In the midst of pretending like I'm having adventures, I have an ACTUAL adventure.

Friday afternoon.  I got off work.  I got in my car.  I started heading toward my temporary dwelling place.

A rush of discontent flooded through me.  I was going to have to go back to that place that wasn't my own, where the actual tenants of the apartment may or may not be barely tolerating having between-housing-contract students bumming off of them.  I wasn't ready to go back there yet.

So I went for a drive.

I ended up in Idaho.

After a lovely night/morning/early afternoon with my brother and his wife, they left to take a friend to Boise, and I decided to just keep driving and go take some pictures in Yellowstone.  It was a beautiful drive through the Teton pass!  Giant pines and sapphire rivers tipped with white.  Mountain wildflowers everywhere.  Yeah.  I was in heaven.  And then I hit Jackson Hole, WY and took a picture of that antler-archway thing (turns out they have like 5 of them), and then I drove past the Grand Teton.  There was lots of haze.  Apparently Wyoming is having fire problems too, sadly.

And then there was Yellowstone.  It was just getting to be dusky when I came across Black Sand Basin (picture hell steaming up from just beneath the surface, killing everything in its wake) and that was perfect!  The tourists were clearing out, and I got some incredible pictures.

I stopped at one last place for a picture of a white waterfall pouring down a white-and-orange rock, then decided I had to get to my hotel room.  It was getting dark, and there wasn't much more for me to take pictures of in that light - or lack thereof.  I packed my camera away and started driving.

As I was driving, I was seriously disappointed by the lack of wildlife.  Last time I was in Yellowstone, there were bison all over the road, elk, and we even saw a mother and baby moose.  So far, the wildest life I'd seen was a shirtless hippie on a bike.

And then I killed Bambi.

I swear, he just appeared in front of my car!  How do deer do that???

There was a flash of golden fur, just enough time for me to gasp, a THUNK, and the next thing I knew, Bambi was flying over my car (in the air) and landing just outside my passenger window.

I looked at the hood of my car.  From my vantage point of behind the wheel, it appeared to be in proper order.  My first instinct was to keep driving - drive to help.

Then my brain came back from its flight of fancy and reminded my first instinct that if you drive a car after breaking your radiator, you will demolish the engine, and that deer hit the front of my car.  I wouldn't make it more than a mile at most.

So I pulled off onto this little one-way side road, got out, and took a look.

The entire front of my car was smashed in.  Coolant was pooling on the ground beneath it, and a bloody chunk of meat nicely complimented the smear of deer poop over the hood.

I pulled out my cell phone, trying to figure out if I should dial 911 or information and ask for the park rangers.  I opened the phone and... no service.

I had no phone.

And no car.

Completely alone.

At night.

In a bear-infested national park.

Even though I'm pretty wary of strangers, I didn't have much other choice.  I needed help.  My past "distress signal" for when I can't do anything with my car is to open my hood and stand there looking helpless.  Inevitably, a guy will stop and ask if he can help.  I'll explain the problem and he'll jump my car (in the past, that's been the only problem I couldn't fix on my own enough to get to a mechanic, though I've still never had to change my own tire.  Something about fighting lug nuts in a skirt tends to attract helpful guys too).  So, I made sure my hazards were flashing bright, and went to open the hood.

Heh.  Nice try.

The bumper was so thoroughly wrapped around the hood of the car that no matter how hard I pulled, even though I could squeeze my little fingers in there and unlock it, that hood was not budging.

A car approached.

I said a fervent prayer, Please, oh please, don't let me get picked up by a sicko, human trafficker or anyone who would hurt me, and then used body language in the fading dusk light to attempt to convey distress.

It drove by.

I went back to fighting the hood, and another car passed.  Then another.

The urge to cry rushed in - I couldn't spend the night in Yellowstone, and there was no way I was going to make it the 20 miles or so to the gate.  What if I ran into a bear?  I bought a pocket knife at the gift store, but a 1 inch blade wouldn't stop a grizzly.  Or an angry moose.  Or a wolf.  Or a serial killer.  My stomach knotted up, and I tried to force the nausea down.  Really, this was ridiculous.  Puking wasn't going to fix anything, so why did my stupid biology decide to respond to crisis with it?

Headlights approached, then slowed down.  I held my breath.  A rescue?  Please?  Not a serial killer?  A couple flashes of my 2 semesters of jiu jitsu bounced across my mind before vanishing from my recollection entirely.  The car pulled onto the side road where I waited, looking appropriately helpless and distressed.

