Mormon Christmas on April 6 and Other Aberrations

This is probably further even than Mahonri's family takes their Mormon Christmas holiday/

I don't know how I made it so far in life with my parents still withholding this little gem from me, but it finally occurred to them to spill it, so now I of course have to share it with all of you . . .

Some of you may remember my Uncle Mahonri. He's my uncle by virtue of his being married to my father's sister Marthalene. The most noteworthy thing about Uncle Mahonri is his proclivity toward theft. My mother holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, and even she cannot determine whether Mahonri is a common thief, a kleptomaniac, or even something much worse. It probably doesn't matter. The bottom line is that he habitually helps himself to things that do not belong to him. This little idiosyncrasy very nearly cost Mahonri his job with the church educational system when he was caught stealing a crate or large carton of disposable douches from the loading zone of a big box store somewhere in Utah County.

Now i have learned that Mahonri may not be alone in his predilection for accessing the property of others. Mahonri's family of birth has a rather strange holiday tradition, about which I feel obligated to enrich the lives of my readers.

A bit of backstory is needed here in order that most of you may put what has been to me a veritable bonanza of information into its proper context. Mormons believe that Jesus was born on April 6. I asked my dad a couple of years ago when the LDS church will back away from of this particular teaching, as they have done with so many things they once taught. ("I don't know that we teach that" was how Gordon W. Hinckley disavowed a particular teaching when confronted with it in a televised interview.) My dad said they'll probably never drop the myth of April 6, as scientific or historical information will never pop up to debunk it as the birthday of Jesus. For that matter, there's approximately 1 chance in 365.25 that Jesus was born on April 6 -- and an even greater chance if you rule out any time in the bleakest part of winter for logistical reasons, as some historians have done, as the likely date of Jesus' birth.

Mormons celebrate Christmas on December 25 along with most of the rest of Christendom. No one else who actually thinks about it really believes December 25 to be the actual date of Jesus' birth, either; it's just that no one else has settled on an actual date, arbitrarily or otherwise. Leave it to the Mormons to be different.

Some Mormons actually commemorate April 6 with a celebration of sorts. One family to whom I'm related draws names and gets together to exchange homemade gifts and to sing carols about Jesus being born in the dead of winter every April 6. Some of them send out homemade cards, though only to other Mormons. On some level they have to know it's just too bizarre an idea to try to foist upon the rest of the world.

My Uncle Mahonri's family has its own peculiar take on the quasi-holiday, to which they refer as "Mormon Christmas"  (italics added by me). Each nuclear family buys Dollar Tree-calibre gifts for each individual member of each family unit. Before you reach the conclusion that Mahonri and his siblings and their spouses must be incredible cheapskates (which is true), I should explain that Mahonri is one of twelve children. He and Marthalene have thirteen children, and most of his siblings have families as large as his if not larger. (They really should have their own reality show. The premise would fall somewhere between the Honey Boo Boo fiasco, the disaster otherwise known as the Duggars,  and the debacle featuring Todd Chrisley's family.) The nuclear families have to come up with an average of 156 gifts each. (The number of gifts would be higher now, as Mahonri and some of his siblings are grandparents.) They would all be in serious debt for the remainder of the calendar year if the gifts were anything more extravagant than Dollar Tree purchases.

As if what I have already explained is not bizarre enough, I'll now get into Mahonri's family's even more peculiar take on the already peculiar enough holiday of Real Christmas. Each April 6 after Mormon Christmas gifts have been distributed and opened, after carols have been sung, after the Christmas story as told in the gospel of St. Luke has been read, and after massive quantities of ham and turkey have been consumed, Mahonri and his siblings all draw small folded squares of paper from a rather hideous bowl made to look like the detached head of Baby Jesus. Eleven of these squares are blank. The twelfth square displays  an X.  The lucky sibling who draws the slip of paper bearing the X is not required to buy gifts for his or her parents, siblings, siblings-in-law, and nieces and nephews. Instead, he or she must, with the help of his or her spouse and offspring, steal something that belongs to every single member of the family throughout the next year. Even the babies are stolen from in this most warped version of a holiday tradition. Then, on the next April 6, the stolen items are presented, gift-wrapped, to the people from whom they were stolen, along with all the rest of the gifts.

The person who draws the X and is obligated to pilfer goods from the rest of the family is known as The Jester. Some joke, huh? My dad said that Mahonri tried to get the tradition started in our family as well, but my grandmother said it was the most batshit-crazy idea she had ever heard of in her entire life (though probably not in those exact words) and that her family would have no part in such an aberrant practice.

Could anything positively scream the pure love of Christ and the peace surrounding his birth as much as petty or grand theft among close family members?

Heidi Cruz, Melania Trump, Their Husbands, PACs and SuperPACs, and Other Players in the Most Recent Drama

The contest is a bit more balanced

when Donald Trump doesn't choose the pictures.

I won't recount too many of the details of the Facebook ads released by Liz Mair, who heads the super PAC Make America Awesome, and of the ensuing Twitter debate. Anyone who cares has already read the material. For anyone who doesn't care, it's bad enough that I'm devoting space and time even to the fallout.

I don't have any strong feelings about Heidi Cruz other than the feeling that the man to whom she is married is perhaps a raving lunatic. As far as her appearance is concerned, she looks like an ordinary person to me. She's probably at least as attractive as are the mothers of most of my friends. 

I will go on record as saying that releasing the ad featuring a nude Melania Trump was not a strategically well-planned tactic. The Mormons already didn't like Donald Trump. Cruz already had the Mormon republican vote. There was little to gain and a lot to lose by releasing the pro-Cruz anti-Trump endorsement, since it isn't 1896, and word of what is released to the Facebook feeds of people living in Utah usually makes it to the rest of the population, some of whom may be put off by sexist implications of the endorsement.

The add was not distributed by Cruz's campaign but, instead, as was noted earlier, by a super PAC opposing Trump.  While  the super PAC's  role in releasing this ad diminishes the culpability Cruz and those operating his campaign perhaps slightly, neither can Cruz accept the benefit of the super PAC's involvement while simultaneously denying all responsibility for what the group does when the group's actions appear to have crossed lines that shouldn't have been crossed. If he's unwilling to categorically distance himself from  all tactics and maneuverings of a super PAC, he'll be linked with anything said or done with the presumed intent of disposing of Donald Trump as the republican candidate for president.

Cruz claims that spouses are off-limits. Will he cling to that mantra if he eventually wins the republican nomination and finds himself running against Hillary Clinton? I'd be very surprised. Perhaps spouses should be off-limits, but if there's anything about a spouse that is interesting enough to be used against a candidate in a political campaign, in all probability it can and will be used.

