Monday, March 29, 2010

Niklas and his Man-Crushes

Yesterday was an awesome day; actually, every Sunday seems to be an awesome day. I used to hate Sundays as a kid because it meant no playing outside all day, wearing a dress, and then sitting in church for three hours where I was bored to death. By junior high this mentality turned around and I now love, love, love the Sabbath day.

Since it is General Conference on the first Sunday of April, yesterday was a fast Sunday. I admit, I never look forward to fast Sundays; and then I'm always pleasantly surprised despite my protesting stomach at the increased spirit I feel when I'm in the church meetings. So then I realize what a murmerer I am. {:B


To give some background information before I give my little story: Niklas was called to be the Ward Clerk in a single's ward on campus, and I was called to teach Temple Prep in th same ward. So each Sunday we attend with the singles and sit in the back of the chapel during Sacrament Meeting by ourselves. (Because being married means you have a plague, I guess. ;) ) I hadn't gone up to bear my testimony in a long time, simply because I hadn't felt the need to do it, and I also didn't want to take up the single folks' time. But inevitably, as it was the last Sunday that the ward would meet before the Spring semester, my heart started beating fast, I was getting nervous---and I knew it meant I had to get up. So I did. And eventually I was the last one on the stand waiting to speak. My turn came, I spoke as much as I could (emotions always get the best of me nowadays), and then as I stepped down there was a row of people coming up. And Niklas was one of them.


When it was Niklas' turn at the microphone, he began by saying that he had already exposed his "nerdom" to the ward, so he mentioned that he was learning a lot of things from this Themes in Literature class he's taking about....super heroes. He brings up that he got to dress up as Superman this last week for the class, etc. Next thing, he says that he has a Superman comic book from the class that he wants to read an excerpt from because it reveals how Superman was like a type of Jesus Christ. Everyone has been laughing quietly, and I see in front of me, slowly turning his head, one of the guys in the ward who had attended my Temple Prep class this semester. And he gives me this look while grinning from ear-to-ear as if to say, "Is he serious?" And I just nod my head, grinning back to communicate, "OH yes." I mean, Nikas is the guy who likens the Gospel to Star Wars and brings his interests (more like obsessions) into his lessons when he teaches at church (though he's not the first to come up with that). All in all, Niklas likes to entertain people, and he is really taken with super heroes because of what they stand for, so I wasn't that surprised. He eventually bore his testimony which did make me feel relieved because I started worrying whether he was going to just go off about the comic book. :P


Anyway, the rest of Sunday was nice. A gal told me that she missed my class (it's over as of last Sunday until next semester), and then we were invited to dinner by our friends the Beck's who we hadn't hung out with in so long. And then...we watched "New Moon." I don't normally watch movies on Sundays, but I did so since we were with friends and we all hadn't seen it. There was a peanut gallery going on while watching it, and then Niklas and I analyzed it and the books afterwards. I'm not a Twilight fan; I liked it for a bit and then it just died. I wanted to like it, but it was just too physical and dramatic for me. But what cracks me up is that Niklas always complains about it and the girls who swoon over it; and yet, he is so intrigued by the whole wolverine and vampire "culture" in the books. As much as he complains, I saw him engrossed in a "New Moon" interview clip on a TV at WalMart while I was picking up some sewing thread. ;)


And side note, the weather is warming up! We had a beautiful Saturday and I told Niklas we had to go outside otherwise it would be such a waste of a day. So we went to Porter Park and threw a frisbee back and forth for a while. It was a lot of fun just being outside, but my arm hurts now. How pathetic is that?! :P


Happy Easter to all!!

2 comments:

Kathy Miller said...

Happy Easter back at you! :-) I was thinking about you tonight when we picked up some Easter candy at Fred Meyer's (and lots of plants from the nursery department). I told Dad it was maybe the first year I'd not be mailing candy to people... mostly meaning you. ;-) So... you'll have to get a Cadbury fix on your own this year, I guess... I wasn't on top of it.

I wonder how many of the people were looking at your face while Niklas was at the pulpit... just to get a read on what you thought of his comments. That was kind of funny... although I know he was totally serious and a person can take that sort of thing seriously when they are into it. We can find metaphors for deity and spirituality all around us in any number of forms. The Spirit works in mysterious ways. ;-)

Nice to see a blog post... you're on a roll this past month. I hope to get something on mine eventually... last entry was in October, after getting back from the U.K. trip.

Well... this is turning into a private message! I should have just emailed you. I hope you kids have a great Easter and Conference weekend. I'm not sure what we're doing... there was mention of a possible Easter egg hunt but I've not heard any more on that... maybe it won't materialize. Certainly if the weather was like today's... it would be a nightmare.

Have a great week!

Love, Mom

Unknown said...

Y'know, it wasn't at bad sounding as all that. Yes I related Superman's actions to Agency, and though he HAS become a Savior figure in American myth, I didn't really talk about that. Besides, what kid from our era didn't want to grow up to be Superman? or Luke Skywalker for that matter? both myths have obvious religious undertones. Thank You Joseph Campbell.