Memorial Days

With Memorial Day coming up this weekend, I am going to remember as many details as possible about Memorial Days of my life. However, since I don't fully consider Memorial Day a true holiday--it's more of a gateway into the Fourth of July season--I don't remember as much about it as I do about other holidays.


 2011. I woke up to my niece Allie coming into my room and saying "Snow!" because I had asked my family to wake me up if it snowed. I was delighted to come out of my bedroom and see snow on the roofs and the grass.  That morning we--my parents, Allie, and I--went to the zoo. They had all their dinosaur models all over the zoo. My niece wanted to see some animal show, so we went to it. We had to find strategic places to sit because rain and melting snow was dripping through holes in the tarp above the benches. They were playing hokey '60s music before the show. I was surprised when they played Beatles songs because the rest of it was so hokey. They had two college-age females conduct the animal show. One of them was a much better actress than the other. At one point they had a little girl come up as a volunteer. The zoo girl was holding a tortoise, and the little girl tried to touch it, but the zoo girl forbade her, telling her she could touch it later. After the show they let the kids touch the animals as long as they only used two fingers, but I don't think Allie wanted to touch them. We went around to the various animal exhibits. I had never seen the new bat exhibit and I was thoroughly impressed. We assumed these bunnies were hiding from the rain; the goats were hiding as well. (When I went to the zoo on a sunny June day, the bunnies were still hiding under that little shelter.)

 We went to the "Living Links" exhibit in the greenhouse. I was sad I had missed the previous exhibit, "Nature's Nightmares," but there were a lot of animals that were the same, so much that Allie kept saying, "This really is Nature's Nightmares!" I was sad that they no longer had free-flying bats, and the Goliath spider was smaller and less impressive than I had hoped. I tried to take some pictures of the hibiscus flowers. Outside the exit of the greenhouse they had gifts for sale, and my mom debated buying the animals that were on exhibit that are dried up and you can bring them back to life (not brine shrimp--way cooler than that, with red on the bottom). When we were at one of the playgrounds, I asked my mom to take a picture of me on the giant spider so I could use it for a Facebook profile picture.

Allie wasn't dressed very warmly, so she wanted to go to the car with my mom. My dad and I stayed and tried to find all the dinosaurs. The T-rex was the only big one that was life-sized.

 

I was sad that the sauropods weren't life-sized. Shrinking the dinosaurs kind of made me think, "What's the point?"

 We went to the car and left. There was a man in short shorts and no shirt who was running across the road as we were leaving the zoo. My mom said, "He's crazy," probably because it was cold, but maybe because he was in the road. Later I texted my roommate Zach Zimmerman to see when he was going to pick me up. I also asked him if he wanted me to bring the Coldplay Viva la Vida album because I knew he hadn't heard it but liked Coldplay. He was quite late when he finally showed up. I was surprised to see Sarah Edwards in the car, because she hadn't ridden up with us. I put my stuff in the trunk and Zach put my CD in. Then we picked up Chase Elwood; it was tough getting everyone's stuff in the trunk. Shannon Kelly talked about the editing minor. Sarah said she had had to take an ELang class. At one point, Zach asked if I could hear the music, and I said I could. One of the girls asked if I liked Coldplay--I said yes but wasn't wildly enthusiastic. One of them said she liked the song "Lovers in Japan." At one point I mentioned disc two, but when disc one was over, Zach turned his own music on. I zoned out--as I often do--when they were talking about speeding tickets. They said, "Mark's never had a ticket," but since I hadn't been paying attention, I thought they were talking about concert or theater tickets. We dropped Sarah off at her apartment when a Beatles song was playing. Then we dropped off Shannon and came home and parked in our parking lot. Zach ejected the CD and then realized that he'd forgotten about disc two and apologized. I didn't mind--I brought the CD because I thought he might like it but it seemed he didn't really care. He read the title, Viva la Vida, or, Death and All His Friends, and commented on the irony of the title. I put my stuff away and put my Peanuts Fourth of July pillowcase on my pillow.

2010. All I remember is going to dinner group. It was a combined dinner group that night. I was wearing a T-shirt that had all the names of the 50 states arranged as an American flag. One guy there told me he liked my shirt because it was "fashionable" and because it had New Mexico on the top. There was some mild ridicule about that, because a few other states, including Utah, were also at the top.

2009. All I remember is sending emails from the Family History Center in the Lewiston Idaho stake center. But thanks to the miracle of the internet (and knowing my mom's email password), I was able to find the very email that I sent that day:

"Wednesday is Pops's birthday, and Thursday I hit the dreaded eighteen-month mark. I've been having all sorts of depressing dreams about going home lately.

"Next week we will be having a baptism in the singles branch. Her mom's not too keen on it, so yesterday Kim (that's the investigator) asked us to go talk with her mom, so we're going to go over tonight. Hopefully that will go well.

"Another investigator who was supposed to be baptized in June dropped us. We don't know if she talked to her parents and they strongly opposed, or if she was just too scared to talk with them. Her dad is against the Church because when he was in Boy Scouts he blew up some flower holders on the church grounds and they kicked him out of Scouts. We visit his bedridden mother often and their whole family is very nice, just not active and some of them against the Church.

"Also, we cover Lapwai, an Indian reservation. The Indians are on the war path (as everyone says) because of a recent event. A couple of the natives were being chased by a state patrolman and would not pull over. Eventually they stopped and he shot them. Here's where some details become conflicting. One version said they were running away; another said they were approaching him to fight. Supposedly he heard a gun shot and thought they had guns, but it was another, unrelated shot nearby. This all happened on tribal lands so the injuns are all up in arms. I guess the FBI has to investigate because state policeman don't have authority over the Indians. I guess if a policeman not of the tribe pulls over a Lamanite (I couldn't resist) he can't arrest them or give them a ticket; he can only tell them to wait until an Indian officer comes, and if they drive off, there's nothing he can do. But it does go the other way; if an Indian pulls someone over, he has to call someone who is a regular officer.

