Mama would have been nearly seven months pregnant with me at that time. She already had two little girls — 4-year-old Rosalynde and 2-year-old Gabrielle — and if I’m remembering correctly, they were living in a starter house on Harmony Place, a small cul-de-sac whose idyllic name belied the very large, frightening dog that lived next door. My parents had been married for nearly five years by then, and Daddy was probably working at his first post-law school firm in nearby Los Angeles.

Mama heard about it first. I think there had been a press conference in Salt Lake City, and it had come through on a local radio station. She stopped everything and called Daddy at work — probably a rare occasion, since Los Angeles was a different zip code, so it would have been an expensive long-distance call. Daddy answered, Mama told him, and both of them started weeping. I think I remember hearing that they kneeled down and prayed together, right there on the phone, right there in the office, and thanked God that no worthy man would ever again be denied the opportunity to hold and exercise the holy priesthood.

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I missed the Eighties. Despite being born in 1978 and raised just 20 minutes outside of L.A., I managed never to see Magic Johnson’s famous hook shot that brought the Lakers to victory over the Celtics in 1987. In fact, if a Trivial Pursuit title were in the balance, I probably wouldn’t have been able even to name that classic ‘80s rivalry. Until a couple of months ago, when life gave me a second chance at my most formative decade.

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No, this isn’t as scandalous as it sounds. Just some simple data collection. Where’s your favorite place to blog?

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Courtesy of a friendly reminder from Science Friday, Mormon Mentality is happy to celebrate this common bane of middle schoolers’ existence. How many digits can you do?

3.14159…

I learned a new word yesterday.

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Well, folks, the time has come to quit your day jobs: Mormon Mentality got a shout-out in Des News’s weekly bloggernacle feature! I, for one, expect some sort of book contract to come rolling around next. Thanks, Emily Jensen, for spotlighting Mormon Mentality in this week’s article.

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The public has made its will known, and ESO has joined us as a permablogger! Welcome, cousin (hey, and don’t forget what we discussed about a possible running mate for the Odhiambo ‘48 ticket. Odhiambo-Sloan: Hope for the Future, right?).

Nepotism Alert: If this introduction sounds just a little too glowing, perhaps that’s because eso is my super-cool East Coast cousin who, along with her sisters, has been the arbiter of taste in my extended family for decades. One of my favorite parts of visiting my New York cousins is sitting around and listening to them talk. They represent the full spectrum of political and cultural opinion (I’ll leave it to you to figure out where eso falls), and if you want a statement on international development in eastern Europe, the latest education legislation up for debate, travel tips for France, or the hot new Broadway hit, there’s a sister who can deliver for you.

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More politics. Sorry folks, I watched my very first live debate from beginning to end two weeks ago, and I have all of the exuberance of a new addict.

(N. B. I’m ashamed to say that until the age of…oh, 24 or so, I just handed my vote over to my dad, who diligently filled out an absentee ballot for me every November. Has anyone considered the political implications of large Mormon families with lazy college-aged children who allow their parents to vote for them?)

The kerfuffle (Curfuphle? Kurphufle?) among the Democrats these days is, of course, who’s going to win South Carolina, and All Things Considered did an interview this evening with a group of black female voters to find out whom they favored: Hilary the woman or Obama the black man?

Identity politics indeed. Read more »

Christmas started in September that year. A friend in my singles ward—the ward choir director, and an intimidatingly good musician—approached me and asked if I wanted to sing in her Christmas choir. She was applying for a masters program in choral conducting and wanted both the conducting experience and some video footage of the rehearsals and concert, a requirement for her application. The choir would be rehearsing two times a week, an hour and a half each time, for 16 weeks. Attendance was mandatory. No chattiness. We’d all be buying copies of the music since copyright laws really were important. This was not ward choir. Read more »

Things I Did Instead of Writing a Post:

• Cleaned out my inbox. 107 unread messages. 230 unreturned messages. I’m down to 10.

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[Fantasy Football Stats: Nerds of Titanium: 6 and 2] 

Whereby Naomi Frandsen Sloan pledges to eschew: 

Cookies, candy, ice cream, and sugary foods, including: jam, sugary cereals, muffins, juice, and other things such as she knows are not good for her. 

Which means that as I write this post, I am without my usual stimulant of semi-sweet chocolate chips, consumed by the handful every time I stop to think.

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My second Friday. That’s when I understood exactly whom I had married. Read more »