Squirrel Cage

by Cindi Jones

  Sometimes she would bring her friend in and we would giggle and laugh requiring the librarian to intervene. I loved her story about submitting an enhancement request to eyeglass companies. She wanted windshield wipers on hers so she could walk home from school in the rain. She didn’t wear eyeglasses most of the time. She had contact lenses that she could wear. I could look into her eyes and lose myself in those emerald pools.

  Our choir performed a concert and she played a Chopin piano solo. I was mesmerized. I had never heard someone my age play like that. I was so proud of her. What a wonderful thing to have a friend like Charlene.

  Each year there was a girl’s choice dance. I don’t remember the name of it. Charlene asked me to go with her. I loved dances. I don’t believe that I had missed a single one in high school. But I didn’t know how to handle going to the dance with my new best friend. It felt odd. I felt like I was betraying her. At the time, I wish that she would have asked someone else. But I agreed to go.

  I picked her up at her home. I and met her parents. They were delightful of course. Her father was a bishop in the LDS church. They showed the careful concern that good parents have when their daughter goes out for the first time. I think that it was the first time for her.

  She wore a light green dress and she was stunning. I brought her a flower and she gave me one for my suit. Fairy tail story for her. Nightmare for me. I enjoyed taking her out far too much. “But isn’t this a good thing?” I asked Squirrel. “I don’t think so,” Squirrel answered.

  We had a wonderful time at the dance. We went out to eat with several other couples. I took her home.

  I was hooked. It wasn’t long before she was hooked. We became a thing.

  I was only sixteen but before Charlene, I had managed to form a crush for two different girls. Both had ended because I was so immature. I was a handsome kid for sure in a soft way. But I didn’t act like a guy. And no, I didn’t act like a girl either. I acted like a true dork, like a 10 year old kid. It turned them off and they would have nothing to do with me. Looks go only skin deep you know.

  I did like girls. I loved to watch them. The Squirrel ran the fantasy films every night and quite often during a boring class, I’d get replays. There was a difference between nighttime viewings and the matinee’s however. At night I would wake up and have to clean up a mess. I hated it. I hated the pervert within me.

  I continued to see Charlene. I wanted to be with her now all the time. My heart ached to be apart from her. Here I was going to be a dork again and drive her away. There would be some stupid thing that would happen and I’d say something totally off the wall. But it didn’t happen. Finally, one day we kissed.

  She hadn’t been the first girl that I had kissed. I had played spin the bottle on a double date just a few months earlier. We were at my house under the Christmas tree. My friend from down the block and I both had dates and we were having a pretty good time. It was fun but there was absolutely no passion. Nothing happened. My date was really a lousy kisser. It was like kissing a salt lick. “It was that or I just didn’t like to kiss girls,” I thought.

  But Charlene. The kiss was tender and sweet and it burst with raging pheromones. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my whole life. It stopped the Squirrel. Cold.

  Magic. Peace. Tranquility. Love.

  We spent every hour of every day that we could together. It was truly a most spectacular time in my life. As our relationship solidified though, the Squirrel came back to life. I lamented my situation.

  For much of our junior and all of our senior years, we were together. We did all the things that high school kids did back then. We attended the dances, went to basketball games, and attended church together.

  The Squirrel was back but I felt I could control it. Charlene could make me happy. I prayed that she WOULD make me happy. I prayed that her goodness would help keep my secret buried.

  We took a trip to the LA area with the high school choir. We would perform at night somewhere and during the day we would go do all the touristy things. We went to Disneyland That day would be one of the most magical days of my life. There was one ride we went on maybe 10 times because it went in a building where it was dark and we could kiss. Charlene had lots of Chapstick and I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t use the whole tube that day.

  At the end of my junior year I was elected choir president. Yes, this is the point at which I am supposed to say that I was a football or basketball jock. Shoot, I couldn’t even fling a Frisbee. Instead, of a letter jacket, I could order a school sweater with “Choir President” tattooed on the pocket somewhere. No thanks. How geeky was that? It would however, mean that I’d be required to stand before the student body at practically every assembly for the coming year and lead them in the senior class hymn. Fabulous, no? Right.

  Senior year was a blast… except for standing up to direct the senior class hymn at every assembly. No, that was truly horrible. I even knew that was dorky.

  I tried out for the school musical. I was selected to play the part of Lt. Cable in South Pacific. Yea, me. Playing the chic magnet of the production, rolling in on the beach with my shirt undone, and making passionate advances to an island girl. Oh… and I would break out in singing… “Younger than springtime are you,” “Gayer than laughter are you”. I know that I had a pleasant voice. I liked to listen to the recording someone made of it. And it was nice because we had the school orchestra play for us. It was the first year that I didn’t play cello in the pit orchestra. Charlene came to the dress rehearsals and each performance. I was so proud to be singing to her.

  One night as we were sitting in my very ugly Chevy Biscayne, Charlotte asked me if I had planned to go on a mission.

