Christmas Phone Books
My brother David marches to the beat of his own drum. I hope he'll forgive me for writing this, but he was always a little different. In the brutal propaganda camp that is the public school system, he never quite fit in. In part it was because of his gifts. He was a piano prodigy. He composed and played at a genius level. I remember him winning a state-wide competition at the age of 9. All of the other finalists were adults with already accomplished careers in music.
This wasn't his only gift. He had a gift for languages, mastering them quickly and building a high tolerance for studying them. He was fluent in French long before he was called, at 19, to serve a church mission in Belgium. Today, he is fluent in French, Spanish, and German, but has studied and can get by in Russian, Japanese, and many other more exotic languages. At any time, you are likely to find him with a dog-earred book on Mayan or Mandarin grammar.
He developed a deep interest in geography and meteorology, studying weather patterns and eventually running--as a teenager--the weather station for Orem, Utah. Yep, my brother David was the one reporting on temperatures, precipitation, wind, humidity, etc. for the National Weather Service.
He had a near-photographic memory. While the rest of us were cuddled in bed with storybooks, he was reading the World Book encyclopedias. He kept a set in his bedroom and read them constantly, memorizing as he went. He would hand Kj, Ntanya, or me a volume of the Encyclopedia and pay us a nickel for every question we would ask him, just so he could answer them. Name any place in the world, and he could tell you facts about it--where it was, its largest river, its average precipitation, its major imports and exports, facts about its language, culture, people . . . . if it was in the encyclopedia, he knew it.
These interests and tastes put him out of step with others his age. There were adults who recognized and nurtured his abilities--his piano teacher, the man who helped him get set up in the weather station, the short hairy geography teacher at the high school, the man who let him play the bells in the huge tower at BYU. But while he had a small circle of friends, he was lonely and often teased. The boys at church were particularly cruel. They ridiculed and excluded him. They sought him out and tormented him. The kids at school mostly ignored him. He was classical music in a world of bubble-gum pop.
He never learned the art of the come-back or the put-down. He never learned the sarcasm that helps most teenagers survive being in such close proximity with so many others like them. He never learned the tricks of conformity that most teens grasp quickly--how to dim your own light so that you don't draw attention to your shine. He never learned how to dumb down and fit in. He had no defensive maneuvers. I remember our bishop's apt description of him as "without guile."
But I am digressing. All this takes me away from the story I wanted to tell . . .
I was always looking for ways to make money. Mostly because there were so many things that I wanted to buy. I coveted nice clothes--something my parents didn't understand or provide funds for. So I developed an entrepreneurial streak. I made and sold "hot pads"--not a great success. I started a refreshments business--much more of a success (on Monday nights--the designated "family" night for Mormons all over, but observed religiously in Orem--I would bake treats and take them around the ward in our red wagon, selling them as refreshments for "Family Home Evening." A kind of mobile bake sale.). But once again, I am digressing.
My parents would keep an eye out for job opportunities for me and my siblings. One year my Dad saw an ad in the newspaper looking for people to deliver the new year's phone books. He picked up a load of them in our station wagon. The gig was simple--we were given the books, plastic bags to put them in, and a map. We had to put the books in the bags and leave one on the doorstep of every house in our assigned area. As soon as we had delivered all the books, we could pick up another load until they had all been doled out.
Christmas was near, and I was excited to earn extra money to buy gifts. I was a little crestfallen, however, by two things. First, the weather. There was snow on the ground, the roads were icy, the air was freezing cold, and wet snow fell from time-to-time. Second, the delivery area my dad chosen. Thinking it would be convenient, he picked up the books for an area near our home--a few miles away, up the hill. Northridge. Not only were these houses in a very hilly area with long, steep climbs to the front doors, this was where all the "rich kids" who attended our high school lived. I went to much effort to appear at school as though I fit in with these kids. To be delivering phone books to their homes in our beat-up old green station wagon with my brothers and sisters was mortifying. But greed outweighed cold and embarrassment.
We all got in on the work. David, me, Kjrsten, Ntanya, and Leif. We came up with a pretty good system: one person would drive (David or me), one would sit next to the books and stuff them in bags, and the rest were runners. This was the hardest work. Taking several books at a time, the runners would run from house to house placing books on front porches. It was a lot like climbing Everest--up steep inclines to front doors in the snow and ice.