Trump's tweet juxtaposing the photo of Heidi Cruz's face caught in an awkward pose next to a glamour shot of his wife was asinine beyond belief. Melania Cruz would have to be considered to be more physically attractive than Heidi Cruz would be. At the same time, it's far from a level playing field to select a flattering photo of one person, then to place it, for purposes of comparison, next to a picture snapped while another person is speaking. Depending upon the particular dialect of a given U.S. region, there are between forty-eight and fifty phonemes used to produce the American dialect of English. A list of these phonemes is probably available on Wikipedia or at some similar site. A curious person might download the list, them take a selfie while producing each of these sounds. When the person viewed the selfies, the person would probably discover that he or she looked quite silly when articulating certain phonemes. If you think I'm exaggerating, look at yourself in a mirror while you are making a /v/, /f/, /r/, /p/, /b/, /m/, or /w/ sound.

Any major disparity between the perceived levels of attractiveness possessed by Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz can probably be explained with the rationale that
Melania Trump is a former supermodel while Heidi Cruz is not. When I think about it, the very idea of Ted Cruz being married to a supermodel is ludicrous. He's most fortunate to have found a wife as attractive as Heidi Cruz is. The idea of Donald Trump being married to a former supermodel would be even more outrageous were it not for the fact that Trump is in possession of an almost insane amount of money. That sort of money can be a motivating factor in marriage. Sometimes a person who is leaps and bounds above another in physical attractiveness  may be persuaded by money to tie the knot with a person as aesthetically challenged even as is Donald Trump. 

That Donald Trump is posting his wife-comparison tweets is inane. That Ted Cruz is responding is equally farcical. That the national media is covering this not-even-schoolyard-worthy dispute is even more preposterous.

It would be funny if it weren't very closely connected to a U.S. presidential election. One of these two men will very likely have the republican nomination in a few short months. God help us all.

USMLE -- I said it aloud and haven't been struck by lightning yet.

The face pictured here is not mine.

I've finished coursework. In just a couple of moths I'll take Step 1 of the USMLE. My initial plan was to pursue hedonistic pleasures this week, to have my tonsils (and possibly my adenoids as well) removed next week, and to recover for a period of ten days to two weeks following the surgery, studying only intermittently. Following my recovery, I would begin a six-to-seven-week period of rather intense study for the first installment of the USMLE, which is said to be the mother****er of all tests.

Old habits die hard, however. I didn't get to my current station in life (which is not all that much about which to boast, though what I have achieved would be even more pathetic by comparison  had I gone through life up to this point as a slacker) by waiting until the last possible moment to prepare for any exam.

I began the arduous process of studying for Step 1 of the USMLE this morning. I didn't study for the full the twelve-to-fourteen hours that I plan to devote to test prep once I begin studying truly in earnest, but I gave "the Boards" a solid eight hours and forty minutes of my time. I'll probably do the same for most of the days this week. I'll still manage to knock at least three of the four items off my short-term "bucket list" for this week, but I could not give up studying even were I to try. Studying is such a habit for me that it's not much of a stretch to call it an addiction. 

Step 1 of the USMLE contains 280 multiple-choice questions (dropping, as of May 2016, from 322 questions)  which are to be completed over an eight-hour span, with forty-five minutes of the eight hours allotted for break time. A person can increase his or her break time by skipping the optional fifteen-minute tutorial at the beginning and/or by finishing each of the seven sections in less than one hour. Unless a person taking the test has highly extenuating circumstances, i.e. lactating or something similarly compelling, it would seem rather foolish either to skip the tutorial or to give any section less that its fully allotted time merely to increase one's break time. Then again, I don't smoke. Perhaps I'd feel differently about breaks if I were a nicotine addict.

Results for Step 1 of the USMLE are reported as scaled scores -- a three-digit score as high as 300, along with a two-digit score that we're told is not a percentile ranking but looks, sounds, and smells eerily like one.  The minimum passing score is 190, but anyone whose score skulks anywhere near 190 will be forced to settle for the very dregs of placements in terms of internship or residency.  Medical schools vary with regard to the number of attempts allowed. A person may take the test up to six times; my med school allows only three attempts before the candidate's enrollment is terminated. I will not jinx myself by suggesting that there's no way I will fail the test on my first attempt, but I seriously have no intention of taking the Boards three times.

I have a detailed study plan mapped out in writing, borrowing heavily from someone else's plan I found online. I've already deviated from it, though, by having  begun my study yesterday. I'd love to take a laid-back approach to this thing, but I can't. Neither can I pretend that my level of obsession is a good thing. On the other hand, were I not stressing out over the USMLE, I'd undoubtedly be stressing out over something else. The USMLE is as worthy as any other cause for stress.

I''m not depicted in any of these drawings.

Good-Bye Tonsils (sung to the tune of "Good-Bye, Little Sebastian")

This is not MY throat, and these are not MY tonsils, by the way.

I made it though finals with minimal stress. All test scores have been reported except for the last one, and I maxed out exam scores. The last one shouldn't be much different than the others. (Thanks for asking, la perla.) Our course grades are pass/fail.

 Now it's on to bigger and better things. Our cohort is now de facto disbanded as we individually prep for the mother of all exams. We had a final social event which was attended by a large percentage of us. Some of us will choose to study together for a portion of our USMLE preparation, and we'll continue to see each other from time to time in the hospital and elsewhere as we begin clerkships. Still it will not be the same. The cohort was like being in a self-contained fourth-grade class, and then having the class move en masse the next year to fifth grade. We'll have the rare meeting as well, but it won't be the same. Alas, even good things must come to an end.

After partying with my classmates ( I limited myself to two mixed drinks, light on the alcohol in both), I slept for about twenty-six hours uninterrupted. Then I packed and drove to my parents' place on the central coast. I have nine days to relax, after which my tonsils are being removed. The tonsil removal is not without controversy. My pediatrician does not think the surgery is necessary. Two doctors at my school, however, consider me a walking strep factory as long as my tonsils are in place, and both of them knew that I wouldn't have the surgery done in their location, so they had no financial incentive to push the surgery on me. The ENT I saw for my secondary consultation said that my adenoids may need to come out as well, but it probably won't be known for certain until the surgeon gets a better look.The bottom line is that it's not my uncle's area of specialty, but he's still asserting his opinion. My dad said if I'm really contracting strep on a regular basis, it would be irresponsible to move on to clinical rotations with my tonsils still in place, but it was my decision. 