Two Asian men got out of the blue SUV.  Neither of them spoke much English.

"You... you have... accident?" one of them asked me.

I nodded.  "Yes, I hit a deer."

"Another car?"

"No... deer."  I tried miming a bouncing deer with my hands.  Pretty sure I looked like a moron.

His eyebrows bunched together in total confusion.

"Animal?" I tried.

He knew that one.  "Aaaah!  Ah, animal!  You hit animal!"  He pulled out his cell phone, registered the lack of service, then turned to his friend who was brandishing a map, written in what appeared to be Chinese (pretty sure it wasn't Japanese, but I don't know enough about Asian languages to know any more than that).  They chattered back and forth for a bit before he turned back to me.

"You alone?"

Do I admit that?  Well... clearly I am alone, so I'd be a total idiot to try to claim I wasn't.  "Yes," I said in my helpless voice.  They appeared to be nice enough, the helpful sort, rather than the sociopath sort, and I wasn't getting any creepy warning vibes.  Though, I'm not sure I'd be able to feel creepy warning vibes through that pesky nausea anyway.

He pointed to the map.  "We go west gate.  We get rangers.  You come."

Option #1: Get in the car with strangers, get to the west gate, get help from park rangers.

Option #2: Don't get in the car with strangers, stay by my car, hope they aren't offended and are capable of explaining what my situation is and where my car is in their limited English.

I said another quick prayer for safety and went to get my stuff.  As I was collecting my valuables, I wrote a quick note:
"Two Asians, dark blue SUV, Utah plates, license plate # ..7 3ND."
I left it on the seat and picked up my bags.  It was as good as I could do, and if it came down to a worst-case-scenario, I could use that note as incentive to not kidnap me.

The drive to the west gate was incredibly long.  At the speed they were going, it took us about 30 minutes, and I spent the whole thing trying to calm my nerves.  The unknown was killing me.  I knew I'd have to deal with towing the car and finding some way to get back to Provo.  I could probably call into work on Monday if I couldn't get back in time.  Barry and Jessie were close enough to come get me... all of that was fine.  It was a distant, "I'll deal with that later," that I didn't really even have to think about.  But right now, right in that moment, I had no idea what was coming.  I was trusting two complete strangers - strangers who had a dead-silent Asian girl in the back seat who wasn't wearing any pants.  I looked at the bright skin of her legs and wondered where her pants were and why she was so quiet.  Was she shy, and she was actually wearing super-short shorts that I just couldn't see?  Or was she their first victim from earlier in their trip.

Disclaimer: In defense of my sanity, I did not treat my imagination as though it were a sentient being.  But conversations are easier to follow than stream of consciousness soooo....

I smacked my imagination upside the head. 

Shut up already!  These guys are helping you!

But what if they pass the west gate and keep going, refusing to stop?

Well... then I'll demand in a firm, harsh voice that they stop, and if they don't, I'll know it's time to use a contingency plan.

Great.  What's your contingency plan?

You're the paranoid one.  You come up with it yourself.

Alright, you know that teeny knife?  If you get it into their artery, right on the neck, you can probably kill them.

Probably???  Where are you getting your information? 

Got any better ideas?  Anyway, stab the one in the passenger's seat first - the driver is directly in front of you, and will have a harder time blocking.  Get the passenger first, then the driver, then jump forward and grab the wheel.

Yeah, so the bleeding driver can get his arm around my neck and choke me.  Nice one.

Not if he's dead, he can't!

I don't even know if stabbing him will kill him!  Besides, then I might get arrested for murder.

It's self defense.  

Yeah, which they'll decide after six months to three years of jail time.  

You have to have a contingency plan.  Odds are you won't have to use it.  And besides, risking jail is better than getting raped and cut up into little pieces, or sold on the black market and shipped off to a sex factory in Beijing.  

Alright, so what's the rest of this stupid plan?  I stab them both with my one inch knife, kill them, jump forward to grab the wheel, and get stabbed in the back because the girl sitting next to me is secretly a samurai and has a katana hidden at her feet?

Now you're just being ridiculous.

Uh huh.  Because defeating two Asian guys with a pocketknife isn't ridiculous.  Besides, these guys are listening to Celtic Woman of all things!  They're not serial killers.

It's a ruse.  They're trying to lure you into a false sense of-

Alright, I'm done thinking of contingency plans now.  I'm going to close my eyes and just wait to get to the gate.