I had the added work of vigilance as I tried to avoid being seen, especially by anyone I knew. Winter trappings made this easier. I wore a hat and scarf that largely hid my face, and I kept my eyes averted at every home and as every car passed.
We started in the mid-morning, and for a while, we had a great rhythm going. We tried to keep the pace fast enough that the driver would never have to use the brake. The car would just coast slowly up the street and the person stuffing bags would toss books to the runners on the fly. When someone got too cold or tired, they would come back to the car to take a turn at stuffing bags or just to take a break and warm their hands. As the hours wore on, there were time when we were all in the car, trying to get warm enough to go back out again. That has a downside, of course, because feeling nice and warm after running in the cold doesn't motivate one very well to get up and try running in the cold some more. The work slowed down.
My mom drove up in her car. She was a welcome sight, bringing sandwiches and hot chocolate. But then she took the younger kids home. Now it was just Kj, David, and me. For all our labor, the pile of phonebooks in the back of the car seemed barely dented.
Now the work went very slowly. We were cold, we were tired, we were bored. The only saving grace was that I hadn't run into anyone I knew. A relief. I had been preparing my come-backs and put-downs for when I was teased about it in school, but maybe they wouldn't be needed. I thought I had succeeded in doing the work unnoticed. I had not shared these fears with anyone--that would let them know that I cared about what other people thought of me, and for years I had been studiously cultivating the "I couldn't care less" attitude.
At dusk, after a long day, the end was finally in sight. We could count down the books left in the back of the car. We all got a little bit of a second wind. I was taking my turn as driver when exuberance got the better of David.
He was jogging just behind the car down the middle of the street when he began shouting at the top of his lungs: "we are not delivering phone books because we need the money!!!!" Then again, stopping to emphasize each word, "WE ARE NOT DELIVERING PHONE BOOKS BECAUSE WE NEED THE MONEY!!!"
Embarrassment. Horror. Mortification. But the yelling continued. He must have felt that his initial statement needed explanation, because he began adding to his mantra as he went: sometimes, "THIS IS NOT OUR ONLY CAR!!!!", other times, "MY FATHER IS A VERY IMPORTANT MAN!!!"
We earned a total of $40 for our work that day. Divide that 5 ways, subtract gas and the money we spent on a trip to 7-11, and that was the cost of my false pride.
Looking back now, I wish I had had David's fearlessness. He was loud, proud, and having a great time, while I was hiding and hoping not to be noticed. Go David.
This wasn't his only gift. He had a gift for languages, mastering them quickly and building a high tolerance for studying them. He was fluent in French long before he was called, at 19, to serve a church mission in Belgium. Today, he is fluent in French, Spanish, and German, but has studied and can get by in Russian, Japanese, and many other more exotic languages. At any time, you are likely to find him with a dog-earred book on Mayan or Mandarin grammar.
He developed a deep interest in geography and meteorology, studying weather patterns and eventually running--as a teenager--the weather station for Orem, Utah. Yep, my brother David was the one reporting on temperatures, precipitation, wind, humidity, etc. for the National Weather Service.
He had a near-photographic memory. While the rest of us were cuddled in bed with storybooks, he was reading the World Book encyclopedias. He kept a set in his bedroom and read them constantly, memorizing as he went. He would hand Kj, Ntanya, or me a volume of the Encyclopedia and pay us a nickel for every question we would ask him, just so he could answer them. Name any place in the world, and he could tell you facts about it--where it was, its largest river, its average precipitation, its major imports and exports, facts about its language, culture, people . . . . if it was in the encyclopedia, he knew it.
These interests and tastes put him out of step with others his age. There were adults who recognized and nurtured his abilities--his piano teacher, the man who helped him get set up in the weather station, the short hairy geography teacher at the high school, the man who let him play the bells in the huge tower at BYU. But while he had a small circle of friends, he was lonely and often teased. The boys at church were particularly cruel. They ridiculed and excluded him. They sought him out and tormented him. The kids at school mostly ignored him. He was classical music in a world of bubble-gum pop.
He never learned the art of the come-back or the put-down. He never learned the sarcasm that helps most teenagers survive being in such close proximity with so many others like them. He never learned the tricks of conformity that most teens grasp quickly--how to dim your own light so that you don't draw attention to your shine. He never learned how to dumb down and fit in. He had no defensive maneuvers. I remember our bishop's apt description of him as "without guile."
But I am digressing. All this takes me away from the story I wanted to tell . . .
