Mormon Wednesdays * Vol. 2: Mormon-watchers

Celestial underwear. Devout Mormons have to wear these.

Mindy June & I are the only Mormon-watchers on Blogspot. It's an important role we play, and I will explain why later. For now, I thought you might like to know about the history of our Mormon-watching collaboration.

My friend Gretchen became a Mormon just after we finished high school. During her period of conversion, I used to go over to her house when the "sisters" were visiting. My first encounter with the Mormons (except for the time I called the police on the ones loitering in a car outside my house when I was nine, but that's another story) was with these "sisters" who brought a Super-8 film projector over to Gretchen's house to tell her about Joseph Smith and the gold plates. Since I had never heard the story, they told me about how Joseph found the plates, magically translated them into the Book of Mormon, and then the plates were never seen again, yada yada yada.

The sisters told me "you have to take the Joseph Smith story on faith. To believe anything else we tell you, you have to believe this part."

That pretty much resolved it for me right there.

Gretchen, however, having a penchant for Dungeons & Dragons, reenactors and all that other kind of horse shit, was hooked. It was kind of scary to watch it happen, to tell you the truth. And now, all these years later, Gretchen is a card-carrying, income-tithing, Celestial Underwear-wearing Mormon. She even lives in Utah.

I learned a lot - way too much actually - about this "religion" so I could keep tabs on what Gretchen was up to. Unfortunately, it's kind of turned into gawker slowdown for me. I can't look away. I go to every LDS Temple Visitor's Center I can get to. I like to talk to the missionaries that work in them. I kind of like that culty, glazed over look in their eyes.

Every Mormon-watcher needs a companion, so I recruited the lovely & talented Melinda June to join me in my perversion, some years ago. Her first Mormon experience with me was non-consensual. We were both in Hawaii on business, so we stayed the weekend and rented a car to drive around the island of Oahu. When I caught sight of the Hawaii LDS Temple, I pulled in the driveway, despite Mindy's vigorous protests.

She handled herself pretty well though, and even resisted laughing when the cute little missionary girl started talking about the warm tinglies she gets when thinking about the Great Prophet.

Now Mindy is hooked, and we go Mormon-watching every time we're together.

It's actually quite a nice hobby. You should try it.

This is the first temple that Mindy & I visited together. A Mormon-watching team was born here.

*At CPW, "Wednesdays" sometimes occur on Thursdays.