Try as I might, I couldn't relax.  My brain wouldn't let me do it.  Stupid phrases like, "keeping your guard up" and "being ready for anything" kept flashing through my mind.  So I contented myself with watching the road, counting the passing minutes and running my finger over the word "Yellowstone" that was carved into my little pocketknife. 

Finally, the gate came into view.  I could see a ranger walking on the far side of it, but the exit appeared to be unguarded.  The Asians slowed a little, but then just drove through... and kept going.

"Stop here," I ordered, my hand tightening around the knife.

The car slowed just a little.

"STOP!"

The driver slammed on the brakes. 

I grabbed my purse, my camera and my computer bag, and threw the door open.  I tried to make my voice sound a little less freaked out, and a little more grateful.  "Thank you for the ride.  I'm going to go talk to that ranger now."

"Okay.  We wait for you."

The girl finally spoke, in very good English.  "You can leave your bags here.  It's okay."

Ummmm... no.

"No, that's okay.  I'd rather just keep them with me.  Thanks, though."  As the door opened and the light came on, I stole a glance down to see if she really wasn't wearing pants.  Hot shorts, light-colored hot shorts.

I jumped from the car and high-tailed it to the check point.  The ranger let me into her little box thing and called Comms for me.  Once we had established that a park police would be by to get me and take me to my hotel, I walked part way back to the car, waved, gave them a thumbs up and yelled, "Thank you so much!  Everything's good now!"  The driver gave me a thumbs up back and drove away.

I sighed in relief as they left.  For all my paranoia, they were really nice guys.

I started calculating tow-truck prices, and my phone rang.  It was Jessie.

"Hey, Savannah!  Just calling to check on you and make sure you're safe."

Rather than bother with a stupid question like, "How'd she know???" I could only fight back the urge to cry as it settled on me just how thoroughly I was being looked after.  Not only was I given a safe ride to help, but my family got the warning that I was in trouble.  My mom called me with the same question, and later told me she had gotten a really strong prompting that she needed to pray for my safety.  Not only was the message given to my mom (who, by virtue of her maternal role, is more or less obligated to worry about me), but Barry and Jessie got the divine memo too.  I was so relieved to talk to Jessie and Barry, who promised to come get me, and tow the car home for me.

After that was waiting for the police, explaining that I wanted my brother to come get my car - not pay for a tow truck - and filling out paperwork.  Oh, paperwork.  Really... they wanted me to draw a diagram of the accident.  Okay, first of all, I'm no artist.  Second, how do you diagram hitting a deer?  So, I drew a road, arrows indicating the direction I was going, a stick-figure deer bounding across the road (complete with a lovely rack of stick antlers), a SPLAT bubble, squiggly arrows indicating the direction my car limped, and a smoking car just off the side road.  The police saw it, started to smile, and then squelched his reaction with a very serious look.  Fine.  Don't appreciate my art.  I put my heart and soul into that diagram, you heathen.

Oh, and people kept asking me if the deer was dead.  Yes.  The deer is dead.  The deer is very dead.  

After paperwork was done, the police took me to the hotel.  I walked in to be greeted by... A DEAD DEER!  Seriously, wouldn't you know it?  Whoever decorated the Stage Coach Inn has a real fetish with dead animals attached to the wall.  Dead deer.  Dead moose.  Dead grizzly bear.  Antelope, elk, wolves, bison, even a mountain goat.   The morbid irony of seeing the very species I had just pummeled to death sitting on the wall, surrounded by a multitude of its late forest pals was a perfect end to a horrific night.

Now I'm sitting in a hotel lobby in Montana.  I'm just waiting for Barry and Jessie to come with a trailer, haul my car out and take me back to Provo.  When I got up this morning, I was greeted by the face of a MASSIVE bull moose.  Next to it was a buffalo large enough to squash my car flat.  Just down the stairs was a big, hairy grizzly bear.  All I could do was look at the three of them and offer another silent prayer.

Heavenly Father, I am very, very, very thankful that I didn't hit that. 

Excuse me while I have a stronger than necessary opinion for a second.

Headline: "What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?"

