Chapter 22: Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving

So today I was sitting in the chapel a few minutes before church started and I looked over and saw one of my home teachers looking over and his tongue was hanging out of his mouth. It wasn’t a teasing sticking out of the tongue and part of me wonders if he even realized that he was sitting there with his tongue on the wrong side of his lips. It was more like he was opening his mouth for a doctor to take a look inside. We made eye contact while his tongue was out and I have to admit that I wasn’t quiet sure how to react. Should I smile? I mean, I’ve never been taught the etiquette for a situation like this. Also, just because this guy is my home teacher doesn’t actually mean that we know each other well. He’s been my home teacher for a couple of months and he’s only come over once. My innate mocking tendency was to stick my tongue out in the same fashion. But instead I broke eye contact and turned away. I kind of wish I had stuck my tongue out; at least we’d have something to talk about the next time he came over to teach us. As it turned out he was giving a talk today in church, so he was up on the stand during the whole first hour and several times we made eye contact, but I didn’t much feel the need to acknowledge it, I figure should we ever actually have something to say to each other I’ll just randomly stick my tongue out at him, or at least bring it up.
I’ve been asked to give a talk and so far my options are my favorite hymn and why it’s my favorite, or testimonies: how we gain, share, grow, etc. pretty much anything to do with testimonies. I was told that I could hold out for a different topic, and I think I’ll ask what’s on the agenda for the month of March. I can’t seem to figure out where I would go with testimonies and the hymn topic seems like it would involve a lot of personal stories and I’m not good at telling personal stories, at least not spiritual ones related to hymns.
Before Sunday school I was running around, not really doing anything but at the time I felt like I was. Anyway, I was stopped in the hall by this kid that I sort of knew while we were growing up. He’s mentally disabled and usually when he stops you to talk he is ranting about some topic of other. He always seems very angry, like at Christmas he was ticked because his mom bought him “The Hulk” on DVD but what he had asked for was “Spiderman” and boy was he ticked off about it. When I first passed him in the hall he had stopped a guy and was complaining about dating. To avoid anything on this topic I walked the long way back around them so that I wouldn’t have to pass them twice. But he got me later as I was walking by and started to tell me about how he was going to buy some dumbbells from Wal-Mart and beef up, and then his muscles would get huge. He asked if I liked the name Strongman or Muscle Man better. I told him Muscle Man. He went on saying that his muscles would get huge and he would be able to break someone’s neck with his arm. Luckily there was a member of the bishopric there who is new to the ward so he came over and introduced himself to me, thus pulling me away from Muscle Man and our interesting if not slightly disturbing conversation. We spoke to each other briefly, meanwhile Muscle Man kept bucking at guys who walked past and for some reason went to the tallest guys and asked if they wanted to take him on. I slipped past him as he threatened another passerby.
I passed the Enforcer (I think it’s been a while since I’ve talked about him. We are slowly becoming independent friends…meaning we don’t necessarily need my roommates there to be friends). Earlier he had told me to go to class and I told him that he needed to go. He said that he was going to make sure that the group we were standing with went to class. I told him that I remember how that worked out for him last time. He came to be the “Sunday School enforcer” and just ended up sitting with us in the foyer the whole time. When I passed him this time he was in the same place I left him so I got his attention and told him that he needed to get to class. He said that he couldn’t because he was the Sunday school secretary (or was it first counselor…I can’t remember) so he had to collect all the roles and therefore couldn’t actually attend Sunday school. I smiled and then leaned in and sniffed and said, “what’s that smell?” he sat there for a split second not sure where I was going with it, and I said, “Oh, its bull-crap.” He laughed and I told him I would see him later. I’m not really going to slight him for not going to Sunday school because as I walked away I was headed to my car to go eat Sunday dinner with my family. Maybe next Sunday I’ll go to Sunday school and take him down with me. But we’ll have to see when that day comes.