I'm really pissed today.

I'm the guy who was chastised, rebuked and humiliated at a youth activity for bringing 2 liter soda (Sunkist brand) and Eagle brand potato chips. The Sunkist was a word of wisdom violation- it wasn't a "known" caffeine loaded Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper or Mt. Dew. Somehow orange Crush was ok, but Sunkist was a no-no.

Both the soda and chips were confiscated. The soda was drained before tossed in the garbage can. The bag of chips were scattered on the ground so the birds could eat.

I received a lesson of the appearance of evil, about my responsibility to set a good example and an economics lesson as to why Mormons need to refrain from supporting businesses which were contrary to church principles. Eagle brand potato chips were a product line developed by Anheuser Busch. On the chip bag there was a small logo. It was indiscernible next to the bar code.

So today, I was learning about the corporate history of 7up. I don't have to explain why Mormons love 7up. It's been guzzled by members for decades because of caffeine free soda.

Do Mormons realize that they were supporting Phillip Morris and their fine tobacco line of Marlboro, Virginia Slim and Benson & Hedges by drinking 7up?

Yes, PM controlled 7up from 1979-1987. That means members (using their appearance of evil boogeyman doctrine) should not have been drinking 7up during those years. We were served 7up at nearly every church function in the 1980s.

Not a hate rant against 7up. My mom abhorred ANY soda in the home. But once in awhile, I would have 7up when I was feeling sick.

Your Mormon life reads like a Seinfeld episode.

Messy has had some real interesting characters for sure in his years amongst the chosen ones. I have to admit, my assigned lot is pretty boring. I love the extra self righteous, that is when I go to great lengths to see how much I can raise their blood pressure.

BYU campus was my best happy hunting ground for making people getting red in the face.

The appearance of evil is often in the eye of the beholder. It suits the Mormon church (and others) to list certain behaviours and preferences as being anti-god. The restrictions and chosen emphases give them their unique identity, something they need in order to maintain their supposedly unique and valid existence.

People in this world do far far worse than guzzling a can of their favourite pop yet Mormon leaders make it a big hairy deal.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2024 06:49PM by Nightingale.

I was born evil, if you believe in color charts!!

I recently related in another thread how my family was not allowed root beer because it was indistinguishable in appearance from colas.

But Sunkist and Eagle Brand? Apparently that unwritten rule never made it to PA. The mind boggles.

I thought homemade root beer was a mormon staple?

It was a Mormon staple, making my mom’s rule all the more absurd.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I recently related in another thread how my family
> was not allowed root beer because it was
> indistinguishable in appearance from colas.
>
> But Sunkist and Eagle Brand? Apparently that
> unwritten rule never made it to PA. The mind
> boggles.

I'm wondering if your former church or a bishop or two in it had a business deal with Eagle Brand going on at the time that was not made public. That certainly would explain a lot!

I feel your pain. That was my point even as a kid, it's so stupid and arbitrary. Bat Crap Grandmother used to bitch about root beer too. Good thing I like the floats with pineapple sherbet and 7up. I did used to sneak the bubblegum cigars. That was goooood gum. The play cigs were a pass but it was worth picking them up just to watch her freak.

I really was horrible at being a kid.

That pineapple float sounds wonderful.

I got a bubblegum cigar once. Good stuff.

One time I found one of those little paper rings that came off a real cigar on the street (litter). I put it on my finger to wear like a ring.
I also found one of those old Kotex boxes with the big rose picture on it in the garbage. I thought it was pretty and put all my crayons inside.

My mom and big sister were horrified but never explained why.

lolololol

When I was eight, my dad took me to Disneyworld. At dinner, he told me to go to the restroom to wash my hands before we ate. There were no paper towels in the dispenser, but I could buy a napkin for a nickel. Luckily I was wearing my cross-body red purse and had a nickel. Meanwhile, everything I’d touched was getting wet or damp, but whatever.

So I bought a napkin, opened the cardboard box, and was confused. “This thing is poofy. Is this a sponge? This isn’t like any napkin I’ve seen, but whatever.” I sort of patted my hands, refolded it the best I could, and wedged it back into the box and put the box in my purse.

I walked back to the table and pulled the box out of my purse, then the napkin out of the box, held it out to my father and asked him what that thing was.

Poor guy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2024 10:53PM by Beth.

That's so funny!
Hey, those machines said "Napkins" on them. How was a kid to know napkins meant something else?

Right? Even better if it was sanitary. I had just washed my hands, for Pete’s sake!