As much as I don't want to go through this procedure, if it must be done, now is the time to do it. I have an extremely accomplished surgeon.  I can recuperate in the comfort of my plush room at my parents' home, and I can study when I feel up to it. My dad and uncles can even help me study if I want their help. A couple of weeks following the surgery, I'll head back up north to the condo and will study there.

Meanwhile, I have a short-term list of goals to be accomplished. I need to para-sail at least once, preferably off the coast of Catalina. I want to see at least one musical before my surgery, and I don't yet have any tickets.  I would really like to find a viola to buy for a reasonable price. My cousin named a prize heifer after me, and I need to meet this creature. I can knock off my goals one at a time if I skimp on sleep. There will be ample time for sleep after my tonsils (and possibly adenoids) have been unceremoniously ripped from my throat.

Daylight Saving Time Sucks!

Finals are here, or will be in less than seven hours. I'm as prepared as I can ever be. I expect the exams to be tough but no tougher than the previous two terms, and I have no electives and hence fewer exams about which to worry.in a few days, whether good or bad, it will be history.

Almost all of us in the cohort gave up  a few hours on Saturday to help someone in the film and media studies department with his project. I can't share the specifics of the project at this time, not that anyone is waiting with bated breath to learn of the details. The timing could have been far better, as we're all facing finals, and the guy's project isn't due until next semester, but he needed the rough footage for his project proposal right now, and almost everyone in the cohort was kind enough to comply. It wasn't such a big deal for me personally, as I've been studying this quarter's material since before the quarter even officially started, but the same cannot be said of all my cohort mates. It was an amazing display of generosity on their part.

I can't remember if I've shared this before, but regardless of whether or not I'm being redundant, I must say that I HATE Daylight Saving Time.*** I know as much as the next person about the historical significance and supposed need  for it, but I'm not buying what is said. Why the #%!&  does the #%!&ing clock need to change? If the agrarian component of our society is so adversely affected by the times in which the sun rises and sets, couldn't farmers and their employees set their alarm clocks and begin their days an hour earlier in the times of the year that they need to maximize their daylight hours? If an entire community is adversely affected, couldn't that community adjust its business hours? Why must the rest of us be dragged along for the ride?

Things were bad enough when half the year was spent in standard time and the remaining half in Daylight Saving Time. Since President George W. Bush reduced the portion of the year to be spent in standard time, however, it's  even more noticeably stupid. In my present area, several school districts adjust their start and end times based on Daylight Saving Time. If enough institutions adopt this practice, isn't it more or less a de facto negation of Daylight Saving Time? The rest of the school systems have students, teachers, or employees who are zombies for a portion of the start or the end of the day, based on whether they're morning or evening people, for a month or so into any transition period. DST has also been cited as a major contributing factor in accidents.

Is the degree to which daylight hours are supposedly being maximized under Daylight Saving Time genuinely benefiting the economy and the nation as a whole? I find it quite hard to believe that it is, and I say this as an industrious student who makes it to class on time every day, Daylight Saving Time notwithstanding. It's just that my head often hurts and I feel lousy each time the clock springs forward one hour.

*** It's technically "Daylight Saving Time", as opposed to the more commonly heard "Daylight Savings Time."

 

Close Encounters of the Odd Kind

This is a picture not of me but of the Man in Black, Johnny Cash.

Raptor Jesus and his study group crashed one of my study groups at my condo tonight. It made for a rather strange dynamic. It was almost like being paid a visit by a gang leader or a mafia don. He sent a flunkie in first to ensure that it was OK if they came in. I said it was fine. as study sessions go, it was fine. we'd been through the meatiest of the material we would study for the evening before Raptor Jesus and his group arrived. They didn't seem utterly clueless on the other stuff we covered.

I could tell right away that the visit really wasn't about studying. I thought initially that it might be because they had heard we usually have good food, which we do. Tonight was no exception, but Raptor Jesus and his people didn't make pigs of themselves. He even handed someone a couple of twenties and sent the person out for more food. They didn't try to take over the most comfortable seating in the place, either.

Then, as the study session was wrapping up, I learned the true nature of the visit. Raptor Jesus sent someone to his car to get his guitar out of the trunk.  He made the comment that as nice as "In the Ghetto" had sounded on the viola, he suspected it would sound even better on the cello, and he asked me to play it for him. I retrieved my cello from the office, tuned it, and played through it as he strummed along. Matthew asked him if he -- Matthew -- should get his guitar out as well. Raptor Jesus said yes. Matthew's quite a bit more skilled at guitar than Raptor Jesus is, so he mostly just sang after that. He also wanted to sing "Ring of Fire,"The Battle of New Orleans," American Pie," and "Lola" by the Kinks.

It was interesting encounter though not an unpleasant one.  I had no idea the guy was interested in music.

Obnoxious Use of Twitter, Obnoxious Term of "Concert Pianist," and Obnoxiousness in General

I'm not the bluebird in this picture.

This is a bit lengthy and probably boring. Read at your own risk.

I don't use Facebook. I didn't start on it as a teen because my mom didn't want my brother or me to be involved with it. She  offered a significant financial incentive to us for not using it until we were twenty-one. I could have signed up since then, but I've seen little reason to do so. Most of my friends use Facebook. Some are able to make what I would consider to be good use of it in keeping up with friends. For many others, it seems to be more of a source of headaches and drama than it would seem to be worth. It could ultimately be used against me in securing an internship or residency, so I'll probably stay away at least until I'm well into a residency, and probably longer since interns and residents have little time for such frivolity.

I do, however, use Twitter on a very limited basis. Initially it was for me as a young adolescent an outlet to express my rage at being kept down by The Man and his representatives. My parents allowed it because they didn't have to listen to my venomous outpourings while I was venting on Twitter. It's now almost entirely a source of amusement for me, though I do use the Direct Message feature as a shortcut to email. With Twitter itself,  there's a limit to how much trouble can be stirred up when one is limited to a combination of one-hundred-forty characters and spaces. Nevertheless, if one is sufficiently resourceful, some trouble can still be stirred up even within the constraints of the Twitter format. If I am to be perfectly honest, I must admit that in the interests of science and entertainment, I've occasionally stirred up a bit of trouble there. I did so yesterday.

