Record players

One of the very first electronic devices I learned to use was the record player in our old stereo. It was a combination stereo; it played cassette tapes and the radio and good old vinyl records. (The top popped up and you’d put the record there.) Of course, I only knew how to play one record: Johnny Mathis.

Why that one? Because it was the only one I’d ever seen played. Mom and Dad both liked his singing, so they’d pull out the record, put it in the record player, and dance in the living room.

Awwww.

Measuring Mom's belly for FHE

When Mom was pregnant with Shawn, Mom and Dad wanted to make sure that Nick and I felt some  excitement for a new child coming to the family.  Every week, we’d have Family Home Evening on Monday nights. Dad would get out the measuring tape and measure around Mom’s waist. We’d record the measurement on a piece of paper, so that each week we could see how the baby was growing.

Mom hated it, but I thought it was really cool.

Camping out in the backyard

Every summer after school got out, we'd set up a tent in the backyard. Every night, the boys would sleep out in the tent. Our bedrooms went nearly untouched. Sleeping out there was great for a few reasons. We never had to make our beds; just zip up a sleeping bag and you're done. It also served as a hangout place; we'd play board games and card games out in the tent, and we took my stereo out so we could have radio too.

I really enjoyed sleeping out there with Nick and Shawn. It was a great way for us to build a friendship with each other. When we had a sleepover, the friend would just sleep out with us. It was an awesome tradition.

(Incidentally, I still swear that we saw something really weird flying in the air one night when Jared was sleeping over in the tent. UFO? Who knows. But it definitely was flying, and definitely had lots of big lights underneath it, and it was definitely silent.  Probably some secret military thing.)

Selling cookies on the corner

Mom has a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that she got (I believe) from someone in the ward. When all the other kids were setting up lemonade stands on the corner, we set up cookie stands. It wasn’t long before we got quite a reputation—I remember a time when there were 4 cars lined up to get our cookies at 25 cents apiece.

We must have been pretty young when we started selling cookies on the corner. One day we had a couple cars lined up and the first car wanted 3 cookies. The driver didn’t have 3 quarters, though, so he just gave me a dollar and asked for change. I had never heard of change; despite the fact that Mom had sent us out with a jar of quarters to give change, I didn’t know how to do it. The driver tried to explain how it worked, but I was worried that he was trying to rip us off. So I said “Um… just a second” and ran inside to ask Mom.

Turns out the driver wasn’t trying to rip us off. Mom made sure to explain how to give change before we did our next stand.

Sliding down the stairs

Our house on Northshore Dr. had some L-shaped stairs leading down from right near the front door to the downstairs. Nick, Shawn, and I discovered that if we laid out the couch cushions on the stairs, we could get some decent speed sliding down the ten or so stairs on the long side of the L. On weekends, we’d slide down the stairs over and over with friends. We’d put one smaller cushion against the wall at the end to avoid poking holes in the walls. Eventually, though, sliding on the cushions wasn’t enough, so Nick (I’m sure it was Nick) tried sliding down the cushions on a sleeping bag.

At that point, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between sliding down the stairs and just diving down head first. It was FAST. Somehow, though, nobody broke a single bone and the stairs survived our abuse.

Learning to read

When I was only 2 or 3 years old, my parents started teaching me to read words. Dad got some posterboard and cut it into 4-in-wide strips. On each strip was written a single word with a red marker. Most of the words were fairly simple; cat, ball, dog, and the like. Mom and Dad taught me to sound out the words, and before long I could figure them out.

One strip, though, had a much longer word: refrigerator. I probably learned to read that one just by its length, but it was a good way to boost my confidence in reading big words. Before I turned 4 I was already reading pretty well.  Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Movie standards

One night when I was 8 or 9 years old, my parents decided to rent a movie for a family activity. We went down to the video rental store and they picked out Ladybugs (1992). It’s a movie about a guy who ends up coaching a girl’s soccer team, but sneaks his fiancée's son onto the team. (I didn't actually remember much more than the name; I had to look it up on IMDB today.)

We brought it home and started watching it. The humor and plot were a bit over my head, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the movie. Halfway through the movie, though, I remember Mom and Dad deciding that the movie wasn’t something they wanted to have in our home. They stopped the movie right there and took it back. They explained that the movie had crude humor that they didn’t like and didn’t want in their home.

I’ve always remembered the lesson they taught that day with their actions.