That would have made sense to me too Beth. I would have wiped on my pants and saved the nickel though lol.

Dagny, did you get caught with that and did you get in trouble? I would have been spanked for sure!

LOL. My mom waited until I went on to another shiny object and it disappeared. No one explained why my crayons showed up in a drawer later.
I was always picking up leaves, rocks and weird things which she would throw away when I wasn't looking.

When I was about 10, Mom sent me to the store to get a box of Kotex.

I walked into a small store, about like a 711 today and just asked out loud where they kept the Kotex. The looks on the checker and a couple of older customers were memorable.

The checker grabbed a bag, stuffed a box in the bag, grabbed some money out of my hand and said I was good to go.

Don't know what hit me.

Just to put things in order, I had three brothers and no sisters, so some things were learned the hard way.

Poor kids. You probably had no idea why everyone acted so weird. At least I had a big sister I could ask.

It was so, so strange.

Oh no!

After the Disney World thing, I wanted to die if a tampon or whatever commercial came on TV.

So here’s what happened after the napkin thing. Dad told me to put it back in my purse and ask my mother about it. Asked me why I had it in the first place, and basically looked like he was going to die. But my mother wasn’t there, and I wanted to know what I wasted my money on. Obviously he knew. Why did I have to wait?

So, I guess they talked and I got some “Welcome to Your Period!” pack in the mail from Kotex that my mother had ordered, but it was the belt set up and not the adhesive ones. There was also literature about menstruation. My mom’s friend was like, “You are *not* going to send that child to school with your grandma’s sanitary belt set up.” She gave me a box of sticky ones. All this is a good four or five years before I actually needed the stuff, but folks were going nuts.

Meanwhile I wrote the Kotex people and asked them for literature about boys and puberty, because they seemed to be the authority my parents turned to. They wrote me a nice letter saying that they didn’t have any literature about boys and puberty, but it was a great question that I should ask my parents.

I have no idea how I was conceived.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2024 12:36AM by Beth.

How awkward and weird!

Thankfully there was a little film in school for girls about the topic (if your parents signed the permission form). That was how I learned. My mom was too uptight to explain much. My sister was fairly clueless about rudimentary physiology so she wasn't a big help.

I had one of the old fashioned belts with the clasps. The sticky pads didn't exist yet. I won't go into the problems with the sling shot pads hanging from the dumb belt. Then, when sticky pads came, they didn't work with open crotch garments.

I actually made a belt with some clasps and elastic that I got from a fabric store. Fancy!

I had no idea what boys were going through. I didn't have brothers.

Same here, Dagny. My parents signed off for me to participate in the 5th grade "health" lessons. But I already had my period by then. Many years later, I asked my mom why she never discussed the facts of life with me. She replied that she would have answered any of my questions. The problem is, I had been raised in a very sheltered manner, and didn't have any idea of what to ask about.

She started me off on a pad with a belt as well. I remember sitting in a lawn chair on a hot summer day contemplating the sheer misery of having a wet pad between my legs. A number of years later, I tried my first tampon, which was such a relief by comparison.

My mother taught the in the evening class. Because of that my poor Dad had to bring me and my next door neighbor. There were 4 kids in her family and her parents were divorced. Still not sure why Carole didn’t take us and let Dad watch the other 3.

I already knew what we’d be learning. I was a test child for the classes. Plus we had all my Mom’s nursing books. I knew what was going on years before they taught it.

I learned from medical books too. My mother used them to teach her sister so of course, being a horrible child, I snuck them to find out why I was told I couldn't look at them. What a letdown. No big deal.

I go back to when jackass milk is a dick priesthood holders asked, "what color is your soda, brother?" They only acceptable response was that it was root beer, but not Barq's.

Many years ago I had the following conversation, or something similar, liberties freely taken.

Young Botchan: “It’s hot chocolate.”
God in Training: “It’s in a coffee cup and looks like coffee. You should avoid the appearance of evil.”
YB””: “Who, besides Mormons, thinks that hot chocolate, or even coffee for that matter, appears evil?”
GoT: “You need to follow a higher standard.”
YB: “Which is why I’m drinking hot chocolate, which apparently is a higher standard than coffee.”
GoT: “Well it looks like coffee and you’ll give people the wrong impression.”
YB: “I thought we were supposed to ‘Judge not.’”
GoT: “It’s ‘Judge not unrighteously.’”
YB: “Like judging someone for drinking hot chocolate because you think it’s coffee?”

I’m sure they think they put me in my place.

Remember to never go back. No one should be allowed to treat you like that.