  “The Mission” is an LDS rite of passage for every young man to volunteer his time and his parents’ money to travel to some far off place (hopefully a foreign country) and preach the gospel. I had told my mother my whole life that I did not want to go. It sounded extremely boring to knock on a hundred doors a day trying to sell religion to people who did not want to listen. Really, I was NOT going. Besides, how would I ever satiate my desires if I had to spend 24 hours a day with some other snotty nosed kid of 19? Now seriously, considering my state of mind, was that really a good idea?

  “Yes,” I replied to her. “What did I say?” I said that I was going on a mission. Crap. “When did we talk about this Squirrel?”

  “Sorry, you are on your own on this one,” it said.

  So now I was going on a mission. You are called by God through the church leaders to go of course. I wondered if God was going to put me back on the list of potential candidates because I had told the woman that I loved “Yes”? The worst part was that I really did want to go now. Such a wonderful influence this precious young lady had on me. And Charlotte. If you ever read this… well you’ll know what I’m thinking.

  I was 18 now, and finished with high school. I was cramming college in as fast as I could before I left. With the classes that I took along with the College Level Entrance Placement tests (CLEP), I would have a full two years of college finished before I was 19 years old. I was told I was brilliant. Yea, sure. Who else in the congregation talks to a Squirrel all the time and dresses up like a girl? The reason I pushed so hard on college is that I knew I had to finish it quickly. That was brilliant.

  The mission call came from God, typed out by a secretary, and signed by some fellow in Salt Lake City. I would be traveling south to Chile. Charlene promised to wait for me. The girl’s right of passage was to see if she could hold out for two years while her young man was away. Usually if she could, she would be dumped two months after her beau returned.

  Charlene was making the ultimate commitment. She would wait for me. I knew that would surely mean marriage. I didn’t mind that thought one bit.

  Mission Impossible

  I hope they send me on a mission.

  When I have grown a foot or two.

  I hope they send me on a mission .
r />   To teach and preach like missionaries do.

  When you are a three year old boy in the LDS faith, you learn this song. It’s kind of catchy isn’t it? I knew it. I knew what it meant at a very early age. When you turn 19 you are called to the mission field to preach the gospel. For two years you spend your entire day, each minute of every hour, with another young man. Young men are called “Elders”. Women that go are called Sisters. I suppose it would be bad form to call young women “Elders” wouldn’t it? They spend six and a half days of every week studying the gospel, learning a foreign language if needed, and teaching the gospel. That extra half day is to do laundry and prepare for the coming week.

  Dad thought that a mission was the perfect thing to straighten out a troubled kid. My little brother was definitely in line to go by that reasoning. Dad did not want me to go. I’d already finished 2 years of college. I could have my bachelor’s degree before I turned 21. I knew that Dad wanted me to be a doctor or something. No one from either side of the family had ever finished college. Dad told me “If you think you are going to go on a mission, don’t come to me to pay for it. You’ll have to go to your mother.”

  I did and she paid. She went to work to pay for it. She went to work with runs in her stockings to pay for it, as she still reminds me after all these years have passed. She worked in a school cafeteria. Now Mom complains about her stockings. I’d be complaining about the crappy job she had to take. The school cafeteria Mom? You need to change your story. People will really know your true sacrifice. And I’m not kidding on this one.

  Gentle reader, I know how thrilled you are to come to this section of the Cindi is crazy as a loon manual. I know that you want to know all about my mission. There are two whole years of it to account for after all. I’m sure you will be enthralled with the following chapters: My trials and tribulations. How I learned Spanish. How many people I converted. And my long distance love affair with my sweetheart. So hold on, here we go.

  My Mission

  I had many trials and tribulations.

  I set Squirrel to work learning Spanish and it did a very good job. I could order a hot dog any where in South America and some places in Mexico.

  I had a long and drawn out long distance love affair with my sweetheart through airmail.

  During my mission I also learned various things from General Authorities of the Church who could not speak Spanish (And oh…. They should not have tried):

  we have the head of Christ

  they are so pregnant

  we believe in the laying on of monkeys

  Poor Spanish aside, I did talk to my mission president, who has since become one of the twelve apostles (that’s about as high as you go without being God himself), about my problem. He advised me to finish my mission, get married, have children, pray, study the scriptures, and attend the temple often. I was set. I could do that. “Right,” said Squirrel, “You know you’ll never make it.”

  I caught typhoid fever and was “healed” by a blessing from a visiting church apostle. I walked around for several days afterwards coughing my guts out and finding myself on the sidewalk. Yes, I had truly been blessed. I ended up back in the hospital. And the mission president blamed me for not having enough faith.

  And last but not least… a surgeon cut me up, sunk a lasting hole into me under my tail bone, and permanently destroyed all of the natural “padding” on my butt. I would return home to four additional surgeries to correct the malpractice. I can’t begin to tell you what Squirrel did with these. The dreams I had of the surgeries would consume tomes.

  In all honesty folks, I had many spiritual experiences. I truly believed the things that I taught. I had become a cult member in a church of cultists. My family has my day to day account of my travels there. For them, those are the real records of my experiences. Everything written therein was from my heart at the time, for the most part. Looking back, I know that much of it was an honest attempt to convince myself that I was making a difference and doing what God wanted me to do.

