You'll Always Be Your Own Hero

By popular request (even one person makes it popular), Motor Mouth’s lesson as heard from SFHB, exaggerated no doubt by myself, and the epitome of why I wish Tyrant would listen to my sound advice.

Or maybe I should start off with the fact that several months ago when we had out very first meeting as a presidency, SFHB and I told Tyrant that we did not think MM should ever be called as a teacher, though she has been vying for the “position” for a long time, and why not? People like Motor Mouth love a captive audience and the only thing they love more than that is the sound of their own voice. So of course MM tried to obtain a calling as a teacher for these very reasons I’m sure. I think I may have even told Tyrant that if MM were called as a teacher I wouldn’t come to church anymore. (I think we are approaching that point).

Tyrant has done a bang up job of calling new teachers by the way. She has a manic depressant teaching second Sunday, MM teaching third Sunday, and a well known backstabbing man hunter teaching fourth Sunday. None of these three were particularly active, nor has their attendance been on the rise, but they do all however do their calling, which is nice, but maybe not so nice for the girls attending the ward. I’m not saying I’m a good teacher, I’m far from it and I’m sure I bore the girls beyond compare, however, having been the former Education counselor I’m a snob about certain things.

#1 Teachers are to end the lesson five minutes till the hour, we have to sing and pray at the end and five minutes seems to be the adequate amount of time.

#2 The lessons are supposed to be a discussion about the lesson in the manual, the hope is that the girls will read it before class. Pick out certain parts, ask a question, and let the discussion begin. Teachers are more facilitators rather than preachers.

#3 With #2 in mind, please don’t talk the entire time, a rule we had in training was don’t talk longer than the age of the youngest person in the room. (If the youngest person is 18 then take a break after 18 minutes and have other people talk). However, I have changed this to a shorter amount of time for church purposes…try to take a break every 5 minutes or so.

#4 As much as you want to tell us about your life and what’s concerning you right now, there is a designated subject and an excellent, inspired manual to keep you on track. Use it. No really, that’s not a suggestion, that’s an order. I don’t care about how your week went, unless it directly relates to the subject that the manual is telling you to teach don’t tell me about it.

That’s all I can think of for right now.

So on to the lesson that I was not myself able to witness but have heard it from the mouths of two to three witnesses.

To begin the lesson MM gets up and tells everyone about how great Tyrant is. Just to let you know, Tyrant was not there on Sunday, so this brown nosing was pointless unless she was treated us as Hitler Youth and trying to brainwash us into believing how great she is and why we should resist and just follow (don’t get me wrong, I do like Tyrant, but sometimes she is too much for me). Otherwise the whole thing seems pointless – that is until she starts to tell everyone about how her week went (Violation of Rule 4). MM moved last week, forget that her three roommates also moved, because in her universe she is the sun and everything else revolves around her. She mentions how she wanted her room painted before she moved in so Tyrant came over and stayed up late and came back early Saturday morning to help her with that. She goes on how Tyrant is the only person who helped her. Ahem…from my understand Bull got sick from being in MM’s moldy room too long the weekend before…painting. I could have the details wrong, but part of me thinks not. Either way, this would be the second time MM has pissed me off because she has mentioned that no one else has helped her paint.

Detour – Last weekend I went over to help paint, Petunia was there, as was Bull, their sister, the boy in love with their sister, an awesome married couple, and two of the other girls who were moving into that house, as well as MM herself. I got paint on the bottom of my shoes, on my jeans, on my shirt, on my arm, almost in my eye, and spackled all over my face. I was not playing with the paint, I was painting. As were everyone else. Not to mention Coz went over there on Saturday and helped paint as well. That little event was apparently blocked in MM’s mind because a few days later when she finds out that Pack Rat wants to go help them paint MM says to her, “It’s about time we got some help!” Excuse me MM? What do you call all those people over at your house on Friday night? You know the ones with the paint brushes? Soar backs and necks and not to mention it was flipping hot! Do you recall those people helping you? Because they sure did. But you know what, if she doesn’t want to consider me there to help her she’s actually right, I was there for Diva and the other two girls. I was helping them because I like them. MM unfortunately fell under my service umbrella on this project.

Back to the lesson. So after she finally gets done raving about Tyrant and how wonderful she is (not to mention daft if she is BFF with MM) she goes on to the “lesson”. Which from my understand consisted of her reading from the manual, leaving most to wonder if she had herself read the lesson before venturing to teach it. Because she wasn’t just reading her favorite parts, she was reading from the first word on the first page, all the way through. Every once in a while asking people to read and then asking what it means. (Technical violation of Rule 4 since there are inspired questions at the end of each chapter and she apparently missed those – maybe she planned to read them at the end. Also she is in violation of Rules two and three since she did most of the reading (from my understanding) and she didn’t do a discussion, she did a reading.)

I don’t know if she violated Rule 1. So far (all one times I saw her teach) she ended the lesson on time, but not before weakly trying to joke that if she didn’t we would be mad at her. Little did she know we were already mad that she had the calling in the first place, but don’t place the blame for your long windedness on us, we have nothing to do with those chatty pipes that feel the need to get out what they are trying to say rather than to take questions of comments from the girls. She aggravates me. SFHB was right when she said she was glad I wasn’t there because she felt like I would have gotten up and walked out. I would have. Way near the beginning I would have so that everyone would know that I can bear to listen to her teach, that I can’t sit there with good conscience as she flagrantly deceives the girls into thinking that she is a superior person than she really is, if I hear her talk one more time about the tender mercies of the Lord or about how we cannot go through this life on our own I’ll B-slap her, because she doesn’t mean it. She’ll get up and talk about it on fast Sunday or when she teaches her lesson and then she’ll ignore the rest of church, and she won’t come the other Sundays and in essence she’ll try to do it on her own.

All I can say is that I have not had many opportunities to feel traditionally sorry for SFHB; by traditionally sorry I mean I am sorry for what she had to go through, having to sit through that lesson knowing what a hypocrite MM is. I feel sorry for her on a regular basis but that is because she is so socially inept, not that I’m that great at it, I have awkward social moments on a daily basis, but at least I am aware that I am having them.

I kind of hate that I'm back - but it feels so right.