What the Fudge!?

I think it's human nature to try and find ways around the rules.  Growing up I did everything I could, without disobeying the church rules or my parents.  One of the most popular thingsas a kid was swearing.  

At around the age of 11, I remember my Mom had this sweet word processor in her bedroom.  This was before computers became the norm, and this word processor was state of the art.  I got the itch to write a story on it.  It was about Batman.  I needed to make it good though, and not any ol' language would suffice.  At 11 years old, I could think of only one word that would make my story great.  So, what seemed like in the middle of nowhere, I wrote the word "FUCK" into my story.

All was well until my Dad saw what I had written.  Needless to say, I was in big trouble.  I was no longer permitted to use the word processor without supervision.  So long Pulitzer.  From there on out I would come up with other ways of expressing myself while obeying all the rules.  I was a fudging clever young man for this one.  I soon noticed it became a popular thing to skirt the rules.  Of course, this wasn’t exclusive to Mormonism, nor was it exclusive to swearing.

A friend of mine from childhood had been dating the same girl for sometime in high school.  I quickly found out they had been intimate with each other.  They weren’t Mormons, but his girlfriend was highly religious in her own Christian church.  When I asked him, cause there was a used condom in his room, he said they would only do it in the butt because she was saving her virginity for marriage.  What the fruck right?  I mean come on, how the heck are you gonna sit there and be like, “as long as I do it in the butt, it’s not sex”?

I’m not one to talk though.  I did many things to excuse myself from committing that big sin of SEX.  Something popular amongst my fellow Mormons was the concept of dry humping.  Sure we were probably guilty of sin, but at least it’s not as bad as having sex.  So, I would go on my merry way and dry hump the fudge out of my girlfriends.  I figured, I wasn’t touching myself, she wasn’t touching me, so therefore when my "Little Factory" was working full force I wasn’t to blame.  

As I got older, I got more creative.  It got to the point where I would reason, “well I’ve done this, so  I’m already guilty of X.  I might as well do more of X”.   I remember one of my girlfriends and I would get fairly hot and heavy with each other.  We got naked!  Holy shiz is right.  Whilst rolling around naked, we felt it would not be “sex” if I just put the tip in.  After all, there was no thrusting, and it wasn’t in all the way.  So I was good.  I didn’t have sex.  

I got pretty good at manipulating myself to thinking I wasn’t committing the atrocities I was actually guilty of.  Sounds kind of familiar with my “conversion” to Mormonism itself.  Tell yourself something until you believe it.  Yup, sounds about right.  

I’ve noticed this isn’t limited to youth in the church.  Adults and even married adults are just as guilty.  I moved recently, and since I was leaving the church I didn’t inform them of my address change.  I wanted to hide away, since I had not yet planned on removing my name from the church records.  You see, as a Mormon, the church maintains a very precise membership record.  You can not just leave the church or ask your name removed.  You have to either be excommunicated from the church, or you have to write into church HQ and demand your name be removed.  Due to many horror stories about members trying to handle this themselves, I used an attorney to have my name removed from church records.  

Anyway, my wife and I moved and I thought I was free from the Mormons.  That is, until we met our neighbors that moved in right across the street from us.  Of course they were Mormons!  Fortunately, although they believe in the bat shit crazy Mormon shiz, they are actually pretty cool to hang out with, in fact we are all going on a cruise together in March.  

I bring this up only because this neighbor of mine is the best at using replacement swear words.  Of course now I see how silly it all really is.  It’s kind of like the Pascal’s wager fallacy.  You know, you should just believe because there’s nothing to lose if you do that.  Users of that argument and of silly replacement swear words don’t really get it.  Faking it doesn’t convince an all knowing God.  You can say any word you want, but an all knowing God would know what you meant by it.  As I would be taught later in my youth, it’s the spirit of the law, not the letter.

I know this really doesn’t have much to do with my journey from Mormonism, but as I pointed out when I began this blog, it won’t always be about that.  It was simply on my mind, so shut the front door and don’t be a son of biscuit, it’s my gosh dang blog and I’ll write whatever the shiznits I want!