It all began a year or so ago when Judge Alex Ferrer posted a picture of himself with his mother on Twitter. I commented in response to his posting of the picture that he resembled his mother except that she was prettier. While I cannot recall the specifics of his reply to my response other than that I do remember that there was a reply, Judge Ferrer seemed not to have been affronted by my response. Most men would, I assume, prefer that they be considered less pretty than their mothers. God knows I could be wrong about this, but I would expect that most of the men I know would probably take some degree of offense to being told the reverse. I suppose it would be every bit as acceptable if not more so just to note the resemblance without bothering to state that either one was prettier than the other, but neither would the inclusion of the comparison seem to be fighting words.

That was just my perspective, however. Another follower of Judge Ferrer took exception to my response. (For the record, I don't believe she's a particularly frequent commenter to Judge Ferrer's postings. I don't think I had come across a response from her to one of Judge Ferrer's postings before or have since then, though I haven't been terribly vigilant in watching for comments from her. She may be a personal acquaintance of his, as she lives in south Florida, though it's a large and heavily populated region. Assuming they know each other personally would be the rough equivalent of assuming that your friend Steve knows my friend Olivia because they both live in the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area.) She directed a reply to my response, stating, and I quote, "That's terrible! I can't believe you said that." I didn't respond to her reply, but I made a mental note of it and have, for my own enjoyment, periodically checked in on the woman's Twitter activity since then.

I shall not name the other follower of Judge Ferrer,  as it wouldn't seem to be too much of a stretch  that she might be a litigious sort of person. While what I have said or will say would be defensible against any charge of libel because everything I've said about the situation is either factual or is clearly a matter of opinion, neither do I desire to devote any time to defending myself against such a charge.  The person of whom I write is a business person. She claims to have earned a bachelor's degree and to have had past employment in an allied health field, and she also claims to be a concert pianist. I'll address the concert pianist issue later. The person is heavily invested in the national political scene. She's a Donald Trump supporter and is an Obama and Hillary Clinton hater. Of late, she's also become a Rubio hater (she has suggested that Rubio is a drug user or abuser and refers to him as "Narco Rubio") and even a Ted Cruz hater. I'm unclear as to the nature of her enmity toward Cruz other than his status as an opponent of Donald Trump, as it would appear that his platform wouldn't be all that ideologically dissimilar from her own at least as I've observed it to be, but politics have been known to create both strange bedfellows and strange enemies. This person was a strong supporter of Fox News until Donald Trump had his parting of the ways with the "fair and balanced" flagship. She now writes most derisively about the network and its mouthpieces.

The person of whom I write has, as I see it, rather intense misconceptions concerning the closeness of relationship or familiarity afforded by Twitter acquaintanceship between celebrities and their Twitter followers. My mother would say that I am the proverbial pot calling the kettle black in this regard. My mom has for several years been bothered by what she refers to as my continual harassment of Judge Ferrer through the medium of Twitter. For whatever reason, Judge Ferrer has been most generous with the time and attention he devotes to fans. I now, much to my mother's chagrin,  consider the judge to be a friend, though I respect the boundaries that need to be maintained in such a friendship. 

I've concluded that the person of whom I write does not make the distinction between social media relationships not otherwise linked in real life and bona fide in-the-flesh connections.  On nights when I've studied so much that I can't bear to read about another white blood cell or diseased organ, it's a nice diversion to me to read her comments to celebrities and media personalities, then to read the comments from among her non-famous peers. I get the impression that these people really believe that they're not just civic-minded and concerned voters but major players in the presidential primary. Taking pleasure in what I perceive as their delusional commentary does not present me or my character in an especially positive light, I concede, but I'm human. I have to do something to keep myself sane during stressful times.

As I'm making a long story even longer, I'll attempt to cut to the chase. While I've sent the occasional tweet  with a benign interjection or question to this person or to one of the others in her circles, I've mostly been a bit of a voyeur. Last night I chose to send a rather obnoxious tweet to the woman. It was an immature thing to have done -- revenge of sorts for what I considered the rude tweet she sent me long ago. She would likely have no memory of the tweet she sent to me so long ago that irked me.  What I wrote  was petty and pointless. Still, as the mean-spirited person that I sometimes am, sending the tweet gave me pleasure.

The person made a comment and then conceded that the subject in question was not her " forte' ." I typed the single quotation mark here as she used it. The single quotation mark was presumably used as a makeshift accent (presumably the French accent ague, which is tough to access in English in the Twitter format). This would indicate that the word was to be pronounced /for-TAY/.  This is a mispronunciation of the word in the sense that it was used. Some dictionaries now list /for-TAY/ as a secondary pronunciation for forte meaning "a thing at which someone excels." The secondary pronunciation acceptability status came about from continual misuse. Repeated misuse leads to an error being considered standard English language usage over time. (I fear that in my lifetime, "I seen him" will achieve "standard English language usage" status just because of its pervasive misuse among the Jerry Springer/Judge Judy clientele of our society.) The correct pronunciation of the word is /fort/, just like the word fort. Forte pronounce /for-TAY/ should be reserved for the musical term meaning loud.

Disagreeable soul that I can be, I shared my knowledge with the person in question. I should note that while I dislike the very idea of pet peeves, as we tend to make far too much of little things that vex us, if I were to have a pet peeve, it would probably be related to the pervasiveness of Grammar, English Language Usage, and Pronunciation Police.  We all need to get over ourselves by policing our own grammar, English language usage, and pronunciation, and allowing others the same privilege. Still, I enjoyed the pedantically obnoxious act of correcting the woman's pronunciation far more than a mentally healthy person should have. (That's my defense! I'll claim insanity.)

The woman first responded by telling me that she knows what "forte' " means and how to pronounce it, again using the makeshift accent, which would indicate that she didn't know how to pronounce it. Then she must have looked it up and found that I was correct, because she posted another response, this time without the makeshift accent, telling me that she knows how to pronounce the word because she speaks French. She also said she didn't recall "verbalizing" the word. She was correct in that she didn't pronounce it out loud, of course. She didn't have to because she used the quotation mark as an accent. Then she told me that she is a concert pianist. Then she disparaged my status as a medical school student. Then she probably blocked me. I don't know. I blocked her, as I need not to obsess on her anymore. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Someday I'll devote a blog to the topic of the term concert pianist.  What makes a person a concert pianist, anyway? It's not a protected term. Anyone can claim without repercussion to be a concert pianist. Technically there are probably two definitions. One definition would encompass anyone who has every played piano in a concert. By this definition, a rock musician could be a concert pianist. So could a person who held a concert in his living room, during which he played "Chopsticks" [the one song that he knows] on the piano. The other definition would be "a classical pianist who regularly performs as a soloist in concert performances." While I cannot know for certain, I highly doubt that Judge Ferrer's other follower meets this criterion. Perhaps she means that she's a classically trained pianist. I can only surmise. 