"It got decently warm this week. I'm starting to acquire a "bring it on" attitude for heat, because I know it's only going to get warmer and there's nothing I can do about it. They say it gets about 110 degrees in the summer here.

"This week we had an interesting service experience. It probably wasn't the most kosher and if it hadn't been established earlier I probably would have not done it. A member took us to several cemeteries out of our area to put flowers on the stones of his relatives. They weren't members, but they recently had their temple work done, so we dedicated the graves. It was fun being in the cemeteries. I wouldn't mind working in one.

"I don't know why he didn't dedicate them; he's an elder, but he is kind of a questionable member, so maybe he's not worthy. He's engaged and his fiancée lives with him. We don't know if anything's going on but they still shouldn't live in the same house. They have both been married several times. He is weird, but she is weirder. Her nickname is Elf (she's short), but I only think of another one-syllable name ending in f--waif. The reason for this comes because we were talking with another member who was saying she thinks he's marrying her because she's a waif--no one else wants her. It will be funny when they're married and she's his wife the waif. It could be funny if I accidentally let slip something like, 'How's your waif--I mean, wife?' In one of the cemeteries he has a plot and his waif was talking about being buried there, but Elder LaPratt and I both agree she won't be buried there. We've heard he's already been married eight times.

"Yes, north Idaho is an interesting place. Lots of members talk about guns and sometimes show them to us. I feel sick when I handle a gun.

"Our landlord has a stupid blue heeler who barks at us all the time. He's on a big line in the backyard, and he runs around until he wraps himself around a pole. If you leave him alone he barks and whines. If you release him he gets excited and pees on you. Our neighbor is a member and he wants to shoot him. I wouldn't mind that.

"I can't think of anything else I want to add. I could add more but I don't know how much time I have.

"Love,

"Elder Melville"

(An update on some of the things in the letter--Kim never got baptized, but Katelyn [the one who dropped us on this week] ended up getting baptized about two months later.  Brother Jones never married Elf.)

 2008. That morning Elder Condie and I went to help a member move in. Brother Longhurst had ridden his bike there. There were a lot of members there helping. This was a workday, despite it being a Monday (which were generally P-days), but due to an abominable companionship, we didn't really work. Elder Condie did about a triple no-no by writing up a story about a past transgression and typing it up on the Welshes' computer (the Welshes were the old couple we lived with). I don't know what I did when he was doing that; I probably did some paperwork. I had to call one Sister Kearl in the Greenbluff Ward to tell her that we couldn't come to her family barbecue. We cancelled that appointment so we could go to the Northpointe Ward barbecue, but we didn't tell Sister Kearl that was the reason. Sister Kearl said, "I thought you could do whatever you wanted on Mondays." When I told Elder Condie she had said that, he said that even if we didn't have the other barbecue, why would we want to give up our P-day to have dinner with members? Then we went to the Northpointe ward party, which was at the park next to Brentwood Elementary and across the street from the "Regina Building," the Spokane North stake center. We were pleased with the turnout; Cindy Neely, an eternal investigator, and her friends came. We and Brother Palmer, our ward mission leader, counted ten nonmembers there, thanks to our efforts and some of the youths' friends. The ward played Capture the Flag; we elders did as well. Elder Condie changed into his shorts and Superhero t-shirt, but I stayed in "pross," although I might have taken my tie off. Elder Condie was pretty good. Some young girls (11 or 12 years old), a Sant and a Johnson, cheered for us, but they gave us silly nicknames: I think mine was Elder Melon and Elder Condie was Elder Condog. After Capture the Flag, the ward played football, but since I don't play football, I got my ladybug kite out and flew it in the school's field. A member who was visiting from Idaho came and talked to me. There was an annoying dog that kept chasing my kite. I got green pollen all over my black shoes; I thought it looked cool. After the party, I insisted on going to the Peone Cemetery. There, I reasoned, if anyone wanted to talk about life after death, we could talk to them. But when we got there I said it would probably be in poor taste to go up to talk to people, so we would be there if they wanted to approach us. There were many tombstones that said things like "Families Are Forever." We even saw one Turnidge stone with the Provo Temple on it; we were well-acquainted with the Turnidges; most (or all) of them were less active. We saw lots of Bible verses on the stones; Elder Condie speculated they weren't allowed to put Book of Mormon scriptures on the stones, but I found that unlikely. We saw the tombstone of the Welshes' son, whose death nearly five months earlier was announced to Sister Welsh while I was holding her hand. I wanted to take a picture, but Elder Condie forbade me.

2007. All I remember is that we had spent the weekend in Fillmore, in my late grandparents' backyard. I think this might have been the time we looked at Christmas lights in one of the sheds and I wanted to take some home. I was wearing my red t-shirt with Snoopy and Woodstock in Uncle Sam costumes; it was my first time wearing it. On the drive home, I sat in the front seat and my mom sat in the middle seat with Allie, who watched The Little Mermaid on a portable DVD player.

2006-2000. So it has always been a family tradition that we go camping on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. Since there are so many years that are the same, and since we camped over the course of a few days, and since it happened twice a year, I don't know exactly what happened on Memorial Days. But then, out of the blue, I remember something from

1999. After we came home, I remember going to get dinner at Gringo's Mexican restaurant. I also got some Tic-Tacs from a gas station. And I remember something about the movie Antz; either we rented it or it was on TV. I don't think I watched it.

1998-before. Same story as 2000-2006 :(

That's it! Like always, I'll probably remember something after I post...