had Olympic potential, but it's not very realistic with either your age or build unless you really wanted it. And it doesn't sound like you do."

 "No, I don't. Diving has always been something I did for fun," I told him. "And training for the Olympics doesn't sound like much fun even if i had a chance of making it, which I do not."

"Why don't you sign up for club diving? It's competitive but pretty low-key way. People are out there mostly for fun.  We're already  into the quarter, but I could probably get you on a team," the diving coach  said.

"He runs the league," the gymnastics guy said. "He can put you on any team he wants you on."

"When does this happen?" I asked him.

"Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00," he replied.

I thought for a moment. "I'll be there," I said to him.

"I'm warning you," he added. "I'm putting you on the worst team. They need all the help they can get."

We said our goodbyes and I headed to my car. I had a blanket in the trunk of my car, which it placed on the seat of my car to protect it from wetness and chlorine.

So I now have a new hobby. I'll probably get swimmer's ear, but there are drugs for that.

To Be, or Not to Be (a Mormon Missionary): That Is the Question (With Apologies to William Shakespeare)

My more-than-friend Jared is right now facing the decision of his life. Later in life he may be faced with even more momentous choices, but for the present, this is about as life-impacting as it gets. No, he's not deciding whether or not to pop any pertinent question to me.  We may both be young and stupid, but our stupidity has its limits.  Education needs to be a priority for both of us for a few years, and while we're on academic scholarships, neither set of mommies and daddies would be all that thrilled about keeping a roof over our heads while we simultaneously played house and attended college.

Jared's monumental decision concerns whether or not to serve a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  The obvious answer would be just say no. In going, he would be throwing more than ten thousand dollars of his parents' money away (at least his parents are willing to foot the bill; some families expect-- even demand-- of their sons that they fulfill missions, but then the parents expect the sons to earn their own way, starting their savings as young as elementary school with paper routes, mowing lawns, and such, and working their way up to more substantial employment. (Other families build a family mission fund with individual and group supplemental employment, all of which lnds in a joint fund from which the missinaries draw to pay their expenses. The problem with ths is that in the families I've known that employ this tactic, the girls are expected to contribute every bit as heavily as are the boys, yet girls are no required as are boys to serve missions.) In Jared's case, his parents have done well enough financially that they are willing to pay for both missions and bachelor's degrees for their six children.  Thus, Jared's personal finances are not impacted in a very direct way.

Jared's issues with serving a mission are mostly concerned with  essentially isolating himself from the outside world for two years and with freedom to make choices for himself for two years being nonexistent. Two years may not seem like a terribly long period of time to some, but to a person who's eighteen, it's more than ten per cent of that person's life. It's a substantial chunk of time to give up when one is unsure as to just how much he wants to do it.

When one agrees to serve a mission for the LDS Church, one fills out papers an submits them to Salt lake City. Depending upon whom one chooses to believe, each individual application is prayed and pondered over before a decision is made as to where a prospective missionary will be sent, or applications are randomly placed into stacks, and the stack into which a prospective missionary's application is placed determines where he or she is assigned to serve. The reported exception (heavily denied by spokespersons within the LDS church) is that offspring of prominent Mormons are often sent to safer, "cushier," or otherwise preferential mission sites. (Mitt Romney, for example, served in France. My father served in Argentina,where the water was not safe to drink.)  No one would argue that it is universally true that the children of wealthy or influential Mormons always end up in the more desired locations. Token children of Mormon leadership are sent to the more remote and less civilized locations just often enough that it can be stated that preferential treatment does not exist.

A Mormon missionary receives no financial compensation for his service (or for her service ; women are allowed, though not required to serve, although they are not allowed to go until they reach the age of nineteen. The minimum age for women to serve had been twenty-one until October of 2012. At that time, the minimum age for men to serve missions was lowered from nineteen to eighteen ).  On the contrary, the parents, or in some cases the local congregations, are required to send an amount of money that I believe is four hundred dollars each month to the Church. From this money, rent is paid, a small allowance for food is given, and an even smaller allowance for incidentals is provided.  Depending upon where the missionary is stationed, the living quarters are often slums into which no parent in his or her right mind would allow a young adult child to live if he or she actually laid eyes on the place. (By contrast, the Mission President and his wife, who are the couple who preside over all aspect of the mission with some degree of delegation, live in typically comfortable conditions in the "Mission Home." Also sometimes living in the Mission Home are privileged missionaries, known as assistants to the president.  These young men (always men; females are not permitted to fill these positions) sometimes are elevated to the positions because of success in the mission field. Sometimes the positions go to them because they descend from LDS royalty.

One reason missionaries are given comparatively small food stipends is because they are expected to be  invited to homes of local Mormons to partake of meals. Sometimes this happens, and sometimes it does not. Sometimes even when an invitation is issued, the young missionaries show up for the dinner invitation only to find no one home.  Missionaries, depending upon where they serve, sometimes have a great deal of difficulty maintaining weight while on missions.

Medical care while on missions has been a major bone of contention. Often medical care is unavailable or is substandard. Depending upon where the missionary serves, insurance may or may not be provided by the church. If a missionary becomes seriously ill or injured while on a mission, the LDS Church tries to persuade the parents to pay the cost of the medical treatment. If the parents refuse, they church has no recourse but to pay it. Sanitation conditions, among other things, often cause missionaries living in third-world conditions to become ill.  Persuading those in charge to seek medical care for such missionaries has been known to be very difficult.