My behavior yesterday was so rude that I'm not proud of myself. Nevertheless, it got me through another day. 

I have to have my tonsils out soon. I'm not sure when. Other than one ulcerative colitis flare and several minor bouts with strep, this has been a good year in terms of health. I was disappointed to learn that my tonsils have to go. I don't know for sure if the surgery will happen here or at home. It would be more convenient to have it done here, but I might have more control in who performs it if I have the surgery at home. My doctor says it needs to happen soon enough that I'll be 100% recovered before I begin clerkships, which will start in late June.

One small consolation is that I'm not a singer, so I don't have to worry excessively about my vocal cords being damaged.It's not that I want to sustain damage to my vocal cords. It's just that the stakes are less high since I'm not a singer.

Neither person in this image is me.

My Brother's Love Life

Incidentally, this is not a drawing of me.

My brother is certain he is in love. The current subject of his infatuation is a twenty-seven-year-old member of our cohort. She's so gorgeous that she doesn't even look real. She's a dead-ringer for Julianne Hough, the former "Dancing with the Stars" dancer who is trying to be n actress or singer or something else other than a dancer. I don't really have time to be current in regard to pop culture. I'm doing well even to know that there is such a person as Julianne Hough. I only knew that my cohort mate looks like her because someone told me, and I google her to see if the resemblance was real or existed only in the mind of the person who first alerted me to it. The resemblance is legitimate, except that the "Julianne" over whom Matthew is pining is brilliant as well as beautiful.

Matthew falls in love roughly once each month, and usually twice in months that have five weekends.  I don't know if he's any further gone on Julianne than he has been on the others, but he's wandering around the condo practically walking into walls, and tonight he put ketchup on his peanut butter sandwich. He ate halfway through the sandwich before noticing that it had an unusual flavor.  

This is only the third time since we've been here that Matthew's love interest has been a cohort member. Another time it was a girl in the cohort two years ahead of us, and a couple times his crushes were RNs on staff at one of the hospitals associated with our medical school. One of them he met up with after I had a medical procedure. He was bringing me In and Out Burger because I was in grave danger of starving to death due to the suckiness of hospital food. Another time the crush was a girl who worked in a taco truck. Matthew's not a class-conscious snob when it comes to his women. If they're pretty enough he'll date them no matter what their station in life. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the bimbo who wanted to bear his child who was so incredibly stupid that at her part-time bank teller job, she gave away thousands of dollars in traveler's checks because the customer held a premium account at the bank, which entitled him to traveler's checks at face value. Bimbo thought it meant he got however much her wanted in traveler's checks totally gratis. That one was pretty, too, but she barely had a two-digit IQ.)

I have no clue as to whether or not Matthew will get as much as a lunch date with Julianne, much less to first base or further. She seems to think he's adorable, but in the way a teen-aged babysitter thinks the four-year-old boy she babysits is cute.  She's twenty-seven and female; Matthew is twenty-one and male. The difference between their ages might just as well be a century.

This would be how Matthew's latest love interest looks on a bad day. (Incidentally, this is NOT a picture of me.)

It's not arrogance when confidence is supported with substance.

my new instrument, though I do not yet own one

Professor Larry Bakman (not his real name; in the event that I mention him again in this blog, I probably will not offer this disclaimer but will instead leave it to the reader to determine [if he or she actually cares,which he or she probably doesn't] that I refer to this professor as Larry Bakman because of his rather obnoxious resemblance to the made-for TV judge Larry Bakman of Hot Bench) seems to have taken exception to a claim I made several weeks ago. Larry Bakman and I met up in early February at a religious observance at which I played the violin. He asked at the time what instruments I play. I listed them as tuba, baritone, trombone just a bit, piano, organ, cello (barely intermediate skill level there), and violin. I could have added other keyboard instruments, as in if you play one, you by virtue of transfer automatically possess basic skills in others, but I didn't want to pour on the self-praise too thickly; I've played organ long enough to have a reasonable mastery of bass foot pedals and of the specific fingering techniques that differ from those required for playing the piano, so it didn't seem disingenuous to differentiate in that regard, but I left off harpsichord, clavichord, and other instruments of that ilk, as well as electronic keyboard. As an afterthought, I added that I technically play viola, as anyone who plays violin also knows how to play viola, though I had at that point never actually touched a viola, much less played one.

Friday morning the professor carried a viola into the auditorium. Just before class was slated to begin, he announced skeptically to the cohort that I had "blazenly professed"  the ability to play the viola despite never having played one before. He handed the viola to me with a terse order to play.

I took the viola from him and tuned it to my satisfaction. Larry Bakman accused me of wasting time in tuning the viola ("put up or shut up" were his actual words),  but I told him I would not play an out-of-tune viola. Once the viola was tuned to my satisfaction, I played a few tentative scales, then segued to a Handel aria. A proficient violinist really can play the viola. I then asked Larry Bakman if he had any requests. He didn't. A guy in the cohort I nicknamed Raptor Jesus [for no reason other than that I read the name on the Recovery from Mormonism message board and thought it was too great a name not to co-opt, and he was the first  person with whom I came into contact after reading the moniker]  requested his favorite song, "In the Ghetto." I played through "In the Ghetto" for Raptor Jesus, then handed the viola back to Larry Bakman, muttering "Touche!" to him under the sounds of applause from my cohort mates. I hastily apologized to the class for wasting their time and money on such a pathetic display. If Larry Bakman had the grace to be embarrassed  even to the slightest degree, it wasn't discernible.

The only result of consequence to come of the encounter is that I now want to own a viola. They're not terribly expensive. I'll pick one up soon.

Did God ever send YOU a thank-you note?

a reasonable facsimile of my cousin's tithing for the month of January

My eleven-year-old cousin Hannah is standing up to LDS authority in an unusual way for someone her age, especially considering the sheep that surround her and call themselves her parents and siblings. Hannah has decided that she does not wish to pay tithing to the LDS church anymore. I find Hannah's rationale supporting her decision to forego tithing to be profoundly comical.

Hannah says that she is required to acknowledge any and all gifts she receives with thank-you notes. She said she's been paying tithing to the LDS church since she was three, and that she's never once received a thank-you note either from God or from the LDS church. Her mother said that the twice-yearly receipts submitted by the church count as thank-you notes. Hannah then said that she'll consolidate all her own acknowledgements into twice-yearly receipts if such constitute adequate thank-you notes. Her parents, of course, said that she would do no such thing. 

