Just give me the burnt one

Christmas Memory 2007

Darron Johnson

“Just give me the burnt one,” Megan says as she reaches into the garbage can to pick up the blackened cheese sandwich.

Have I fallen asleep at the grill and am now dreaming this craziness? Am I hallucinating? Maybe I did not step into my Peach Tree apartment 15 minutes ago, but actually stepped into the Twilight Zone. No, Megan is definitely pushing me—the conscious, present me—out of the way to pick up the charred refuse from the dirty receptacle. What chain of events could have led me to this rather bizarre moment in time?

This morning started ordinarily enough. Kristen and I woke up at 6:30 and got ready for the day. At 7:30 we forced down some stale Corn Flakes and marched out to our car to drive into work together. The trusty, old All-Track Corolla got us to CaseData in the usual time; 15 minutes. I went to my desk, and Kristen went resignedly to her back room exile.

After an uneventful morning of QA, I met up with Kristen to head back home for a quick lunch. She informed me that Megan and Bart were in North Salt Lake visiting Bart’s cousin Jared Lyman, who happened to be our downstairs neighbor, and that Megan might pop over as long as we were going to be around.

So far so good. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest I had fallen into an alternate reality where house guests dig through yesterday’s garbage for today’s special and hosts proudly serve sandwiches with a side of salmonella. So why do I find myself in this awkward predicament? Am I really going to have to disapprovingly slap my sister-in-law’s hand with the spatula to convince her that I honestly do not want her to eat from the trash? Surely not. And yet, she appears insistent upon eating the blackened bread. Perhaps there is something I missed, some clue in our recent interactions which might help unravel the mystery before me now.

I recall pulling into our covered parking space and walking by the pool to building 3. Kristen and I poked our noses into Jared’s place, sniffing for signs of life, but none seemed apparent. We had missed Megan, or we would miss her. We wouldn’t be home long—just long enough to cram a couple grilled cheese sandwiches down our throats and zip back to work.

We labored up the stairs and into our little home. No sooner had I dropped the first sandwich into the pan than we heard a knock at the door. Megan had arrived. Kristen opened the door to a whirlwind of hugs, hellos, laughter and merriment. When the excitement subsided, I discovered Megan and Kristen beaming at each other—elated to have even a few minutes together. I took in the scene, genuinely happy myself to witness the reunion.

Suddenly something seemed wrong. In an instant I realized what was casting a gloomy shadow over our meeting. It was smoke, and it was coming from the kitchen. I had burned my cheese toast.

You’ll remember that this is where our story began. You’ll realize why I left the lunch to overcook on the stovetop, but you’ll probably also realize that I still have no idea why the remains of this poor crust have been exhumed from their resting place and now sit on the plate of my house guest.

In a moment of uncharacteristic and surprising force I snatch the ruined food from Megan’s plate and pitch it into the kitchen sink. Before she has time to react, I crank the knob and run water over the sandwich. Nobody could possibly want to eat cheese toast that is both burnt and soggy. I smile inwardly at my genius, and then I see the horrified look on Megan’s face. I panic. To keep the mood light, or rather to restore the good humor I sucked out of the day, I offer a joke.

“Here, I’ll burn you a new piece of bread…and we’ve got some curdled milk in the fridge for you too.”

Megan’s face brightens, not because I delivered a good line and saved myself from embarrassment, but because both offerings seem to meet her expectations. She assures me that she would love nothing more than to drink our spoiled milk and eat the worst we can give her.

I’m not sure I’ll ever understand what happened here today, but I can tell you this much: If the United States ever experiences a second Great Depression, or food becomes scarce or just detestable to the average palate, Megan will not suffer from hunger or want. And I learned a lesson as well. I’ll think twice next time I consider wasting food. There may not be a starving child in China who would benefit from my table scraps, but Megan just might be dropping by that day.

Engaged?

Christmas 2008

If there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that God answers my prayers. If there are two things I know to be true, it’s that every time He answers, it’s a completely unique experience. The commonality between each of these events is the feeling I get once the answer is revealed. It feels something like, “Duh, Darron. Didn’t you know?” followed by deep satisfaction and a sense of gratitude.