A cousin of mine came home from South America before the scheduled completion of his mission last spring because of a severe case of amoebic dysentery. He ended up losing a large section of (I think) his ileum. As ill as he was, he was given no assistance to get to a hospital or to travel home. My uncle (not the missionary's father; the father had wanted his son to stick it out in South America despite his life-threatening illness, but the missionary's mother's brother, himself an active member of the LDS Church and an MD as well) traveled to South America, located my cousin, traveled with my cousin to the Mission Home and demanded his passport, which had been denied when my cousin asked for it earlier. My uncle gave the Mission Home staff a deadline of twenty-four hours before he would travel to the U.S, Embassy if the passport was not handed over.  It took almost the full twenty-four hours for the Mission President to return to the Mission Home and open the safe to retrieve the passport.

The Mission President still did not want my cousin to leave. My uncle, concerned before he even left for South America  about the condition of my cousin's health, took four units of safe A+ blood (my cousin's type) for a worst-case scenario. The Mission President tried to talk my uncle into admitting my cousin in a hospital located in the city of the Mission Home.  My uncle was very concerned about the integrity of the blood supply there. He transfused my cousin with two pints of the blood and saved the rest in the event of a bleedout or other emergency. It ended up being needed before they were able to make it out of South America.

My cousin was flown to a hospital in Miami, where he was stabilized until he could be flown to California for surgery. My cousin's father had stopped paying insurance premiums on him, so the surgery, if possible, needed to happen in California because our family had enough connections that most of the services would be comped.

About eight months later, my cousin has regained forty of the sixty pounds he lost while on his mission. He was far from overweight when he left. Because he left before completing his mission honorably, he is not eligible for the BYU missionary scholarship on which he had counted to complete his education.  He lives with my aunt and uncle in California and attends a university here. My parents and two other aunts and uncles who live here split the cost of his tuition. His parents refuse to help him in any way because he left his mission before its completion.

My cousin's case is extreme. Jared's parents would not expect him to remain in a foreign country receiving no or substandard medical care, and if he needed to come home, they would still pay for his college tuition.  Still, Jared is weighing the pluses and minuses very heavily. If he goes, he'll be two years behind in college when he returns, He plans to go to medical or dental school.  If he doesn't go on a mission, he will be 22 when he earns his B.S. If he serves a mission, depending upon the timing of the mission, he'll be between 24 and 25 by the time he ears his B.S.. That would have him finishing dental school at 27 or 28, or completing medical school at 28 or 29.  The age of twenty-nine doesn't exactly qualify one for an AARP card,  but if he didn't go on a mission, he'd be out of medical school and starting a residency at 26.  It's a pretty substantial difference.

Jared then needs to consider reasons why he should serve a mission.  The first reason is that it would please his father. Sorry, Jared's dad, my dad, or anyone else's dad, but two years of one's life is a whole lot to give up just to please one's father. Were the depth of Jared's religious convictions such that he felt compelled, that, along with the desire to please his father, would be sufficient reason. Without the religious call, however, the reason is flimsy at best.

Another reason Jared might benefit from serving a mission is to learn another language. My father learned to speak Spanish fluently while on a mission in Argentina. He has found the skill invaluable. My Uncle Scott learned fluent Spanish in Colombia. He, too, says he'd do the mission over again even though he's no longer a believing Mormon if only for the acquisition of Spanish.
On the other hand, here;'s no guarantee Jared will be sent to a Spanish-speaking country. The forms that prospective missionaries complete ask about previous languages learned and about where one might choose to serve, but far more often than not, the actual assignment does not reflect the missionariy's answers to those questions in any way.  Furthermore, not all languages are of equal value for a prospective doctor or dentist in California. Jared's dad served a mission in Norway. While learning any language is a valuable experience and can be a real novelty,  Jared's dad used his ability to speak Norwegian six times in his twelve years of practicing medicine in Utah, and used it  zero times in practicing medicine in California.  Jared could end up spending two years of his life trying to convert people to Mormonism in the Great State of Oklahoma. Or who's  to say Jared wouldn't be sent to somewhere in the Great White North where an obscure native Canadian language is spoken. Just how valuable would that be in his future medical or dental practice?

My advice to Jared is that if, for whatever reason,  he wants to go on a Mormon mission, he should go. If he doesn't want to go, he should skip out on the whole experience. If he's totally undecided, he should  complete the paperwork and submit it. If,  when he receives his "call" in the form of a thick white envelope from Salt Lake City, he should open it, look at where it is the church proposes to send him, pay close attention to precisely when they want him to report, as in a lousy reporting date can kill two semesters in addition to the four that he would miss anyway while he's off riding a bicycle and handing out Books of Mormon. He could then either report on the appointed date or say to the big boys in Provo (where the mission Training Center is located), "April Fools! I was only kidding!"

If he goes and ends up in an unhealthful or dangerous situation, he has at least three uncles and a mother who will do whatever it takes to rescue him from whatever jungle in which the church has stowed him away, so he has a tremendous advantage over many prospective missionaries.