Family Experiences.

My family has been in town for the past week and boy has it been wonderful. However, their timing is incredibly inconvenient given the fact that it is finals. But no matter, beggars can't be choosers. And I am officially a beggar for family time, given my summer plans.

       Anyway, one of my favorite things about being with my family is all of the ridiculous, humanly funny stuff that happens. These little jewels tend to crop up the most when the family is under stressful/unusual circumstances, which is actually pretty convenient when you think about it.

       First of all, last week my family got in a car accident. Some idiot girl dropped her drink and decided to  duck down and pick it up WHILE SHE WAS TURNING LEFT. Brilliant, I know. So naturally, she collided directly with my family's vehicle. Since she was completely ducked down under her dashboard, my mother's first thought before the collision was:

"There is nobody driving that car!!"

Haha. Yea. Sometimes stress and her brain don't get along.

Anyway, the car is in the shop now and they are driving a rental car. It's a Chevrolet Impala, nothing too exciting. But it's black and relatively new looking, so naturally my dad think it's cool and felt the need to inform my brother (who is home because of track) about it via text.

This was their conversation:
Dad's text:

"Riding a black impala. And it's raining."
Brother's response:

"What?"
Understandably, brother thought my dad was referring to an animal.

Sorry guys, we're out of cars. But we have this steed of an impala that you can rent. Just pile the family on and ride!

        Speaking of cars, the morning of my cousin's wedding, my aunt, sister, little brother and I didn't go to the sealing, so we were all given the assignment to leave Grandma's house at 9:30 and arrive at the temple in time to see cousin and hubbie come out after being sealed. Naturally, we didn't leave until 10. We were still on time though. Luckily, given the fact that we had to drive Grandma's fancy car. It's a white 2010 Prius with all of the gizmos and gadgets and way too advanced for our little brains.

        So aunty gets in the driver seat and realizes that the seat is raised to an unusual height. I consult the extraordinarily thick driver's handbook, and learn of magical things such as the "lane keeping assistant" which informs you when you are going outside of your lane, the "pre-collision system" which preps the car for collision when it deems an accident to be inevitable and the "adapted cruise control" which adjusts your speed in accordance to the speed of the cars around you. Wow. Basically, this car doesn't even need humans.

        The sad thing is we had no idea how to even use all of this stuff. When we started backing out of the garage and the "rearview camera" came on the console screen, my sister jumped out of the car, went to the back and danced around and we all watched her on the screen. That's about as far as we got in utilizing the technology.

        Eventually I found what I was looking for and informed aunty that there is in fact a "vertical height adjustment lever" located on her left side. She pulls lever. Wrong lever. She is now in a fully reclined position.

"Other lever," I add helpfully.

         When we finally got to the temple, my younger brother was about to pee his pants so I took him to the restroom as quick as I could. We went in to the women's so I could supervise him, just to be safe. Nobody else was in there and I breathed a sigh of relief. But then just after he washed his hands and we were leaving, a nice, matronly woman walked in. Before I could do anything, he shouted to her

"Hey! You're a man! Why are YOU in here?"

So awkward. I tried laughing it off. "He's just joking," I laughed to the woman. She smiled in a confused way and we just walked out as fast as possible.

           Then we waited in the temple waiting room. In my waiting, I observed a black man with a colorful beanie on his head and an alpaca blanket drooped around his shoulders and big boots. Not your typical temple waiting room attire. He had a crazed looking smile on his face. A nice, little elderly temple matron walked over to him in her white dress. She bent towards him slightly and gently asked,

"Are you here for a sealing?"

"Yeah!" he shouted enthusiastically. "Evvy time I'm here I'm here fo a sealin'!"

She looked doubtful and concerned.

"What's your party's name?"

His smile faded slightly.

"Uhhh...mmm... ehhh....I dunno."

A few minutes later I saw security escorting him out. He was still smiling.

If he has a reason to smile, we all do.

And apparently there's a rare degenerative neurological disease that's genetic on my father's side and a rogue mutant cancer gene on my mother's side that is so strange and rare that the Huntsman Cancer Institute is currently conducting a research case on it. Yep. I'm doomed. So enjoy me now world, while I'm whole and healthy because it's only going to go downhill from here.

Peace and blessings.

The end.