Article [paraphrased]: "Some Marines got shot in the back by an Afghan police officer, three were killed.  This is just one of several incidents of insider attacks this year, and is becoming a mounting problem.  What could be causing it?
"A spokesman for NATO states that the main reasons are personal grievances, stress situations, and what we call battle fatigue.  Only 10% of these attacks are Taliban related, while the remaining 90% are just personal grievances.
"A former Afghan border police blames it on the foreigners' disrespect for their culture.  He tells us that the soldiers have entered Afghan homes without permission, killed innocent civilians, bombarded wedding parties, entered mosques with dogs, and burned the Holy Qur'an.  The Afghan people have been humiliated by the foreign troops."

Really!  What could POSSIBLY be leading those troops to turn on the US soldiers?

No $#!t, guys.

Try having a shred of respect for the nations you're invading, okay?

This overly-strong opinion brought to you by nine years of frustration with the US government's foreign policies.  Tune in next time for "Apple's Monopolistic Tendencies: Why some companies deserve to be target practice for ICBMs."

How to Win Friends and Be a Jerk

I got asked to edit a script today.  My boss said, "Hey, can you look this over?  Just make sure there isn't anything in it that sounds sketchy, or like a pyramid scheme."

Now, as the company I work for is a multilevel, network marketing company (ie... pyramid... just without the scheme since we have a legitimate product) that can be a real problem.

So, I printed out the document and started reading.  Mostly it was good.  It felt smooth, believable, reputable... what the?  "I know this sounds too easy to be true, but..." 

Really?  Okay, that needs to be changed.  I got out my red pen.

Now, if I had been editing for someone I didn't work with every day, I would have written, "This sentence sounds sketchy.  Omit."  I would have kept it professional.

But it was for my boss.  He likes my sense of humor, and he's used to my voice.  So I wrote, "And now, for a limited time only, when you buy this too good to be true offer, we'll throw in a small country in Europe!  ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!  Call now, at 1-800-I-SOUND-FISHY."

And then I found a missing word and a couple other typo's and turned it in.

Well...

It wasn't for him.

He didn't even look at it.  He just gave it off to the Creative Team who wrote it and said, "I asked my assistant to edit this for you."

They looked over my edits, came back to me, and said, "Really.  That wasn't necessary."

And now I think I'll spend the rest of my life hiding in a small, dark and very unprofessional hole.

Just because I'm on a Thomas Paine kick.

When I was in high school I read Thomas Paine's works for the first time, in my American Lit class.  At the time I was trying to convince myself that all literature was boring and depressing and that I hated it.  But even with a chip on my shoulder, I couldn't help but appreciate his stuff.

This was the passage that made me realize how much I liked his writings:

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."   - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

This was written for the soldiers of General Washington's army, who were camping in the dead of winter after a bitter retreat through New Jersey.  The pamphlet was published December 19, 1776 - 6 days before Washington paddled across the Delaware, snuck up on the Trenton Garrison, peeked over the walls and went, "Surprise!" and then proceeded to take the fort, launch an offensive up New Jersey and flank the British army. 

Clearly, I'm not the only one who found these words inspiring.

We don't have war on our soil anymore, and life isn't anywhere near as hard for us as it was for the battle-weary soldiers of the Revolutionary War.  That doesn't mean life is easy right now.  I'm watching people struggle - a good friend who is too sick to go to work, a whole region of farmers losing their crops in the face of an awful drought, and my own battle with discouragement.  The war is more metaphorical now, but this is still a time that tries our souls.

But the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.  Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.

Keep fighting.  Hell is not easily conquered.

Translating Thomas Paine

Of late it has come to my attention that any perusal of the written works of eighteenth century philosophers, so lately disregarded in the daily conversation of the populace, begets a sense of confusion and misunderstanding.  So bogged down are the words, a sea of sentence structures so strangely stated and a plethora of words so anachronistic in our modern dictionary, that they can but only induce the most vexing of headaches when one but engages in contemplation of said works.  It is then my intention to engage in a work of translation that might render such writings palatable to the modern reader.

Translation:  I'm re-writing Thomas Paine's Common Sense because attempting to read it gave me a headache.

Common Sense

by Thomas Paine

Savannah Woods, trans.

I. Of the origin and design of government in general, with concise remarks on the English Constitution.

First thing we're going to do is talk about two very important elements of not being a hermit hidden in a small hut in the Rocky Mountains.

Oh, wait.  It's 1776.  The Rocky Mountains haven't been discovered yet.

*ahem*

First thing we're going to do is talk about two very important elements of not being a hermit hidden in a small hut in the Appalachian Mountains.  Those two elements are Society and Government.  Now, all these philosophers that have popped out of nowhere lately (geez, you'd think it was an Age of Enlightenment or something) have spent so much time writing about Society and Government that they're completely mushed up into each other, and there is no longer any distinction between them.