Back now to September 2002. I’m driving north on I-15 in a hurry. I’m not in a hurry because I’m going to be late, but because I want to be early. I’m excited, which is fairly unusual given that I’m a junior at BYU—too long off the mission to be unscathed by the relentless boredom of social factions and too far from graduation to feel hopeful of escape. Things have recently begun to change though, and that change is coming to a head this weekend. I just need to get to Bountiful.

After a series of romances and breakups, I’ve somehow managed to convince Kristen that I really am a catch and she could do worse. We’re meeting up in Bountiful to have a special fast with her parents to get an answer about whether we should get married. Frankly, I think that Kristen took more convincing than God will.

I realize that I’ve been shaking with nerves, but there’s really nothing to be nervous about. Kristen and I have come to our decision, and this is nothing more than a formality. I steady myself as I climb the mountain road up to Kristen’s parents’ house. The leaves are turning beautiful shades of autumnal reds and yellows. The scenery helps me feel more peaceful about what’s ahead. Formality or not, it’s no small thing to ask a parent for his daughter, and that is next on the agenda.

I’m welcomed into Steve and Marcie’s home warmly. After standing awkwardly in the entry for a couple minutes, Steve invites Marcie and me into what’s known as the zebra room, for the fake zebra skin rug on the floor. He dismisses Kristen, and she gives me a quick look of slight apprehension as she vanishes down the stairs. Despite the somewhat disconcerting look from Kristen, the meeting goes very well and ends with hugs all around.

I’m staying the night at the Alleys, and so I join them as they go to Kristen’s grandmother’s house. She passed just a few weeks ago, and some of the family is meeting there to eat, share memories and clean up. After sitting down at the gateleg table that would later sit in my own kitchen, Ben shows up. He greets everyone, sits down, waits silently for a few seconds, looks directly at me and says, “So do you have some sort of announcement?” Meeting Ben’s stare can be compared to staring down the barrel of a cannon. That’s not to say he was about to explode, it’s more to say that it can be a little daunting if you don’t work with cannons every day. I freeze and just manage to jerk my thumb in Kristen’s direction as if to say, “You’re going to have to take that up with your sister since we haven’t actually completed our fast about this yet.” Kristen artfully dodges the question, and we move on with the evening.

The next day we go to Ben’s ward for church because he is speaking in Sacrament Meeting. He gives a great talk in which he shares a story about the time he was inactive in the church, but his parents persisted in inviting him back. He says that his mom’s invitation to read The Book of Mormon and her outpouring of love is what finally moved him to return to church and embrace the gospel.

As I think about this I get a distinct and powerful impression—the kind that only can come in moments of inspiration when the spirit is working on you. While I don’t hear a voice, the words clearly come to my mind, “This is your brother. Listen to him.” I sit bolt upright and listen as carefully as I can to the rest of his talk.

I must admit that I don’t remember another word of what Ben said that day, but I’ll never forget the story he was telling when I was struck as if by lightning with an answer to the prayer I thought was already answered. I was fasting and praying as a formality after all.

First Date

First Date

Darron Johnson

The tapestry of my dating career was held together by this common thread—unbelievably weird experiences. From automotive mishaps to Freudian slips, my experience was largely one of confusion and regret, which makes for hilarious memories now that they are safely 10 to 15 years behind me. Without any Dickensian prologue to this peculiar chapter in my life I was thrown, Robert Zemeckis style, directly into the action without the foggiest idea of what awaited me. No single date embodies the strangeness of these experiences quite so well as the first.

My very first date at the tender age of 16 was with Robyn Williams—not the funny-man-turned-serious-in-later-years actor, but the goddess who graced the halls of dear old AF High back in 1994. This fated night was over before it began. It will be easiest to follow my trail of tears in table form:

