A Little Reminisce…

Let me take just a minute from my cleaning to share one of my most embarrassing experiences with you—one that might not have been quite as embarrassing as playing footsie under the table with my father-in-law just hours after meeting him, but one that lasted much longer and was known about by more people…

 

When I arrived at BYU for my sophomore year I had a new-to-me stereo system in tow and I was pretty excited about it.  (This was before the days of boom boxes or compact discs, or really compact anything.)  I quickly saw that there wasn’t a good place in my apartment bedroom to place the stereo.  One thing led to another and I found myself and a 4x8 piece of plywood in the wood shop located in the basement of the student center.

There, a kind young man responded to my need for a corner shelf by helping me design it and then teaching me how to cut it using the table saw.

 

When the shelf was done and ready to be taken to my apartment, he pointed out that I still had a lot of plywood left and asked what I was going to do with it.  I had no idea.  He suggested that I could make a small bookcase.  I thought that sounded like a great plan.

Over the next few weeks he helped me design and then assemble a small bookcase.  I enjoyed working with the wood tools, but I also enjoyed visiting with the wood shop guy.  One night my cousin and I even took him brownies. 

 

A few weeks later my little bookshelf was almost done and it was time to be thinking of the girls preference dance.   I settled on two possible victims; my family home evening brother, or the helpful wood shop guy.  On a whim I picked up the student directory to look up the wood shop guy’s address.

What I saw was at first incomprehensible to me.

The wood shop guy lived in married student housing.

 

How could this be, I wondered?  He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring!  He’d never mentioned a wife!!  He’d said thank you for the brownies!!!

What was I going to do?  While it was obvious I’d have to chose the other option for my date (a lack-luster evening forgotten years ago) the other obvious issue was my bookshelf, which was still not quite finished.  How on earth was I going to finish it, when I could clearly never show my face in the wood shop again???

 

As the days passed I rationalized to myself that I could, indeed, go back and finish my bookshelf.  After all, I comforted myself, he had know all along he was married.  He had been pleasant and helpful because that’s what he was paid to do.  And hopefully I could finish the bookshelf quickly.

The next time I was in the wood shop working the phone rang.  After he got off the phone we had a short conversation that went like this:

Him: My wife needs me to pick up some cough syrup for the baby.

Me: You have a baby?  How old?  What kind?

Him: Oh, didn’t I ever tell you that I have a baby?

Me: Uh, no. 
         (while shrieking in my mind “You never told me you had a wife!!!!)

 

I’ll spare you any more details, other than to say that I later found out that everyone who worked in the basement of the student center had known and been entertained by the fact that a co-ed was putting the moves on a married man.  As I was finishing the bookshelf the wood shop guy set me up with a friend of his. We went out a couple of times and he was all excited to take me to meet his mission president, but I turned him down so that I could spend more time with a nice guy I’d just started dating…so it all worked out ok in the end…

my humble bookshelf, all these years later…getting ready to go into storage…