Geeks, Lizards and Zombies

If you know me at all, you're very aware of the fact that I'm a bit of a geek.  I openly embrace it.  I am not ashamed of my geekish tendencies.  However, you may not be aware of a certain aspect of my geekiness.  It turns out I'm a bit of a dinosaur geek.  I've always had something for dinosaurs.  I mean, they're great big lizards.  How could you not think that is awesome?

It should be noted that a big part of the reason I'm able to read is because of dinosaurs.  When I was a small child, I loved to be read to about dinosaurs.  I would pretend to be every dinosaur in the book.  I'm sure my mom tired of reading me my dinosaur book over and over.

When it came time to go to Kindergarten, I was afraid to go.  My mom promised me that if I went to Kindergarten, I would be able to read.  I eagerly went to school, with a laser like focus.  Every moment had specific intent to give me the ability to read about dinosaurs.  I was really cranky when I came home the first day and still couldn't read the dinosaur book. (They didn't even try to teach me).  The good news is that I eventually learned and have spent plenty of time reading about dinosaurs since.

This past weekend Robyn let me indulge some of my dinosaur obsession.  We went to Vernal where there is a famous dinosaur museum.  It was a lot of fun.  I'm still geeking out about it.

One is an Allosaurus, the other is me.  Can you tell the difference?

I'm so good at blending in.

It's a dinosaur.  It's also a zombie.  Does it get any cooler?

You would be scared too.  Don't judge.

What Happened to Honesty?

I've had thoughts on this subject for a long time. But the events of the past few weeks have made those thoughts come closer to the surface of my mind.

What happened to honesty? Why don't people keep their word? I have a very vivid memory of the first time I discovered that other people didn't think it was important to tell the truth. I was in second or third grade, I was in the lunch room. As children do, somebody mixed up a few different foods and made an unappetizing concoction. One of the other kids put a dollar on the table and said that he would give it to whomever would eat the mush that had been created. I quickly reviewed in my head what was in this undesirable mix and decided that there was nothing inedible in it. The taste may not be desirable but that would be over in moments. Clearly the transaction was worth a dollar. In my first experience in the services industry, I became a contractor that ate something gross in exchange for compensation.

Of course, we had no written contract, but in my eyes, why would we need one?  I promptly ate the mush.  In exchange, this other little boy pointed at me and laughed, while saying scornfully, "I totally tricked you, why would I pay you?"  Of course, I was faster than him and I grabbed his dollar before he could, and made no offer to return it to him.  (Was that dishonest of me?  It's debatable, but I recognize I was certainly not perfect in this transaction.)

That was the first time I realized that people don't tell the truth.  As a little boy, it baffled me that someone would make an offer they didn't intend to honor.

Throughout my life I have been baffled by the rampant dishonesty around me.  When I lived in BYU housing and signed the honor code, it really bothered me that there were so few around me that took the honor code seriously.  Did I think some of the rules were really stupid?  Absolutely!  But I signed a paper saying I would keep those rules.  When midnight came and I kicked girls out, occasionally some were offended, but my integrity was more important than their feelings at that moment.  (I did try to do it nicely, and tried to give warning before midnight, and most girls understood because they also had signed the honor code, but some of the most offended were a few that had signed it but didn't think they actually had to honor what they signed.)

That brings me to the present.  For those of you who don't know, Robyn and I are in the process of buying a house.  We're really excited about it, it has a beautiful mountain view, (because I didn't want to give up my current mountain view) Robyn gets the master bathroom she's always wanted, and it has an unfinished basement which will hold my library and my sweet home theater room in the future.  We're not selling our current house, though.  We're going to keep it as a rental property.  Part of the reason for this is that its value significantly dropped after I purchased the house.  If we sell it, we'll lose a bunch of money, so we want to hold onto it until the value comes back.

So what is the honesty issue?  We've been approved for financing, but our loan officer has made us fax him copies of the lease agreements with our new renters and he's made us jump through all sorts of hoops.  He says that investors want to know that we're not going to walk away from the old house and let it go into foreclosure.  When he said that, I was blown away.  That had never even occurred to me as an option.  I thought about saying, "Well, I can fax them my mortgage that says I'll pay it off over the next 30 years unless I pay it sooner."  I figure the fact that I signed a contract and gave me word to actually honor the mortgage should be enough proof that I intent to honor it.  I mean, I know it's not their fault that the contract I signed doesn't mean anything to them.  So many people are just walking away from signed contracts.  No one honors their word anymore.