Hannah's father then pointed out that tithing was not so much a gift as a tax. Hannah debated this point on the grounds that a tax is mandatory, as in one will ultimately find himself or herself in the slammer for not paying it.  Hannah's father said that a person will absolutely find himself or herself in a spiritual slammer if he or she fails to pay tithing. Hannah responded that she was willing to take her chances on that ever happening, and that furthermore, the slip which is to accompany all tithing contributions displays the heading "Tithing and Other Offerings"; offerings is synonymous with gifts, not taxes. When was the last time anyone's tax return noted the amount due to the state or federal government as an offering?

Hannah then went out and spent her entire month's allowance on candy and gum so that her parents could not force her to donate ten per cent of it to the church. Her father then took ten per cent of the candy and gum she bought and shoved it into three of of those Mormon tithing envelopes and gave them to the bishop. Uncle Lee, Hannah's dad (the uncle who looks like Oswald), said that it is not the way tithing should be paid, but that if something terrible were to happen to Hannah before she earned enough money to catch up on her tithing, perhaps forcing her to fork over ten per cent of the candy would save Hannah from the fires of Hell. (Mormons take Hell very literally, and sometimes refer to tithing as "fire insurance.") It is heart-warming to me to know that Uncle Lee worships such a merciful God.

God alone knows what their bishop will do with four Jolly Ranchers, one package of Pop Rocks, one extra large envelope of Fun Dip, and one package of Chiclets Tiny Size gum, and one package Hubba Bubba gum that comes in a container sort of like chewing tobacco. Technically, I think all tithing is supposed to be forwarded to Salt Lake City. I can just see Thomas S. Monson, the Grand Pooh Bah of All Things Mormon,  ripping open the Pop Rocks and Fun Dip and pouring them into his mouth, sending himself into his final diabetic coma. At least he would die a happy man. 

Hannah's mother said that in the future she will deduct ten per cent of Hannah's allowance before it is given to her and will make the payment to the church. Hannah said that forcing people to do the right thing was Lucifer's way, not Jesus' way. I would assume Hannah was probably slapped for saying that, though that detail didn't make it onto the story as it was told to my dad by my Aunt Cristelle, the Wiccan, who takes perverse delight in any deviation from Mormon Orthodoxy that she perceives in the ranks.

My brother says that Hannah's actions are evidence that what is wrong with me is genetic and comes from my dad's side of the family. My mom seconds Matthew's conclusion. My dad says that he needs to make sure he and my mom put have away enough money for Hannah's education, because the chances of her remaining in her parents' good graces for long enough either to get married or to finish college are hovering around zero.

It's rare that I am proud to claim one of my relatives on my father's side, but tonight I'm toasting Hannah with my half-bottle of Guinness.  Here's to independent and forward thinking and to turning one's nose up at the purple Kool-Aid. Great job, kid!

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you

The cast of characters by which I'm surrounded here each day of my medical school career seems to be slowly but surely parting with its rather tenuous (my favorite word of late) grasp on reality. It's like a reality show except that no one gets kicked out or kicked off anymore; we're past that. People just slowly but surely lose their marbles a few at a time until they're saying or doing truly bizarre things, even more so than when these people first arrived, and most of them were more than a few centimeters off-kilter in one direction or another even before they got here.

To put things in perspective, Matthew is probably one of the saner people here. I know I disparage Matthew about as regularly as I clean my ears, and my ears are cleaner than most. To be fair, Matthew's been a bit challenged in terms of raw intelligence for most of his life, but he hasn't necessarily been crazy. There's a difference, as I'm certain you can appreciate.

One of my high school teachers told a story that illustrates the difference.  A man had a flat tire, so he pulled over to change the tire. The spot where he was stopped was just outside the fence of a home for the insane, criminally or otherwise. One of the residents watched the man as he changed his tire. The man jacked his car and removed the flat tire. Before he could replace the flat tire with the spare, all for of the man's lug nuts rolled down a curb gutter and beyond his reach.

Not quite sure what he should do next, the man stood idly while pondering his fate until the loony bin inmate calmly suggested, "Maybe you should take one lug nut off each of the other three wheels. Put those three lug nuts on the wheel with the spare tire. That should keep all the wheels in place until you can get more." 

Not having a better idea, the man did just as the inmate had suggested. Then he turned to the man and asked, "If you could think of that so easily, why are you in there?"

The inmate replied, "I'm crazy. No one ever said I was stupid."

I don't think there's anyone left here in my cohort who is stupid. Some are brighter than others, but no one (even Matthew) is bona fide dull-witted. I cannot assert with equal veracity, however, that no one here isn't just a bit touched. 

Germophobe behavior is so common here that it's practically mainstream. I've heard from some of the doctors in the family that germ-obsession is off-the-charts among medical school students in general. Most though not all of  of them will eventually get over it to some degree. My cohort mates are certainly holding their own in this regard. Several cohort mates wear nitrile or vinyl gloves the entire time we're together. Considering that in the lecture halls we're more or less limited to note-taking, such would seem to be a bit extreme. One of my fellow med students carries a container of antibiotic facial tissue with him everywhere she goes. If anyone sneezes or coughs, he gets up from his seat to distribute exactly three tissues (never one, two, or four, but always exactly three) to the sneezer or cougher. He wears a facial mask at ll times. He used to wear the facial mask just to school functions, but the word on the street is that he now wears it everywhere. I have no clue as to whether or not he wears a mask in her own apartment, and I don't intend to find out.

Other quirks I'm seeing in my peers are not quite so easily explained away as is the germ obsession. One guy has to sit where he can see all doors in whatever room we're convening. This is a bit weird but still basically fine as long as we're in a room that doesn't adjoin another room with doors. If we are in an adjoining room or hall, he sort of wanders as though he's patrolling. Some professors are less bothered by this than others are.

Corinthe (I'll leave you to guess whether or not that's her real name), who is my closest friend in med school other than my brother, has begun to think about one of every two males she sees looks just like Jim Jones. I'm not certain from whence her fixation with Jim Jones sprung. He and his band of followers were six feet under long before she was born. No one among her extended family or circle of friends had any association with his cult. It started when she was, for some reason known only to her, watching a Bertie Higgins music video on her computer while waiting for a lecturing professor to medicate himself because the poor guy could barely get through a sentence without practically asphyxiating himself in cough spasms. (We were all amused by the irony that the guy was lecturing about the ineffectivity of traditional cough suppressants -- both over- the-counter and high octane, as compared to their homeopathic counterparts. Yet when the disparager of Dayquil and all its neighbors on the pharmacy shelf was forced out of commission by the mother of all coughs, to what did he resort? Codeine laced phenergan with a side of 10/325 hydrocodone / acetaminophen, more commonly known as Norco. I have good reason to believe we're being taught by a team of junkies. They may preach homeopathic remedies, but when push comes to shove, they'll reach for the opiates every time.) 

