BYU

Yesterday I found out that a young and impressionable cousin of mine is reading this website (Hi, George!). I found out because he sent me an email that began, “Dearest cousin Heather, I must say I thoroughly enjoy your website,” and ended with three attached photos of his new cat, Ass Face.

While I consider George the most awesome and cool member of my extended family (he named his cat Ass Face!), the fact that he is reading my website is troubling for a couple of reasons:

1. He is a member of my family and he is reading my website. My family’s official policy when it comes to my website is to ignore it to the point of denying its existence. If we can all just pretend that Heather doesn’t do that website thing, then it must not exist and we can all go on with our perfect lives, lives that are not burdened with the reality that our daughter, our sister, the wonderful little girl who made straight A’s throughout high school and college and loved Her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has become a godless infidel. Let us all pretend that she is going through a phase. Yes! That’s it! A godless infidel phase, much like an awkward teenage phase, one she will grow out of. She will come back to the fold, she will again bow down before God and accept Rush Limbaugh as her moral compass. As a family WE WILL NOT ACKNOWLEDGE THE EXISTENCE OF DOOCE.COM, otherwise we will be supporting her lifestyle, and then we, too, will burn at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

You should know that I never say things on this website about my family that I wouldn’t say to their faces. That is a lesson I learned the hard way (what lesson have I not learned the hard way?). They know that I don’t write bad things about them here, but that is not what keeps them away. What keeps them away is my irreverence, and that irreverence is at the core of who I am. Isn’t that sad?

2. My young and impressionable cousin is currently enrolled as a student at BYU. I am surprised that there are computers in Utah Valley (location of BYU) that actually allow a person to see my website. I’m afraid that if BYU found out that George was looking at my website that they might put him on academic probation, because you never know, I might say something like JOSEPH SMITH WAS A CHILD MOLESTER or BRIGHAM YOUNG SUCKED COCK. Why I haven’t been struck by lightning yet is just one of those mysteries that will be explained in the afterlife, for those of you who have faith and endure to the end. Why does the Lord allow people to be tortured and killed? Why does the Lord allow Heather hosting space and access to Movable Type?

Perhaps I should tell you a story about the time BYU put me on academic probation. During my junior year in college I was taking six English classes simultaneously so that I would have a chance at graduating within four years (it’s nearly impossible to graduate from BYU in four years for reasons that I will explain at some other time, reasons involving required religion classes taught by homicidal sociopaths). I was trying to keep my academic scholarship which required that I maintain a 3.9 grade point average.

So there I was drowning in essays and masterpieces of world literature and sentence diagrams, and my GPA was teetering on a 3.91. And I was working a part-time job to pay for housing and I didn’t have any free-time. I should point out that even if I had had free-time none of it would have been spent having sex or drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes or watching MTV. Free-time would have been spent reading the scriptures or praying for forgiveness. I was a very good Mormon who worked very hard to make good grades and to make God happy.

However, I wasn’t very good at attending all of my church meetings. I attended a lot of them, most of them, just not all of them, partly because they were SO GODDAMN BORING, partly because I was studying all the time, because you know, there was that very unstable 3.91 GPA of mine. And during my interview for my Ecclesiastical Endorsement, the interview during which the Bishop decides whether or not you are worthy to continue attending BYU, the interview that has to be conducted every year, my Bishop told me that I wasn’t attending church often enough and that because of my excessive absenteeism he was putting me on academic probation. This meant that if I didn’t attend EVERY SINGLE church meeting for the entire second half of my junior year that I would be kicked out of school! ON MY ASS! WITH A 3.91 GPA!

So you see, I am very concerned for the academic well-being of my cousin George. If they find out that he is related to such a non-church attending godless infidel who is PUBLIC about her godless infidelity, they might sacrifice his body on an altar in the quad between the English building and the cafeteria. And then they will cut him up and eat him in the temple, because that is what Mormons do.

Avert your eyes, George!