  Of course, Squirrel didn’t make it in my mission diaries. That would have ruined the big picture.

  Eternal Marriage

  Mormons (a name taken from one of the books considered scripture within the faith), have been famous for decades as a group celebrating plural marriage. The legal practice of having more than one living wife was officially abandoned in the late 1800’s. And you may know that splinter groups of the church have continued the practice. When a man and woman, in good standing, get married in the church, the service is performed in one of the LDS (Latter Day Saint) temples. A temple is different than a chapel. Each candidate must be deemed worthy to enter the temple. You are interviewed by your congregation’s authority (the Bishop) to determine worthiness and you must be a full tithe payer (10 percent of your income before taxes) to be able to enter a temple. The marriage does not end at death. It transcends death to last eternally.

  A man, losing his married wife to death or legal divorce, can marry another woman in the LDS temple. Once this happens, he is, in the eyes of the Lord, married to two women for eternity. If a woman loses her eternal companion to death or legal divorce, she will still be married to her first husband in the eyes of God forever. She may remarry legally and by Church blessing for “this” life. But she may not remarry in the temple.

  The net effect is plural marriage. It may be a good thing for a man to have more than one wife for eternity. But consider this; what if one of his wives is a real nag? What if a woman marries a man for time and all eternity and he turns out to be a wife beater? She will divorce him legally and they will separate. But she will forever be married to him along with his other wives he has managed to pick up during earthly life.

  I present these doctrines, not to deride the LDS faith but to explain the situation every young man and woman that are to be married. The eternal consequences of their marriage are daunting to say the least. I generally believe that most do not think through the doctrine. But I had studied it in great detail. In the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church (composed mostly of revelations given to Joseph Smith by God) section 132 verse 26, reads:

  “Verily, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife according to my word, and they are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, according to mine appointment, and he or she shall commit any sin or transgression of the new and everlasting covenant whatever, and all manner of blasphemies, and if they commit no murder wherein they shed innocent blood, yet they shall come forth in the first resurrection, and enter into their exaltation; but they shall be destroyed in the flesh, and shall be delivered unto the buffetings of Satan unto the day of redemption saith the Lord God.”

  The sealing of the Holy Spirit is “the marriage”. The new and everlasting covenant is the umbrella under which it is performed in the temple. The covenant with God is a contract. I’ll leave the rest to your own interpretation. I don’t understand it still.

  *****

  I was on the plane homeward bound from South America. I did indeed consume many hot dogs there. They were delicious. No health regulations on tube steaks down there, so the dogs were very good. Yes, they really were. I don’t think that they can legally make dogs like that here in the US. Barring the hot dogs and perhaps the South American fruit in season, there was nothing there that would ever pull me back. There were some very fine experiences to carry with me the rest of my life and some terrible memories. Not all of them were of the Squirrel running constantly in his little spin wheel. But many were. I still found myself longing for my secret wish. I also had a very difficult time being with another young man for 24 hours a day. I felt that was sinful too. I was a mental hot dog for most of my time there.

  I had been ill with typhoid fever and had severe infections from two surgeries in Chile. I had a large open wound just below my tailbone that was ulcerated and would not heal. Little did I know, I would never be able to sit comfortably again for the rest of my life because of it. As I was buckled in my seat, I had to twis
t and turn to keep the pain somewhat bearable. I had read the contents of my folder in the central office of the mission before I left. One of my buddies had managed to land sweet position there in the air conditioned office. According to the reports filed by my peers, I was a total screw up. I had tried very hard, every day to do what was expected. I convinced myself that if I did do what was asked, I could park the Squirrel in a dark garage somewhere and leave it. As other missionaries spent time in the field, they would be “promoted” and given positions of leadership. But my Squirrel could never abandon. Due to health problems and poor performance reports from the field, I was never offered other opportunities. I truly knew that I was a screw up. Of course now, a different word is more commonly used, and I’d probably use it here if it made a significant difference.

  I didn’t care so much about being a district leader or zone leader so much. I’d never thought about it until I opened the folder. I was never supposed to see the folder, but “Ducky” my somewhat rebellious friend passed it to me. It was disheartening to put everything I had into this task of missionary work, devote two years of my life and Charlene’s, spend all that money my mother made to support me and then be labeled a screw up.

  But I’d never have to go back there. To that private hell of living with another man every minute of every day. Pushing a way of life that was splashing out of my faith bucket as I walked my life’s rocky path. Terrified, that I would do something wrong and be caught. I wasn’t worried about getting caught for something that I had done. I was horrified for discovery of the unknown sin that I would surely commit.

  The airliner had a sound system on board and each of us received a pair of headphones. I was listening to a new song I’d never heard before. “Nights on Broadway” by the Bee Gees. I had never heard of the Bee Gees either. The synthesizer sounds were terrific in the mix and I was also anxious to get back to my electric bass and band. Music let my soul soar with the plane, among the clouds, as I peered out the window. Despite my feelings of trepidation, I felt that I had a new start; that the rest of my life might turn out okay. I loved Charlene with my heart and soul. But I knew down deep in my soul, that my mind or the Squirrel would never submit.