I'd been engaged to the Stake Patriarch's daughter. when I agreed to go on a mission, the guy at Zale's said, "no money back, loser!", but the bishop made a couple of calls and I DID get my money back!

Through the four months at the LTM and another four months in Mexico she wrote weekly. Then they started tapering off and my companion said, knowingly, "You're toast." ...or whatever was in the vernacular back then... Probably something Maynard Krebs said on Doby Gillis.

And he was correct.

It's a sad thing. I moped about for a few days and then I started to try to look at the bright side of life and I decided to try out those new fangled contact lens thingies and by the time I was transferred to Guadalajara, and the contacts caught up with me, via the APs, I had reached the conclusion that life was still worth living.

So while it's not fun, the pain was temporary.

Were those the old hard contacts that you had to cook at night to disinfect?


PS: Sorry about the Dear John.

We like Saucie better.

Absolutely true.

We are quite fond of Tom in Paris, too.

I love Tom in Paris!

When Saucie and I go to Paris, we're gonna TP his pied-à-terre!

Not sure what "TP" means, but we'd be delighted to put you and Saucie up in one of our spare bedrooms if you come - and I'll give you a very different tour of Paris from the one usually reserved for visitors to the city. I know lots of stuff that is rarely if ever mentioned in the guide books :-)

TP means toilet paper, the American ritual of throwing rolls up in your trees or on your roof or wherever, leaving streams of white paper hanging down o so decorously.

I am, by the way, jealous that they received such a generous offer of accommodations and guidance!

I admit to having favourites ;-)

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not sure what "TP" means, but we'd be delighted to
> put you and Saucie up in one of our spare bedrooms
> if you come - and I'll give you a very different
> tour of Paris from the one usually reserved for
> visitors to the city. I know lots of stuff that is
> rarely if ever mentioned in the guide books :-)



What a sweetheart you are. That would be such a wonderful trip for us. Wow... Thank you so much.

kathleen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We like Saucie better.


Oh thank you kathleen..... I needed that today.

I guess you could say he was the first guy I ever really dated. Met him at college. We were just good friends from a family home evening group the first year of college and then we were friends the second year and did everything together. Then he started telling me he loved me. I talked him into going on a mission. Or I certainly helped. He was 20 when he left.

I went to work at Thiokol and I worked with MANY MEN and he didn't like that. He didn't like me talking about work. I was so happy at that job. Best time of my life. Then all the missionaries in his district sent out contest letters for girls to send cookies at Christmas and so they sent them to all the girls they knew. I didn't realize that they went out to other girls from my missionary until his sister told me. That was pretty much the end of it???

I wrote him a dear john in February and his zone leaders wrote me a letter mimicking mine. Then he called me and told me he was coming home. I told him I wouldn't see him if he came home. I was quite the bitch, wouldn't you say??? I still have the ZL letter.

I saw him when he got home. We went out once and I got my letters back. He married a girl he also knew at college when I knew him. She dated his best friend from high school. I'd give you her name on fb. She has an interesting name on there. But that would be rude. Anyway, I met my current boyfriend at that job. The guy I dear john'd said he thought I'd be married by the time he got home, but the only proposals I got were from nonmormons and I wouldn't marry them. Stupid me.

this reddit link has a photo of the Guadalajara luau where I helped heal myself by deciding the blonde LM was cute. I'm the LM with the black hair, in the white, floor length gown... Really!!

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/e78hqk/pday_used_to_be_dday_diversion_day_we_used_to_be/



how embarrassing that I called the movie "what's up, pussycat" ...

Hey, I copywrited that. You owe me royalties!

I was born on the 3rd of the following month.

Dang, you're old!!

I was "dear John-ed" too. Beautiful girl. We had the same birthday and once we made out I was in love big-time.

We wrote to each other every week but after the first year went by she wrote and told me she wanted to go on a mission too. I was sad because it would mean another year apart after I got home. Perhaps that should have been a wake up call?

After I arrived home she sent me a letter from her mission in Italy. She dear John-ed me then. I was very upset. I ended up marrying the first TBM woman who would give me the time of day and i deeply regretted that.

I still sometimes pined away for my first love. Once, when I was stationed (the USAF) in England I hopped my way back home to visit my family. What I really wanted to do was to see if she was still available. Once I arrived home I found out that she had died.

I endured another 10 years of marriage to my BPD wife. I thought it was a sign from god to stay with her. I suppose it took me leaving the cult before I felt less guilty about ending that marriage.

Still, it was better than my experience. One should never agree to trust a girl who says that she can't marry anyone who is not a returned missionary.

I was so in love. Damn. It was difficult.

I shall refer you all to a post I made several years ago containing a bit of poetry I wrote on the subject of "Dear John's" when I was in fear of receiving my own such letter --

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2032021,2032238#msg-2032238

Re-reading that post, I realize I forgot to mention one very important thing. The effect of this poem on the missionary receiving the Dear John is maximized if the poem is actually sung to the tune of the "Mexican Hat Dance" song.

Don't know the tune? Listen to the first 17 seconds of the following - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Rqdgna3Yw. You may want to play the video at .5 or .75 speed until you learn the words.


You're welcome.