Alright Already

Calvin is pretty adamant about me making another post here. I think he is trying to prepare me for having a nagging wife or something. Because he nags me incessantly. "Dude, did you make a blog post?" "Hey, I thought you were going to write something today." and if I tell him about even the most minuscule events in my day he'll usually respond with, "Hmm, that's interesting Jake, that would make a pretty interesting blog post... think about that."

I clearly don't have the gift of writing that Calvin has, but I will do my best to fulfill this blogs purpose to portray a true, uncensored, look into the lives of single, sexy, bachelors who happen to be Mormons and try their hardest to live by those standards. Okay, sexy might be a stretch.

I am really digging on Andrea. She is pretty freaking beautiful. I notice little things about her that I feel sappy and embarrassed about noticing. For example, when she gets nervous and she is talking she will blink and her eyes will un-blink at different times. Her left eye un-blinking just after her right eye. Also, when she gets excited and starts talking about something she is passionate about she will press the nails of her thumbs repeatedly under the nails of her middle and ring fingers intermittently between making regular hand gestures. I notice this kind of stuff because I love watching her... I really like being with her. Even though we have really only been out a couple times.

One tid-bit of not so perfect information. I met her dad on Tuesday. We were sitting in the dining room and he came in and interrogated me a little bit. After all the usual stuff he says, "So Andrea tells me that you watch "R" rated movies?" I responded with sort of a scared, unprepared, "Uh..." he cut me off and said, "Being off your mission so short, I wonder why you think that's okay when an apostle has come out and clearly said we should not do it."

I had to think hard about how to respond, but didn't have a whole lot of time... I have had this discussion a hundred times before and felt fairly capable. However, Andrea had told me on a couple occasions how much she adored and looked up to her dad. I was treading on some dangerous territory here. I didn't want to lie and just cave in either, and say something that wouldn't be true. I responded with, "I love movies, I always have, I want to make movies for a living some day, so quitting the "R" rated's have always been a struggle for me."

He gave me a disapproving look and I knew he was about to go into some lecture he had probably been thinking over since Andrea first told him that. I thought about things I could use to defend myself like how in Ireland & England they use a different rating system, and that members are told that they cannot watch "18" rated movies. Well the movie Braveheart in America is rated "R" and in Ireland it's rated "15"... so a good upstanding member of the church in Ireland can watch Braveheart and be a "rule follower" while that same member can fly over to America and be looked down upon by his Mormon peers. I would then follow this up with some speech about the spirit of the law, and tell him (and this is the truth) that I don't watch just any "R" rated movie... I try to ensure that whatever I decide to watch wont drive the spirit out of my life.

Instead of saying all of that, which would surely have started a verbal arm-wrestle, and then would have him disapproving of me to his daughter when I wasn't around. I decided that before he could respond, to say, "It's something I am working on, my dad and I have this same conversation all the time." He smiled and said, "You should listen to your father." Andrea and I left shortly after that and I expected some sort of discussion and urging on her part to get me to renounce "R" rated movies, but she didn't even bring it up. She's pretty awesome.

Even though I avoided what could've been a more uncomfortable scenario, and even though I was honest on the surface, I felt like a coward and have spent many hours running the next movie conversation with Daddy through my head. I may be a little more argumentative with him once me and Andrea's relationship gets a little further along.

Jake

PS: Had a good date tonight with Andrea, # 3, still no kiss... more on that later.