Let me point out a couple of the differences.  In short, Society looks like this :-) and Government looks like this >:-( .  That's right, government is evil.  Now, of course, it's a necessary evil, else we wouldn't have it.  Both of them promote our happiness.  It's just that Society does it in a positive, glass-half-full kind of way by encouraging us and uniting us with the things that we like, and Government does it in a negative, glass-half-empty sort of way by keeping us from doing bad stuff.  Society is a patron, Government is a punnisher.

Incidentally, spellcheck no longer recognizes the word "punnisher."  Spellcheck also does not recognize the word "spellcheck."  Curse those squiggly red lines.

So, Society vs. Government.  Society is a great thing.  It blesses us, makes us happy, gives us good things to talk about and circumstances to be in when we talk about those good things.  Government not so much.  It is the big guy who gives us spankings when we get our hand stuck in the cookie jar.  It grounds us for 25 to life.  I mean, like I said before, it's necessary.  We've gotta have it.  Can you imagine the world without it?  Rioting, chaos in the streets, nothing to stop people from bullying little people and pushing them around.  But what happens when the government starts bullying and pushing little people around?  It's the Government itself that is reducing us to the state we'd be in if it didn't exist.

Now, at this point, I'd like you to imagine lots of purple prose while I muse to myself over the state of government.  Think of a government, and then think of words like, "the badge of lost innocence," "the bowers of paradise," and imagine things like palaces of kings being built on the ruins of paradise.

Are we good on the imagery that makes my philosophy a true work of art?  Excellent.  Moving on.

Let's use an image to understand the whole reason governments exist.  It's harking back to a movement that is very popular in my day, known as Primitivism.  Primitivism is the act of imagining mankind as they were before the days of mud huts and bongo drums.  This is mankind at his birth, when he first decided he looked a little too similar to a chimpanzee and shed all over the furniture until he was shiny smooth and pink and quite naked.  This is man at his purest, his most natural.  Completely unadulterated by the corrupt trappings of modern life.

So, ancient mankind lives on their own.  Much like our Hermit in the Rocky Appalachians.  They live in this lonely existence for about thirty seconds before someone gets the grand idea, "Hey!  If you help me build my mud hut, I'll help you build yours!"  And the other guy says, "Ooh!  And, and, and!  And our wives can join forces making deer-poop stew and we can save time and combine our resources and be very happy!"  And the first guy goes, "Deer poop stew?  Dude, that's disgusting."  And the second one says, "Oh... you're right.  It tastes pretty good though."  And the wives sit back and giggle to themselves because it doesn't actually have deer poop in it, but they've convinced the second one's husband that deer poop is good for his respiratory system, and tada!  Society is born. 

They work together, because they need to.  They can't go it alone.  Besides, being a hermit is miserable anyway.

So, you have this little society.  It's got about 7 or 8 people in it.  They're living with no government, and they are happy.  Then, Uggawugga carves himself a walking stick.  Not only does he have a walking stick, but he carves the face of a duck into it.  Maggawagga likes his stick.  Maggawagga wants his stick.  Maggawagga takes his stick.  Uggawugga goes to get his stick back, and while he is there he shoots an arrow through Maggawagga's eye.

Society is not very happy about this.  They all get together and say, "Okay, we need to establish some rules.  Rule #1: don't take something somebody else made.  Rule #2: if someone takes something of yours, you can't kill them over it.  If someone breaks rule #1, they have to return it and stick their head in a pot of deer-poop stew until they pass out from lack of oxygen.  If someone breaks rule #2, the community here will kill them right back!"  Everyone agrees and tada!  Government is born.

Flash forward a few generations.  We don't have 7 or 8 people anymore.  We've got about 200.  Society is more complex and there are more problems, and a need for more rules.  Everyone has an opinion, and there's not really enough time to listen to everybody.  The meetings to discuss rules are getting longer and more boring, people are falling asleep, kids are making a mess and distracting their moms who are getting annoyed because they want to participate but they're too busy tackling small maniacs in loin cloths.  It's not working.  So, they pick someone who is smart and who believes the same things they do and say, "You go to the meeting for us, kay?" 

This group of elected people, or elected, as I like to call them, will meet and discuss stuff and work together for the good of everybody.  It's important to re-elect and make sure the elected stay in touch with the electors so that they represent them accurately.  And, it is this that makes a government strong and makes the people it governs happy.

