Comments on: Life Among the Mormons, 1970

By: Tatiana

Tatiana — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:07:07 +0000

Lol, Ardis, these are wonderful! =) (/easily amused)

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:31:24 +0000

[Self-edited unkind comment about the B School and people who go there.]

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:01:12 +0000

Doesn’t the business school at BYU have the informal motto “I’m a Mormon, and I believe in a profit”?

By: kevinf

kevinf — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:52:20 +0000

Mark B, your number 8 reminded me of a time as a freshman in college when I mentioned something about a church activity, with no charges involved for attending.

One of my non-member friends responded with “You don’t need to make a profit, you already have one!”

And this was, indeed, 1970. Seemed very funny at the time.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:21:57 +0000

Suuuuure, Steve, suuuure. (I’m guessing she was really a closet Trekkie, prophetically aware that Kirk would explain Spock’s odd behavior in ST IV by saying he had done “too much LDS in the ’60s.”)

By: Steve C.

Steve C. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:06:52 +0000

A clarification on my previous post–my mother was a straight arrow. There was so much in the media at the time about illicit drug use and my mother in her haste to fill out my enrollment form got confused.

By: Steve C.

Steve C. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:01:52 +0000

Those are interesting. I think Church magazines should do that more often.

My mother had a great one that she should have submitted (although, I’m not sure that the IE would have printed it due to its subject matter). I remember when my mother enrolled me in Kindergarten. It was 1970 and just a few months after Woodstock and Altamont. When the enrollment form asked for religion, my mother nearly wrote LSD instead of LDS.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:30:27 +0000

Well, um, uh, er, at least he’s giving everybody, Jewish and Christian alike, the credit of assuming we all honor our own Sabbath!

And yours is still funny 34 years later, Mark.

By: BruceC

BruceC — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:19:00 +0000

Well, I appreciate your nefarious plot, whatever it is. And since we are sharing laughs….
We just moved from Maryland to Tennessee. On the way home from church on that first Sunday, my nine year old son says to the missionaries riding in our car. “Look at all the Jew cars”.
Shocked, embarrased, and a little confused we asked him what he meant?
“Right there” as he points to the strip mall parking lot full of cars. Our old church was in the countryside. Our new church is in a major shopping district. So this was his first sight of other people shopping on Sunday. And in his mind people who shop on Sunday must be Jewish.

By: Mark B.

Mark B. — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:38:03 +0000

Ok, I overstated my case a little. I don’t want to spoil anybody’s fun.

And, I’ve doubled over in laughter at things that would just make others groan (like most of the tales above). I guess you just had to be there.

One day while tracting in the southern part of the lovely seaside village of Sakai, Japan (it’s actually a gritty industrial city of about 1 million just south of Osaka, a gritty industrial city of 3 million), a woman we met was surprised at the low cost of the Book of Mormon we were offering her–I think it was 250 yen, under $1.00 at the exchange rate back then. As she went back into the house to get her money, my companion said, in English, sotto voce: “Yeah, we’re not out here selling books for a profit.”

We sure thought it was funny 34 years ago.