Anyway, Corinthe was killing time and for some reason to which only God and Corinthe are privy, she stumbled upon the video of Bertie Higgins wailing that godawful song about having it all just like Bogie and Bacall. I must assume the song was the only Bertie Higgins hit. He was probably banned from recording in studios everywhere after the fiasco that was "Key Largo." In today's world, it wouldn't stop anyone. They'd just record their trashy works on their cell phones and become bad Internet sensations. Back then, however, such was not an option, and the world was thus spared from further musical degradation at the hands or voice of Bertie Higgins. I looked at Corinthe's monitor when she called my attention to Bertie Higgins' supposed similarity in appearance to Jim Jones. To be perfectly honest, I could see the resemblance. (Higgins probably sang like Jim Jones as well. That was probably part of the musical problem, though only a small part. Bertie Higgins was too great a musical debacle to be blamed solely on Jim Jones or on any other single entity.) Since then, she's pointed out at least thirteen other guys as well as two women who, in her estimation, look a whole lot like Jim Jones. None of them look any more like Jim Jones than you or I do. To say that Corinthe has Jim Jones on the brain is an understatement.

Another cohort mate who sits near me during most lectures is developing some sort of obsession with the rate at which people blink. You can see in his eyes that anytime he looks at someone, he's calculating the person's number of blinks per minute. He doesn't seem to do a whole lot with the data once he's gathered it, though I'm not sure what could be done with it, anyway. I've heard that some people blink more frequently when they're lying than when they're telling the truth, but since there's not really any major incentive around here for anyone to speak untruthfully on a regular basis, it's probably not a major causative contributor to the statistical phenomena. I say whatever floats the guy's boat is probably harmless if it's so out in the open. (If he were hiding cameras in restrooms to gather data of a more private or insidious nature, I'd be the first one to protest.) A few of my cohort mates, however, aren't so laissez-faire and are beginning to be freaked out by someone staring at their eyes. I admit to sabotaging his collection of statistics by staring for seemingly impossible intervals.

We're dealing with digesting a whole lot of very important information in a relatively short period of time, and we all have our own ways of breaking down the information, of making sense of it, and of storing it in places that will make it easy for us to access the information when needed.

One lady who sits three rows ahead of me and two my left for most sessions is a flutist. I've never seen her with  flute, and she's never spoken to me about it, but I can see that she places her hands in front of her and  moves her fingers in the configurations to play flutes scales when she's trying to process information. I've never played the flute, but my mom plays it, so I recognize fingerings. 

A girl who sits in the same row as I but to the far left of me takes notes on her laptop as do most of us, but the very key points of any lecture she writes with Sharpie marker on her left arm. Her left arm is often very red from having been scrubbed so hard to rid it of each day's notes. I don't understand why she doesn't switch to an easier-to-erase marker than a Sharpie. Then again, perhaps it's the erasing and not the writing that locks the information into her brain. By the time I'm helping people to justify such odd behavior, I'm probably just about as screwed up as the rest of my cohort is.

I'm not going to go into every quirk of every person who attends lectures and other class sessions with me, or at least not in this particular blog.. Suffice it to say that no one has ever noticed that I don't touch the arm rests of the auditorium-style chairs in which we're almost always seated and that no one thinks anything about having to check public restrooms for goons or bad people before I am comfortable going in myself.  Even if I didn't have a good excuse (for the latter, anyway) my quirks are so insignificant that they fail to attract even minuscule attention. I'm normal to the point of being boring by comparison to my medical school peers.

One of my cohort mates who shall remain nameless (he's been mentioned) made a proposition of sorts. He suggested that when he's through with his residency and I'm finished with mine, if neither one of us is in a significant relationship, we should perhaps contemplate looking each other up at that point. I told him that when the time comes, I'll think seriously about considering it. Thinking seriously about considering contemplating looking someone up in five to eight years IF we both happen to be unattached is about as serious a commitment as I'm willing to make to anyone at this juncture of my life.

Smashed Violins and Internet Sensations

how my smashed violin might have looked on the floor of the parking garage; I didn't see it, so at least I don't have to live through flashbacks

I played as a member of  a string quartet  in an Ash Wednesday service earlier this evening. I did not have the time to spare on such a diversion, but my arm was figuratively twisted by a professor  whose wife was fretting about the original first violinist having bailed. I don't really see how Ash Wednesday equates all that well with a string quartet, as it's usually a decidedly low-key observance, but what the hell. The  congregation in question apparently had plenty of money to toss around, if what they paid me was any indication of their wealth. If what they paid the second violinist, who seemed to consider key signatures as mere suggestions, was anything more valuable than Monopoly money (hell -- I would've considered Monopoly currency too pricy a commodity to part with in exchange for her performance), they were ripped off in a most egregious manner.

Semi-regular readers may recall a previous conflict with my mother, who made short work of my previous violin by borrowing it, then almost immediately dispensing of it by backing over it with my dad's Porsche. It seems that she has redeemed herself to some degree. She finally came up with the rough equivalent of the violin she slaughtered. She says she intended to do so all along. I don't know whether or not to believe her, though I don't really care. The new instrument will get only limited play time, as it's a shell of the one my Uncle Jerry bought for me. 

The impetus for my mom  actually breaking down and forking over the bucks for the new violin was that she learned that I took my $18,000 violin to a beach bonfire in northern California when I was there with Claire's family and some friends a couple of months ago. I'm not sure what my mom's issue was. Hasn't she seen any of those Piano Guys' YouTube videos? They lug that expensive Yamaha grand (probably not as expensive as any one of my mom's four grand pianos, but still expensive nonetheless) all over Christendom and beyond. Still, if I'd known that taking the violin into dangerous territory or uncharted waters would result in a new violin coming into my possession, I would have carted the expensive violin off to a combat zone or perhaps to Antarctica a long time ago.

In any event, I now have no need to take my nice violin to the beach, to the morgue, to the forest, to the desert, or on my ascent of Denali should I attempt the behemoth. I own a two-thousand-dollar fiddle to cart with me on little side trips. In theory, it's not a bad idea. 