So, to sum that all up, government was designed to benefit the people.  Get that, England?  Ben-e-fit.  Not control.  Not bully.  Now, I offer it as my opinion that the more simple something is, the less likely human beings are to muck it up, and the easier to fix it when it does get mucked up.  So, keep government small and simple.  England really thinks it's something special, and really it was... for the dark and slavish times in which it was erected.  The whole world was in one big tyrannical toilet bowl, and it was a dramatic step up.  But, it's incredibly complex.  The problem with this is that it's been degrading and it's so complicated that nobody knows how to fix it.

I mean, if you look at it, you've got a tyrannical head in the form of the king.  But wait!  You have the commons, which are there to check the power of the king!  Needing to check the king implies that he isn't trustworthy, and that the commons are smarter than him.  But then you give him the power to reject whatever measures they propose to check him.

And that makes sense... how?

Anyway, I would like you to now spend about seven minutes re-reading that last paragraph over and over.  It will save me the time to rephrase it thirty times in the next five paragraphs.

And when you're done, it's not enough to just be glad that Englishmen are not in as dire of a situation as those under the Ottoman Empire.  You need to recognize that England is in such a better circumstance because the government is a constitution of the people and not of the government.  Then think about how even though it's better than Turkey, it's not good enough.

In section II, we will discuss what's wrong with it more than we already have.  Thanks for tuning in!

finé

The road to hell is paved with really big attitude problems.

"Hi!  Can we come visit you some time this week?"

"Okay.  But just so you know, I don't like those awkward lessons.  If we're gonna do visiting teaching, we should do it right and go have fun!  Hey, let's go get ice cream... or Cafe Rio!"

"Okay, that sounds great!  You know, you're right.  Visiting teaching isn't about lessons - it's about forming friendships." 

"Yeah.  That's right."  Phew!  My new visiting teachers understand.

"And we'll have the lesson while we have fun!"

Ummmm... no.

"Really, I don't like the lessons.  They always feel forced and awkward.  If we could, you know, play a game or something?"

"Oh, okay."

**next day**

Knock knock knock.

"Hi!"  Oh, look.  You're carrying an Ensign.

"Hi, Savannah!  Here!  We brought you some cookies!  Listen, my companion can't go out tonight, she has an appointment in half an hour.  Could we just stay here?  I planned an activity."

An Ensign, and a Disney Princess coloring book.  "Um, alright.  But the TV's on and I don't want to interrupt my roommate, soooo... Club House?"

**inside Club House**

"So, Savannah.  We'd like to give you just a short message.  Have you had a chance to look at the Visiting Teaching message this month?"

"No."

"Oh.  Alright, well, that's okay."   **flashes coloring book into sight**  "So, do you like princesses?"

Not since I grew boobs.  "Well... sort of?  I mean, I like the feisty ones more than the froofy ones."

"Oh.  Okay.  Well, I just wanted to read you a scripture here that talks about how we are daughters of God.  So really, we are all princesses!"

How about Princess Leia?  I  could totally do Leia.  "Yay!"

[insert scripture]

"Now, for our activity!  We are going to-" **dramatic gasp, wide eyes, coloring book held high**  "-color princesses!"

Not until I've had my animal crackers, we won't.  "Oh boy!"

"Here.  Now pick a picture of your favorite princess, and while you're coloring, we can talk!  And we can get to know you!  Because, just like you said yesterday, Visiting Teaching isn't about the lesson.  It's about making friends!"

**Begin Spiritual Evaluation**

"So, have you served a mission?"

"No."

"You mentioned you had brothers.  Did they serve missions?"

"Yes." 

 "Oh good.  Did you grow up in the church?"

"Yes."

"Did your parents grow up in the church or were they converts?"

"One of each."

"So tell me something about yourself."

"I'm really anti-social.  I hate people.  People suck.  And I'm really bitter about boys.  They suck too.  And I'm sick of BYU housing because of all the rules.  I'm just SO DONE with it all!" 


"Oh.  Wow.  Um, well... tell me why you feel that way about people?  What is it about them?"

Hahaha.  "Nah, I'm totally kidding.  I love people.  People are great."

"Oh, good!"

**

Alright, I'll admit I dropped the word "hell" in there at some point, just to see her squirm.  I kinda felt bad for her companion who sat there, dead silent, unsure of what to do with either of us.  But really.  I told her no lessons.