People say things like, "The bank shouldn't have given me a loan I couldn't afford."  What happened to personal responsibility?  If you can't afford a loan, don't get that loan.  Two people with the same income can't necessarily afford the same loan.  One may like to go out to dinner more than the other.  One may have a tendency to gamble.  One may have a sick family member.  These are all things that the individual should figure out for themselves.  This is not the responsibility of the banks to figure out.  Your lack of forethought does not exempt you from your obligations when you sign that contract.

Sorry for my ranting.  I'm just frustrated with the difficulties we're having in proving that we really intend to rent out our house.  I just wish we could live in a world where my word would be enough, because people actually honor their word.  I'm not worried about whether we'll get the house.  I know we will, but we'll just have to jump through a lot of hoops before we do.  Meanwhile, I still believe in honesty.  Maybe, if you're reading this, you'll join me in making our world a place that honors honesty.

My Run in with the Law

It occurred to me that there are a great wealth of stories that happened before the inception of this blog.  It is a great tragedy to not share some of these stories.  I decided I should share the story of the time that I was picked up by the cops.  It's a good story.

I don't remember how old I was.  But I do remember it was my birthday.  I was turning either 14 or 15.  I had an overnight party.  We decided it was imperative that we toilet paper a house.

You have to understand that there was a period in my youth where toilet papering was the thing we did.  There's something magical about the long streams of toilet paper attached to the top of the tree and flowing in the wind all the way down.

Anyway, there were two girls in our neighborhood that lived across the street from each other.  They were fun and cute so they were natural targets for these sorts of things.

We did one house and then debated whether to do the second across the street.  We were having so much fun we decided to keep going.  About 20 minutes later we were putting the finishing touches on the second house.  I always liked to put the empty rolls on the antenna of the cars.  I was placing them on a car that was parked on the street when I saw headlights approaching.

Of course, the car I was working on was parked on the street and there wasn't time to run far, so I just dove behind the car in hopes that the oncoming car would just drive by.  Unfortunately, it didn't drive by.  More unfortunately, it was a cop.

This is not the cop that was there that night.  But the cop did point kind of like this cop.

The officer stopped and got out of his car.  He said in his most authoritative tone, "I know you're behind the car.  Just stand up and show yourself."  Naturally, I obeyed.  He told all of his to reveal ourselves.  Everyone came out from behind bushes and cars, except for my friend Mike.  He started running away as fast as he could.

The officer yelled, "Come back right now."  At this point I wasn't sure what would happen.  Would he tase my friend?  Would he pull out his gun?  I figured if my friend got shot that might ruin my birthday.  Luckily, my friend responded to the cop's command and returned to the group.  (I still wonder what the cop would have done if he didn't obey.)

The cop took down all of our names.  He asked us who was the ring leader of the group.  Everyone pointed to me.  He called my mom and asked if she knew where I was.  "Yes, he's out toilet papering a house."  (I always told my mom where I was going.  I had a bad experience once when I snuck out.  Maybe I'll write about that later.)  The cop asked how many houses we were doing.  "They were doing 1 and possibly a second."  The cop told her he believed we had done 3.

He told us that we weren't in big trouble.  He said he did the same thing when he was our age, but he said we had to clean up all 3 houses.  We were confused, we had clearly only done two.  But we commenced to clean up the two that we had done.  Of course, this was a great tragedy to me.  I felt that toilet papering was an art form.  (Maybe I'll write later about the time I toilet papered my own house just because we had such excellent trees.)  I didn't mind being the one to clean it up.  I just wanted our recipients to see it first.  I tried to bargain with the cop that I would come back at 10 AM and clean it up but he would have none of it.

Since we had already been caught, I think that our commitment to being stealthy was over.  As such, as we were cleaning it up, the mom woke up and came outside to see what was happening.  My friend Cyle was standing right next to the front door when she came out.  When he saw her he just said, "It wasn't me, it was Jeff Stockett."  I have such courageous friends.

After cleaning up the two houses we were told we needed to clean up the third house.  We tried to explain that we had only done 2 houses, but again, he would have none of it.  He marched us to the 3rd house about 3 blocks away.  He drove his car as we walked along side it.

When we got there we were amazed.  Remember I told you that it was an art form?  Well, we had come to clean up the work of Rembrandt.  Every stream went to the very top of the 40 foot tree.  The flowing toilet paper was truly beautiful.  We were honored that the cop considered our skill to be on par with these masters.  We tried to explain that, as honored as we were, it wasn't us.  He didn't care, he just wanted it cleaned up.

So there I was 30 feet in the air, pulling toilet paper out of a tree at 3 AM.  I think that's when I decided that my toilet papering career was over.  You should also know, that was the only time I was on the wrong side of the law (other than speeding tickets, those don't count.)