I was reading an excert from a hilarious book by Elna Baker called The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance and I thought wow, that brings back memories.(Wow, that's a long title, huh?!)
I got some fairly non-useful advice when I was a teenager too. It was the early 1980's. My mother said these two brilliant things: Never ask a boy out on a date. [too aggressive] AND Never have sex with anyone you're not married to - EVER.
Yep, Mom was a time traveler from 1956.
But I digress. I really wanted to publish an excerpt from Elna's book. She also has a cute website. I hope I am not going to tick her off. I am trying to help her sell books here. I admire her moxie in publishing it. So here goes, if you need a good laugh for today:
"I remember when I got my acceptance letter from BYU via the British
Royal Mail. I opened the thick envelope, looked at the emblem of the
busy honeybees all working together, and then read the word
"Congratulations." It felt good. Any letter of acceptance makes you
feel good. But when I got my letter of acceptance to NYU, something
was different. I opened the package on my way up to my room, read
the word "Congratulations," and started to sob, right there on
the stairs. I sat down and I cried. I didn't realize how much
getting into NYU meant to me until I had those huge tears pouring
down my cheeks. And that's when I knew I had to go to New York City.
My mother was terrified. She's the more conservative of my parents,
and when she's not busy being a mom, she spends her time forwarding
cheesy e-mails about Christian miracles, or signing petitions
against Abercrombie & Fitch's pornographic ads. To her, New York was
the city from the movies made in the seventies, where you heard
gunshots out your window and pimps screaming at hos. Not that there
were many scenes like that in the PG-rated movies my mother was
inclined to watch. But still, New York was a scary, dangerous place.
A month before I went off to college, she sat me down for a
mother-daughter talk.
"Elna," she said nervously. "The first thing that will happen when
you move to New York is, you might start to swear."
I wanted to say, "Oh 's hit,' really?" But I knew that only my dad
would think that was funny. Instead I nodded my head and said, "Mmm
hmm."
"And Elna," she continued, "swearing will lead to drinking."
I had somehow missed the connection.
"And drinking will lead to doing drugs."
The conversation was starting to get more amusing than even I had
anticipated. "And Elna," she said, pursing her lips and looking
directly into my eyes, "what would you do if a lesbian tried to make
out with you?"
I didn't think double takes existed outside of "Three's Company"
until that moment. I was used to her saying words like "church
calling, relief society," and "bishopric meeting." Not the word
"lesbian," let alone "lesbian" and "make out" in the same sentence.
It was awesome. But I was also slightly offended. If you followed my
mother's logic, each step was a progression toward becoming more of
a sinner. First I'd swear, then I'd drink, then I'd do drugs. By
that point I was getting used to the narrative, so I assumed sex
with men would be next. But no--my mother skipped that altogether
and jumped to my becoming a lesbian. Did my mother honestly think
that I had a better chance of getting action from a woman than a
man?
These are all questions I didn't ask her directly. But at this point
I'd almost forgotten she'd asked me anything: What would I do if a
lesbian tried to make out with me?
She was sitting there, arms folded, waiting for an answer.
"I'd say, 'No, thank you...lesbian.'"
My mother rolled her eyes. "There's one more thing," she said,
resuming our heart-to-heart.
"Sex with men, sex with men, sex with men."
"There are these clubs in New York where men pay larger women to
dance with very little clothing on; don't do that."
Our mother-daughter talk ended with that golden nugget of wisdom. I
left thinking, "Great, my mom thinks I'm moving to the big city to
become a lesbian stripper. Apparently, when she told me I was
"special," this is what she meant.
"My father sat me down a few days later for another leaving-the-nest
talk. His advice was a little different.
"Elna," he began, "never forget these three things." He paused for
dramatic effect. "Number One: Never wear a dead man's socks. Number
Two: Never let 'em see you sweat. And Number Three: Never touch a
fat man's stomach."
I waited for him to clarify, to add a line that would somehow make
all the other words he'd said make sense. But he just patted me on
the shoulder and left me in the living room to contemplate his
wisdom.
That was all the advice I was given before moving to New York City.
I wanted more, or at the very least a tender good-bye. Only this
was interrupted when the check-in clerk announced that my bag was
too heavy. My father opened it in the middle of the terminal. I
watched as he pulled out items of sentimental value, told me I
didn't need them, and threw them away.
That's when my mother saw it, among my tightly folded clothes: a
rainbow scarf. I wasn't keeping it from her. I'd owned it for
several years, and had purchased it because it reminded me of Punky
Brewster in a retro eighties sort of way. She snatched it out of my
suitcase."
If you want to leave a comment and let me know the extent of the parental or dating advice you got as a teenager, feel free.