I was always looking for ways to make money. Mostly because there were so many things that I wanted to buy. I coveted nice clothes--something my parents didn't understand or provide funds for. So I developed an entrepreneurial streak. I made and sold "hot pads"--not a great success. I started a refreshments business--much more of a success (on Monday nights--the designated "family" night for Mormons all over, but observed religiously in Orem--I would bake treats and take them around the ward in our red wagon, selling them as refreshments for "Family Home Evening." A kind of mobile bake sale.). But once again, I am digressing.
My parents would keep an eye out for job opportunities for me and my siblings. One year my Dad saw an ad in the newspaper looking for people to deliver the new year's phone books. He picked up a load of them in our station wagon. The gig was simple--we were given the books, plastic bags to put them in, and a map. We had to put the books in the bags and leave one on the doorstep of every house in our assigned area. As soon as we had delivered all the books, we could pick up another load until they had all been doled out.
Christmas was near, and I was excited to earn extra money to buy gifts. I was a little crestfallen, however, by two things. First, the weather. There was snow on the ground, the roads were icy, the air was freezing cold, and wet snow fell from time-to-time. Second, the delivery area my dad chosen. Thinking it would be convenient, he picked up the books for an area near our home--a few miles away, up the hill. Northridge. Not only were these houses in a very hilly area with long, steep climbs to the front doors, this was where all the "rich kids" who attended our high school lived. I went to much effort to appear at school as though I fit in with these kids. To be delivering phone books to their homes in our beat-up old green station wagon with my brothers and sisters was mortifying. But greed outweighed cold and embarrassment.
We all got in on the work. David, me, Kjrsten, Ntanya, and Leif. We came up with a pretty good system: one person would drive (David or me), one would sit next to the books and stuff them in bags, and the rest were runners. This was the hardest work. Taking several books at a time, the runners would run from house to house placing books on front porches. It was a lot like climbing Everest--up steep inclines to front doors in the snow and ice.
I had the added work of vigilance as I tried to avoid being seen, especially by anyone I knew. Winter trappings made this easier. I wore a hat and scarf that largely hid my face, and I kept my eyes averted at every home and as every car passed.
We started in the mid-morning, and for a while, we had a great rhythm going. We tried to keep the pace fast enough that the driver would never have to use the brake. The car would just coast slowly up the street and the person stuffing bags would toss books to the runners on the fly. When someone got too cold or tired, they would come back to the car to take a turn at stuffing bags or just to take a break and warm their hands. As the hours wore on, there were time when we were all in the car, trying to get warm enough to go back out again. That has a downside, of course, because feeling nice and warm after running in the cold doesn't motivate one very well to get up and try running in the cold some more. The work slowed down.
My mom drove up in her car. She was a welcome sight, bringing sandwiches and hot chocolate. But then she took the younger kids home. Now it was just Kj, David, and me. For all our labor, the pile of phonebooks in the back of the car seemed barely dented.
Now the work went very slowly. We were cold, we were tired, we were bored. The only saving grace was that I hadn't run into anyone I knew. A relief. I had been preparing my come-backs and put-downs for when I was teased about it in school, but maybe they wouldn't be needed. I thought I had succeeded in doing the work unnoticed. I had not shared these fears with anyone--that would let them know that I cared about what other people thought of me, and for years I had been studiously cultivating the "I couldn't care less" attitude.
At dusk, after a long day, the end was finally in sight. We could count down the books left in the back of the car. We all got a little bit of a second wind. I was taking my turn as driver when exuberance got the better of David.
He was jogging just behind the car down the middle of the street when he began shouting at the top of his lungs: "we are not delivering phone books because we need the money!!!!" Then again, stopping to emphasize each word, "WE ARE NOT DELIVERING PHONE BOOKS BECAUSE WE NEED THE MONEY!!!"
Embarrassment. Horror. Mortification. But the yelling continued. He must have felt that his initial statement needed explanation, because he began adding to his mantra as he went: sometimes, "THIS IS NOT OUR ONLY CAR!!!!", other times, "MY FATHER IS A VERY IMPORTANT MAN!!!"
We earned a total of $40 for our work that day. Divide that 5 ways, subtract gas and the money we spent on a trip to 7-11, and that was the cost of my false pride.
Looking back now, I wish I had had David's fearlessness. He was loud, proud, and having a great time, while I was hiding and hoping not to be noticed. Go David.
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