Time	Event	Comments
5:00 pm	Depart home	I was in wet clothes because my turn for laundry had been pushed back to Saturday afternoon, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear anything but my black jeans and turquoise No Fear t-shirt.
5:10 pm	Purchase gas	I also took this opportunity to buy a single rose which was never removed from its plastic wrapping.
5:20 pm	Drive past Robyn’s neighborhood	This should have resulted in on on-time arrival at the group’s meeting place, but it turned out that my sense of direction as a new driver was actually very bad.
5:35 pm	Flip a U-turn on an unknown road	This location would later become the Micron facility near I-15 at the point of the mountain.
5:40 pm	See the “Welcome to Highland” sign.	Highland is just one city north of Robyn’s parents’ house.
5:55 pm	Arrive at Brigham Kelly’s house	By nothing short of a miracle, I found the meeting place for our date. I was still without my date, and I had no hope of finding her on my own. Without knocking, I burst through the front door and demanded to know who in the room could show me exactly how to get to Robyn’s house. A few tentative hands went up. I stripped Mike Davis away from his own date to feed me directions to Robyn’s house en route.
6:00 pm	Arrive at Robyn’s house	My clothes were now dry, my palms wet and my face red. I gave her the gas station rose, she gave it to a puzzled sister to put into water. We left.
6:10 pm	Arrive at Brigham’s house redux	Here we met with the other 8 couples to head up into the canyon for a fire and some hot dogs.
6:45 pm	Arrive at Altamont camp ground	The gate was locked, but we were able to get it open, so we caravanned in.
7:00 pm	Burn a hole in my new boot	Trying to make myself useful, I decided to tend the fire. Another helpful guy took on the same responsibility, and when he threw a log into the fire it kicked up ash and embers which fell on the nylon part of my new HiTech boot and immediately singed a hole through the toe.
7:15 pm	Lamely give a hot dog to Robyn	At this point in the night, I realized that I did not know how to talk to girls. Recognizing this weakness, I compensated by getting her food and drinks and standing next to her in stoic silence.
7:30 pm	Ranger escorts our group from the site	Apparently we were not supposed to jimmy open the locked gate.
8:15 pm	Regroup at Heidi Christiansen’s	This was a nice reprieve from the stress of the night. We played night games and watched the SNL.
11:30 pm	Announce that if I don’t leave I’ll get grounded	Actually, this was not as embarrassing as it had played out in my mind for the 40 preceding minutes. I rehearsed it internally as I built the courage to admit I couldn’t be out past midnight. Everyone else agreed it was indeed time to go.
11:33 pm	My car inexplicably begins to bounce	…until I look in the rear view mirror to see the undiluted horror on Josh Pearson’s face as he stares at the back of my parents brand new, leased car.
11:35 pm	Discover I hate Grant Robinson	We used to call Grant “Lenny,” you know the really dumb but strong guy from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Grant had somehow decided to perform a stress test on my little Geo Prism by jumping up and down on the bumper. The Prism failed miserably, evidenced by the bumper which was strong and secure on the passenger side while touching the ground on the driver’s side.
11:50 pm	Depart Heidi’s	Silent and grave, I pulled from the Christiansen home, wondering what form my punishment would take.
11:52 pm	Disengage the clutch to early and stall at a stop sign	This did not help me maintain any emotional control or dignity. I think that my poor date began to grasp my desperation while I pounded my fists into the steering wheel. She commented on how that sort of thing happens to her all the time—sweet girl. I answered her with steely silence and finally a gruff, “Oh ya?”
12:00 am	Drop off date	Distractedly I pulled up to Robyn’s driveway and stopped the car, without killing it this time. I recall her saying something like, “I hope you don’t get into too much trouble with your dad.” Then I think I mumbled something like, “Ya, he’s going to kill me.” With nothing remaining to say she let herself out. I was far too preoccupied with my impending doom to remember to open her door.
12:01 am	Depart Robyn’s	It was fortunate that there were no children in the street or police officers patroling between Robyn’s house and mine. I drove as fast as I could to minimize the damage awaiting me for breaking curfew.
12:08 am	Arrive home	My dad was on the couch watching a re-televised BYU football game. When I came in, he acknowledged me only by turning off the TV and declaring through the darkness, “You’re late. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

That talk was one of the least pleasant I’ve had to date. It wasn’t so much what my dad said, but rather all that he didn’t say while we both gazed into the back of his new car where the bumper should have been.

I paid the piper in many respects for that night, but I also learned something very valuable: Nothing could possibly be worse than that experience so my prospects had nowhere to go but up.