So there I was, sitting in the BYU lecture room that served as a chapel for my Young Adult ward in Provo, waiting for sacrament meeting to begin, talking to a girl who sparked a certain interest in me. I have to confess that I don't remember her name anymore—this would have been around the middle of 1994—but since she did have a few brains in her head, we'll call her Minerva.
So there Minerva and I were, chatting before church, when she asked me if I were going to attend choir practice after the regular meetings were over. Now, Minerva had been working on me for weeks, trying to get me to come to choir practice—perhaps sensing that this young backslider needed a certain extracurricular involvement with the ward to keep him from slipping into complete inactivity and apostasy—but she hadn't yet succeeded. I mean, after three solid hours of church meetings, who wants to hang around singing hosannas for another hour?
Most of my excuses were pretty lame, but that particular week I actually had a good one—and a true one, no less. "I can't come to choir practice," quoth I, "because I have to drive my friend Scott up to Salt Lake for a movie audition."
"On a Sunday?" she said.
"That's when they do them," I said.
"Why do you have to drive him?" Minerva asked.
"Because his car doesn't work. I drove him up yesterday, too. They must like him, because he got called back."
"What's the movie?" she asked—perhaps in an attempt to catch me out.
"Halloween 6," I said.
Her face wrinkled in revulsion. "Oh, you're kidding!" she said. "Is he LDS?"
"Yes."
"Well, I hope he doesn't get the part."
I took a deep breath to calm myself. "Look," I said, "my friend Scott works in a nursing home. He has a wife, three kids and one more on the way, and he doesn't make a whole lot of money. But he's also in the Screen Actors Guild, so when he can get a part in a movie or a television show, it means he gets scale, which is about five hundred dollars a day for every day he works. Now, his not getting this part could mean the difference between his children eating or not eating this month."
Then I simply sat back and blinked my eyes, blank-faced.
"Oh," said Minerva. "Well, um, I guess that wouldn't be such a good thing after all . . . "
Oh, those pesky ethical dilemmas! (You try soaking, you try scrubbing . . .) Don't you just love seeing someone full of confidence and self-righteousness, and shoving a big muddy one right in their pious little mug? I sure do.
Hmmm. Maybe that's why the relationship never went anywhere . . .