All I need now to complete my own personal string quartet is a viola. Wouldn't it be really cute if (once I obtained a viola) I filmed myself playing all four parts of a string quartet? I could become the next Internet string musician sensation, right after Lindsay Stirling or whatever her name is. Perhaps I could even gyrate all over the screen as she does to distract viewers from noticing that I'm not exactly exuding talent from every pore. It's just a thought, though,  and it will die in the thought process, as I have no intention whatsoever of attempting to become an Internet sensation in any form.

Political Rantings

I'm contemplating switching my voter registration to Republican for the presidential primary. If it looks as though my pal Marco Rubio is still in the race by the time the California primary rolls around, I will wish to support him. If he's for all intents and purposes out of the race, I'll participate in the democratic primary.

I was pleasantly surprised that Rubio did as well as he did in Iowa. It will be interesting to see what happens in New Hampshire, where a greater percentage of the population may actually be sane. Regarding Trump, and Cruz, I'm hard-pressed to decide which one is the lesser of the two evils.

My brother thinks I like Rubio because he's better-looking than the other candidates. I won't argue that he's the best-looking of the presidential candidates, though that's not why I support him. I don't disagree with the majority of Trump's views on the major issues, as he's a relatively moderate candidate. I do think, though, that he's so inflammatory and so lacking in decorum -- the apparent absence of any sort of internal filter regulating the words that come out of his mouth is particularly appalling -- that it would be unwise for our populace to elect him. I also think Trump is a sexist pig.

I  have only one vote, which I will cast it whether it makes any difference or not.  It would be nice if the U.S. would drop the whole electoral college thing for presidential elections. It's obsolete in modern times.

Is there currently in circulation a photo of Ted Cruz that doesn't make him look like a comic book character?

Catholics, Mormons, Fundies, and Everything In-Between

                         

Religion is my particular concern at the moment, though not necessarily in the sense that one might expect. My personal religious beliefs are arguably a bit in limbo at this time, but I'm happy with my present theological standpoint of still having at least some faith in a few of the most basic principles of Christianity, yet simultaneously doubting that there is only one path to God. In any event, my state of faith is not a great concern to me at this time.

What does perplex me is the concern others marginally in my life have of late been expressing concerning the fate of my immortal soul. Several acquaintances -- mostly relatives, but some unrelated acquaintances as well -- have, in the past month or so, made very pointed comments to me about this precise matter. The Catholics think I should be a better Catholic.  The Mormons think I should no longer say anything that remotely hints at a disbelief in any of the many teachings (some of which are a bit hard to swallow, to put it mildly) of the LDS church. A couole of evangelical Christians are have asked me point-blank whether or not I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

My relationship with Catholicism has long been on the tenuous side. Just about the time I admitted to myself that Santa Claus was a metaphor, I came to the same conclusion regarding the Host and the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and wine,  Lest any of the anti-Santa fanatics who think that allowing a child to believe in a literal Santa causes him or her to later reject religious teachings on the grounds that he or she was lied to about Santa Claus, so what was told to him or her about religion was equally fictitious, use my words as fodder to support their own misguided views, I had my doubts about the Eucharist wafer being one and the same with the body of Christ considerably before I forced myself to come to terms with the unlikelihood of a fat man in a red suit delivering presents all over the world in a single evening.

I think Jesus existed. I know there's no positive proof, but I'm comfortable with the belief that he was. I'm not quite sure exactly how He came into existence, but that doesn't matter a great deal to me. The words in the Bible directly attributed to Him are words by which I feel it is reasonable to try to live my life. I'm a little more dubious about the words of some of the others, including the Apostle Paul.  I prefer to stick to the words of Jesus himself, though I know we cannot come close to authenticating that they were actually His words. Still, they seem wise enough that I'm OK with accepting those words and with trying [sometimes poorly] to follow them. 

Over Christmas break, two of my more devout Catholic aunts questioned me (they actually ambushed and ganged up on me; it was seriously like a planned attack) about my feelings concerning abortion.  I answered that I'm not in favor of it except in cases of rape, maternal health, or insanely young maternal age, but that I'm not comfortable denying anyone else the right to the procedure because of my personal beliefs. I don't know why my aunts would care so much about one relatively unimportant person's stance on abortion. I'm certainly not planning to open up an abortion clinic once I'm licensed to practice medicine.

Where Mormonism is concerned, it's a little less clear exactly what those who talked about it to me expect me to do. I do know they would prefer that I not speak or write in jest about the LDS Church. Whether this is out of fear for my immortal soul or simply because they don't like anything said about their church that is not 100% favorable is unknown to me. In truth, there's probably a bit of both. The conundrum in this regard is that I'm in a stress-laden environment, which will likely grow a whole lot more stressful before it becomes less so. I need moments of levity to lighten my mood and my load. I find the Mormon Church funnier than hell. Why should I not laugh at the things I find funny when the opportunity presents itself? I wouldn't be so insensitive as to make light of what the LDS Church and its members hold sacred directly to a person who practices that faith. The Mormons in my life only read it or hear about it from others. That, in my opinion, is their problem.

Beyond that, I am the very least of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' problems. Why should anyone care what silly little Alexis has to say about them? I don't go to LDS.org to post obnoxious comments. I don't show up on Mormon-friendly boards to debate with them. I rarely even go to organized exMormon sites to poke fun at the Mormons. I keep a low profile where my grandfather is concerned; his buddies do not know anything about his errant granddaughter unless he tells them himself. I occasionally share thoughts [which I distinctly frame as my own opinions] or stories [which are true, albeit with the caveat that anything one remembers from very early childhood may be ever so slightly degraded by the constraints of the human memory] in my own spaces or in the spaces of other like-minded individuals. I don't say or write any of these things with the intent of hurting the Mormons in my life. At the same time, if these people practically stalk my Internet activity, they may come across things that are hurtful to them. I'm sorry that people may have been have been hurt by something I said or wrote [not to them], but I'm not sorry I said or wrote it.

With respect to the individuals who have expressed concern for my salvation as far as whether or not I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior . . . I actually have done so. When I was twelve, I'd heard just enough of such talk that I was troubled by the idea of Catholics being excluded from heaven over a technicality. I formally accepted Jesus. Some would say I was merely hedging my bets with my actions, and perhaps I was, but the acceptance was sincere, and I haven't rescinded it. I have no reason to believe Jesus has, either. I'm covered on this base.

On the other hand, if this were the most serious problem in my life, I lead a fairy tale existence. Alas, such is not the case, though from what I hear and read, others around me are dealing with matters of far more gravity than that with which I presently contend. I should probably stop complaining.